Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

 

Fishermen or Fishers-of-Men?

        I wonder how many of us have felt as Simon Peter did in today’s gospel when he complains “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing . . . .”  Hard work never guarantees success.  In fact, Peter had lent Jesus the use of his boat as a platform for preaching because the crowds along the shore grew so large.  He did this after a long night of unsuccessful fishing. But Peter’s comment that began with despair ended with “…but at your command, I will lower the nets.”  What faith!  Jesus wasn’t even a fisherman!  Of course, the story ends with the boat being almost swamped with fish, to the extent that other boats needed to assist in recovering the catch.  Jesus remarks that he will make them “fishers of men.” Peter and the two brothers James and John left their nets to follow Jesus.  What a remarkable morning, and what a remarkable insight into our life in Christ.

            Our calling is not us to success, but is to a life of faith, to paraphrase Mother Teresa of Calcutta.  Just as last week’s gospel suggested a path of “seeking” rather than “building” the Kingdom of God, this week’s gospel suggests obedience to Christ over obedience to tradition, because tradition wants to use the status quo to reference the past to guide the future. The Spirit, on the other hand, wants to use the energy and drive of the present to work with God to create the future: “Behold, I am doing something new” (Isaiah 43:19).  What propels us forward in the life of faith isn’t concerned with success, but responsiveness to a lover---God loves us!  We are called to a living, dynamic relationship, where God is asking us to be a part of His creating acts.

            Too often our evangelical efforts to be good news become subject to cost-benefit analysis, but such a model is foreign to a God who courts His creation and actively seeks communion with us who, like the priest of Isaiah proclaims

Woe is me, I am doomed!
For I am a man of unclean lips,
living among a people of unclean lips;
yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!

What can we do when we have experienced God’s great grace and love and realize we are no worthier than the rest of humanity to merit God’s favor? We love others as God has loved us. We see God’s universal love poured out, in the elegant words of William Sloane Coffin “…universally for everyone from Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet. . . .”(Credo). In this model of love, we don't love from fear or shame, but from the awesome realization of being loved.

            The conversion of the fishermen to fishers-of-men didn’t begin with Jesus excoriating them but loving them.  It was from that grace-filled love that Peter and the priest in Isaiah dropped to their knees Too often the church shames people to their knees; however, God's universal love doesn't send the faithful to their knees out of shame, but out of awe.

            The message to the Church is clear: put out into the deeper waters of grace and stop messing around in the tide pools of shame.