Trinity 5 Service
Trinity 5-St. Luke 5:1-11 (2022)
On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on [Jesus] to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken, and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.
When my family and I were traveling in the last several days, we went again to the area in which I grew up, in North Texas. As I was driving around reminiscing, I was asking myself many times, Why is this so important to me?—seeing the old places, connecting the dots of what’s still like I remembered it, what’s changed. More on that to come…
At the end of our text, St. Luke says Simon and his fellow fishermen/fellow future disciples left everything and followed Jesus;
Have you done that?
Though St. Luke might not have been speaking philosophically like that (he might just have been talking about them leaving behind nets and boats, and fishing articles), sometimes we read it philosophically like that, don’t we (I do, anyway). In that bigger sense too, it’s what they did. Considering what happened after this moment (three years of training under him so they might bring His message to the world), we read it, that they were leaving more behind than those things related to their work; they were leaving behind a life without Christ for one with Him. They were leaving behind a life that concerns itself primarily with the machinations of this passing world for one in which God’s kingdom is the most important thing.
Have you done that?
We're going to talk about what it means to do that.
Jesus would say some time later: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God (Luke 9:62).” —Meaning: if you’re going to do it, do it. There’s no partway in this. In our Old Testament lesson, when God says through the prophet Jeremiah, I will bring [the people of Israel] back to their own land that I gave to their fathers, in the most important sense of it, He is talking about an eternal land. He’s taking about His eternal kingdom that gathers up all who will allow themselves to be gathered, so that they might inherit the paradise that God has prepared for them (when He says things like, behold, the days are coming, we know He is talking in this Messianic kingdom kind of way).
Traveling back to North Texas. Driving around reminiscing. Why do I feel compelled to go back over that ground? No doubt psychologists would have a certain explanation. My simple conclusion is that a part of the way God made us is to value the things we remember, the feelings we felt. We value what we think of as home (which might be combination of many places we’ve been, actually), even though we go on from there to other things in life that are greater and more important. We feel grounded in a certain way in that time and place. It’s an important part of us being human, that we want to feel this connection to whatever sense we have of where we came from.
And yet, the Bible’s message over and over and over, is that there is something even more important than that. Where we came from is more than our old neighborhood. Always present along with my excitement about seeing the old places was the realization that this is a world that moves on toward an end. This isn’t what lasts. It doesn’t last just as surely as many of the places I spent time at and valued at one time are long gone, replaced with other things. Were we to consider this to be the final destination, we would be clinging to what passes away.
The writer to the Hebrews made a big point about this when he talked about the believers of the past—Abraham, and the like, who were looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God (11). It isn’t that they despised where they’d been in this world. It isn’t that they didn’t reminisce and have nostalgic feelings for them (like we do); but they knew they were just passing through those places on their way to the greater place.
In our text, it seemed pretty important to the men in the boats that they catch fish. In their conversation about it, Simon gives Jesus a fisherman’s most discouraging report: “we toiled all night and took nothing!” But a fisherman’s got to catch fish. The way he lives his life depends on it. He sells the fish so he has money to live; that’s how it works. That’s the reality of this life, isn’t it? It’s the practical concern that every one of us faces. We have all sorts of those things that we face here.
And we’re not told to ignore them, or to make light of them. We aren’t told they aren’t important. Jesus doesn’t tell Simon that it’s ridiculous that he work so hard at catching fish, or that he be disappointed at not catching any. He doesn’t say it isn’t important that people catch fish. In fact, He kind of deals with that important practical concern first, and then directs Him to what’s even more important.
In terms of dealing with the practical concern, Jesus says to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” Of course, Simon’s immediate recollection at those words would be of a night just passed in which many hours of work have been entirely without result.
I’ve been out fishing and caught nothing a number of times. It was boring and disappointing; but it was only for the potential fun of it in the first place. My livelihood didn’t depend on it. I wasn’t going to go home and face devastated long faces who had been relying on what represented income at the end of that night. Not the same for them, though. Those hours out in the boat must have been dreadful ones. No doubt the fishermen were asking themselves how many more nights they could afford to have this happen, and then considering what a new plan for feeding their loved ones would have to be.
We might well imagine that Simon is reluctant about dragging the boat back out there after the nets have been washed and everything’s been put away; but he has respect for this one he calls Master. “At your word," he says, “I will let down the nets.” And, of course, there’s a miracle—so many fish, they can’t even deal with them all.
Can God handle the concerns you have in this world? Yes. This says, yes, He can. It said it to Simon, and it says it to you.
