Readings: Isaiah 6.1–8 [9–13]; Psalm 138; 1 Corinthians 15.1–11; Luke 5.1–11
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.
Over the last few weeks,
since the start of January,
we’ve been listening each Sunday
to stories about the beginning of Jesus’s ministry.
How Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist;
and about the wedding at Cana,
where ordinary water was turned into abundance –
an abundance of the best possible wine.
We heard how Jesus came to Nazareth
and himself read the passage
where Isaiah foresees
good news for the poor and the oppressed,
for the blind and the captive.
And today we have Jesus
gathering his first disciples.
In Luke’s account,
which is what we are mostly reading this year,
this is the first time Andrew, James and John have appeared,
though Simon Peter gets
a teensy mention in the previous chapter.
And yet they do exactly what Jesus says.
What’s going on?
Luke doesn’t really tell us,
but we can get a hint from John’s gospel.
You see, John tells us
that Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist;
that when Jesus was baptized
John the Baptist pointed him out to Andrew,
and Andrew then went and fetched his brother Simon Peter
and introduced him to Jesus.
Another disciple with Andrew is not named,
but it is traditionally thought to have been John –
that’s the same John who was one of the fishermen
in today’s story,
the brother of James.
So it seems Jesus already knew these four fishermen,
Andrew and Simon Peter, James and John.
But they had not yet begun to travel around with Jesus.
What changed?
Well,
what changed
was that John the Baptist had been arrested by Herod
and was now a captive in Herod’s dungeons,
where he would soon be executed.
Can you imagine what it must have been like
for those who had flocked to hear him preach
and become his disciples?
It must have been a dark and difficult time, mustn’t it?
Well, the gospels don’t tell us anything
about what happened to John the Baptist’s followers
when he was arrested –
but it’s easy to imagine, I think, that they all ran away,
away from the danger that they too
might be identified with his movement
and his criticism of Herod.
Away from the danger
that they too might be arrested and perhaps put to death.
That they ran away
back to the anonymity of their homes
and their families and their everyday jobs.
And that’s where we find
Andrew and Simon Peter, James and John –
back in their family businesses of catching fish
and no doubt trying to keep a low profile.
And then – Jesus comes back too.
Perhaps he’s realized that his time has arrived:
that with John the Baptist silenced
it is his turn to proclaim the word of God,
to proclaim the good news about the kingdom of God.
And already people are listening to him:
Luke, in our reading today,
says “the crowd was pressing in on him”.
Why?
Luke tells us they wanted “to hear the word of God” –
Jesus preaching about the kingdom of God.
And in this mêlée,
there right in front of Jesus
are some people he knows:
Andrew and Simon Peter, James and John.
Was he looking for them?
Or did he just come across them?
What he saw though was an opportunity
to stop the crowd pressing in on him
and to continue to teach from the safety of a boat,
presumably just out in the shallows.
And then
they put down their nets
and catch fish –
fish in great abundance,
fish almost beyond their capacity to bring to shore.
And this miraculous catch of fish
provided the perfect opportunity
for Jesus … to tell a joke.
To me that’s one of the things
that comes across so strongly
in the gospel stories about Jesus.
He was just the most wonderful speaker –
a really skilled orator.
Jesus knows when to tell a story and when to argue;
he knows when to cross-question and when to debate;
and he knows how to use
exaggeration and sarcasm and humorous one-liners
to great effect.
And that’s what he does here, isn’t it?
“Yes, you can carry on catching dead fish,” he says,
“or you can come with me and we’ll fish for living people.”
Of course it’s not just a one-liner –
the punchline to the teaching about the kingdom of God
they have just heard him deliver,
or the punchline to the great catch of fish
they have somehow just managed to land.
No, it’s not just a one-liner,
it’s also a prophecy, isn’t it?
Because we know that’s exactly what these fishermen,
these ordinary people,
will become.
They start right here
becoming Jesus’s first disciples.
They will finish,
beyond the end of Luke’s book,
bringing in a miraculous catch of people,
followers of Jesus in great abundance.
They were frightened fishermen
who had run away
when John the Baptist had been arrested,
and they would do so again when Jesus is arrested.
And yet
Jesus inspired them and nurtured them
and gave them what it takes
to be catchers of people,
miraculously so,
fearlessly proclaiming the kingdom of God’s abundant love.
Here we see the very first steps of that journey,
Jesus gathering together
this group of John the Baptist’s disciples,
who become the core of Jesus’s own disciples.
And it’s a journey that has continued
down the ages and across the world,
right down to us,
to you and to me,
here today in this place
far from the shores of the Sea of Galilee.
Because it is our responsibility now.
We are the disciples sitting on
– if you like –
the beach.
We are the disciples
who have heard Jesus’s message about the kingdom of God –
where the hungry are fed and the homeless housed,
the sick nursed and the stranger cared for,
the oppressed and the persecuted set free,
and where peace and reconciliation
replace bitterness and war.
And our job,
our job is to share this good news,
to live as people who believe this good news
and to invite our friends and our neighbours
to come and live it
and to share in its great abundance.
Thanks be to God.
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