May 29, 2016 Luke 5.1-11

Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret,
and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God,
he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake;
the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets.
Jesus got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon,
and asked him to put out a little way from the shore.
Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.

When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon,
“Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”
Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.
Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”
When they had done this, they caught so many fish
that their nets were beginning to break.
So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them.
And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.

But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying,
“Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”
For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon.

Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”
When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

***
Candy Aldredge, our Personnel Chair, called me. She had spoken to a perspective Music Director/Accompanist for our church, and encouraged, she sent along an e-mail but heard nothing back. She also hadn’t heard if a musician friend had been able to forward the church’s job description to the local music community. Candy had called the LaGrande newspaper and found out that job posting ads ran in the hundreds of dollars and on top of all that, I had accidentally passed along a couple wrong numbers for potential people, which of course led nowhere. Moreover, Candy had back issues to deal with which were presenting themselves in a similar hopeless manner. There was a way in which she, like Simon, had been fishing all night in the lake of Gennesarat and come up with nothing. “Katy, I don’t know what to do from here.”

And with that particular sentence, for once, I did. Despite the variables, there is an equation in my head, which goes, ‘When you don’t know what to do, you pray.’ It’s bad algebra; it doesn’t guarantee an exact answer, it doesn’t make a Music Director/Accompanist appear from thin air, or instantaneously heal Candy’s back, or reel in the biggest single catch of a fisherman’s life, but by pulling the boat out into the deep water of prayer and letting down our nets, we acknowledge the depth of God’s bounty despite our lack. To pray acknowledges hope and with hope I believe comes endless possibility.

Simon, the fisherman, says, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” Maybe Simon, the experienced fisherman, is merely humoring Jesus the preacher; maybe Simon feels pretty hopeless about the possibility of catching fish, and his address of, “Master,” is merely sarcastic. There are certainly times, after long and hard efforts, that to pray can feel like a joke. But to be a fisherman, it not only requires skill, but also a belief in chance, or happenstance, or serendipity, or luck, or grace, or God - whatever you want to name that presence of possibility, which joins the exact moment you lay down your net - with a fish swimming in your direction. So maybe, as a fisherman, Simon says, “Master,” in a way that acknowledges there is always room to be pleasantly surprised. I imagine, Simon, giving one more cast toward the sea of possibility. I imagine it like Candy, bowing her head on the other end of the phone, and we together, letting down our nets into the deep water of prayer, that we might be pleasantly surprised. We said Amen and waited.

And maybe that is the other part of fishing, the waiting. Perhaps waiting is the Y variable in the equation of prayer. And in this case it was very small, as thirty minutes later. I got a text from the same perspective candidate kindly following up about the e-mail. An hour later my friend sent a new number for an interested candidate we were previously unable to reach, and that afternoon, the woman who handled the much cheaper newspaper Ad in Baker said her daughter would be prefect and might be interested. That and at least yesterday, Candy’s back hurt a little less. The fisherman caught so many that their nets were beginning to break and I too was overwhelmed by God’s bounty. Can you imagine all those gills and tails, and eyes, and slimy scaly skin filling the boats such that they began to sink? Can you imagine all the songs, all the chords, all the notes, all the scales that those Music Director/Accompanist possibilities could play and summon out of our small repertoire? Can you imagine the fisherman hailing their friends over to fill yet another boat? Can you imagine inviting your friends over to experience that moment of still quiet that can fill our sanctuary after a hymn or instrumental benediction? Can you imagine?

There is a bounty under the sea, but how many times have we have told the story of coming up empty. I wonder, if when challenged, how will we say Master? Will we say it as fisherman, still willing to pull toward deep waters of prayer. I believe how we answer changes us from fishermen to fishers of men, fishers of people. Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” Do we answer with our skill of fishing, or do we answer with our hope?

The fisherman leave their catch in the end, and we can see their answer there, and I think Jesus could too. In the end it wasn’t about their skill or the bounty of fish. In the end it was about their hope in possibility, and they are to share their hope, to feed people with hope. When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him. May we also.