Simon’s reaction to the great catch of fish is always an interesting portion of this text, isn’t it? He doesn’t jump up and down with excitement. He doesn’t come running and hug Jesus. If anything, he keeps at a distance. He’s afraid. He drops to his knees. The reality of his place before God [brought into sharp focus in this moment] is even more frightening to him than the practical consequences of not catching fish. We said we were going to talk about what it means to leave everything and follow Jesus. The humility that Simon demonstrates in this text is an essential component of it. No one can really follow Jesus unless he has left behind the illusion that he doesn’t belong on his knees before the perfect God. Every one of us does; don’t ever forget that. We stand as an indication of this humility during the Confession of Sins; the Church used to kneel before that went out of fashion.
This same sort of scenario was played out at your Baptism (or at your conversion through hearing God’s Word). The Holy Spirit’s first order of business was to present the true God to you in all His glory (isn’t that what Jesus also does with the great catch of fish in the text?), and have you cower before Him like Simon does here. Because even in your infancy, you were a sinner before the perfect God (in sin my mother conceived me, the Psalmist writes [51:5]). You’d inherited a sinful flesh. You had no business before God if your situation was going to continue as it had been. The Psalmist comments on this in a way, when he says, If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? He means that if God were to consider what we are by nature when determining if we can be with Him or not, none of us would be there. If you were holding onto a sense that you were good enough in your own right to stand before God, you’d never be interested in His saving; so it was necessary that you put this thing all of us have—this natural self-security—away as the first order of business.
But God didn’t intend that you remain terrified of Him, like Simon was in the text. The Spirit presented God’s grace to you in your Baptism, and a change occurred. You came to know of God’s mercy for sinners to be found in His perfect Son Who made atonement for sins.
Have you left everything and followed Jesus? We’ve been talking about the need to prioritize God’s kingdom that lasts over this world that doesn’t (though we live this life; we live every moment of it with all its importance). The most important thing the disciples were leaving their fishing to go and do, was listen to Jesus—listen to His Word, that He would go on to call the one thing that is necessary (Luke 10:42).
Neglecting that necessary Word might be one of the things Simon was thinking about when he lamented to the Lord, I am a sinful man. The worry of catching enough fish might have kept him from it. Your worry about your own concerns in this life has kept you from devoting yourself to that necessary Word as well. It has felt sometimes, like you didn’t have any choice but to neglect God’s Word. The devil is so good at getting us to think that way. When we confessed this morning that we have sinned against [God] by thought, word, and deed, this neglect of His Word was one of the things on the list of those sins—this prioritizing of this passing kingdom over His eternal one. It’s one of the things that demonstrates that we can’t stand before Him on our own merits.
The One who demonstrates His godly glory in our text with a great miracle can stand before the perfect God because He is God. His earthly human life was entirely without sin. He would never have any reason to feel like Simon felt, or like we feel when we consider our sins. He stands before God in the judgment in our place, making us perfect before God.
Hear Jesus’ words to Simon this morning, and consider them as said also to you: “Do not be afraid.” Jesus is your Savior. There isn’t anything He can’t do to help you in this life, and more importantly, to bring you safely to the one that is eternal, in His kingdom.
That kingdom is the only lasting one. As important as it was for the men in our text to catch fish, even more important was following Jesus. At a certain point the last fish will have been caught, the last meal prepared, the last payment made for goods in this world. Our last breath will be breathed too. None of the things we toil at and concern ourselves with will be important then. But God’s kingdom remains. It doesn’t (like this world) move on toward an end. It truly lasts. Jesus is the One Who is worth leaving everything else to follow. To Him be the glory, both now and forever. Amen.
Other Lessons This Week:
Jeremiah 16:14-21
“Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when it shall no longer be said, ‘As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,’ but ‘As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.’ For I will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their fathers.
“Behold, I am sending for many fishers, declares the Lord, and they shall catch them. And afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks. For my eyes are on all their ways. They are not hidden from me, nor is their iniquity concealed from my eyes. But first I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations.”
O Lord, my strength and my stronghold,
my refuge in the day of trouble,
to you shall the nations come
from the ends of the earth and say:
“Our fathers have inherited nothing but lies,
worthless things in which there is no profit.
Can man make for himself gods?
Such are not gods!”
“Therefore, behold, I will make them know, this once I will make them know my power and my might, and they shall know that my name is the Lord.”
1 Peter 3:8-15
Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. For
“Whoever desires to love life
and see good days,
let him keep his tongue from evil
and his lips from speaking deceit;
let him turn away from evil and do good;
let him seek peace and pursue it.
For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,
and his ears are open to their prayer.
But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”
Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.