Less is More: What are You Fishing For?

In this world, you will stay busy 24x7 doing something. The question is, "What are you doing, and for whose sake are you doing it?"

Luke 5:1-11

Commentary

Of the synoptic gospels, Luke has the longest account of the calling of the fishermen, giving us many details omitted from Matthew 4:18-22 and Mark 1:16-20). What details can you find?

v1 Lake Gennesaret is the Grecian name for the Sea of Galilee. The name came from the town Kinnereth, a town of the tribe of Naphtali (Joshua 19:35) on the NW side of the lake.

v5 This is not Simon’s 1st encounter with Jesus. Luke 4:38-39 puts Jesus at Simon’s house, and John 1:35-42 indicates that Simon met Jesus shortly after Jesus’ baptism. Simon’s response to Jesus here shows the high regard Simon already had for Jesus.

v7 What happens when God gives you your heart’s desire? At least in this case, the fishermen are about to be done in by their prosperity. The word translated here as "sink" is only used one other place in the Bible (1 Tim. 6:9) and it connotes dragging down to ruin.

v10 Matthew and Mark both report that Jesus said, "Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men;" however, that’s not Luke’s account. Let’s look at the two big differences:

"Don’t be afraid!" The most common reaction to God’s revelation is fearful awe (in Luke look at 1:13, 1:30, 2:10, 5:11, 8:35, 8:50, 9:34, & 9:45).

"Catch men." The verb here has nothing to do with fishing, but rather catching something alive. [1]

What do these differences suggest to you?

Application

This is a story of the transformation of Simon.

In the beginning, Simon was an ordinary fisherman. Nowadays people might practice catch-and-release; however, Simon certainly planned to eat or sell everything he caught. For Simon, fishing was a predatory practice, a means of survival. As soon as the fish were caught, they’d begin to spoil, [2] and the key to survival was to catch & dry (or sell) the fish as soon as possible.

Simon already knew Jesus; however, the focus of his life was fishing [insert your favorite fisherman joke here]. Fishing was Simon’s means of survival. No doubt Simon dreamed of, and prayed for, a bonanza: a really good catch, a windfall profit, one good stroke of luck that would turn things around for him. Be careful what you wish for, Simon! [3]

God gives Simon the catch of Simon’s dreams, and it threatens to drag him down. Simon asks for help from his partners, and still the catch is overwhelming. Simon is smarter than most. Instead of persisting in trying to haul in the fantastic catch, he realizes that the real prize—Jesus—is already in the boat. He realizes that he has been taking the real prize for granted. In his transformation, he judges himself [correctly] as being unworthy.

There is a better way, Jesus implies:

Instead of survival, how about real life?

Instead of bringing death to your catch, how about bringing your catch to real life?

Instead of feeding the body alone from the death of your catch, how about feeding your spirit from the birth of new life in your catch?

By the time Jesus tells Simon not to fear, Simon has already been transformed in how he perceives life: what feeds him & what gives purpose to life. Until Simon’s epiphany, obeying Jesus was a duty: a chore competing with Simon’s instinct for worldly success. But now, but seeing Jesus as the real prize which will order his life, Simon can put his worldly fears aside.

"Not a Fishy Smell" (2 Corinthians 2:15)
For we are to God
the aroma of Christ
among those who are being saved ...

Points to Ponder

For what do you labor?

For Peter the fisherman, survival depended on catching and killing fish. On what does your survival depend?

For Peter the fisherman, the biggest catch of his life brought him to the brink of disaster. What is your fantasy success? Realistically, what would probably happen if that fantasy became reality? [4]

For Peter the fisherman, transformation came on the heels of the revelation that the real catch of the day was Jesus and that Jesus was the source of everything he needed. Have you ever had such an epiphany?

For Peter the catcher of men, Jesus’ first words after the miracle are, "Don’t be afraid!" Transformation cannot happen for us as long as we are afraid of what God will do to us. What is your fear?

For Peter the catcher of men, survival now consists of catching people and bringing them to spiritual life. Transformation cannot happen for us as long as we fear for our survival. Look at your life as it is now: where would following Jesus, becoming like Peter, and becoming a catcher of people put your survival at stake?

Are you willing to trust that God is greater than your fear?

Later, after the resurrection, when Peter was lacking direction, he reverted to fishing for a while. That story is in John 21:1-19. What parallels can you find between the story in John and today’s story? There will be times when we revert back to our old ways, but God loves us too much to let us do that for long. At the conclusion of the story in John, Peter is no longer a fisherman, or even a catcher of men: now he is to assume the role of a shepherd (but that’s another sermon for another day). Likewise, if we, in our frailty, revert back to old behaviors, God is ready to reinstate us, and even use us for bigger things.

Postscript

For those of you who are wishing for more baseball sermons, I offer up this little newspaper article "Batting for Jesus" about the Colorado Rockies. The Rockies, National League champions for the first time ever, decided a couple years ago to build a team based on character instead of on good pitchers or good hitters. A prosperity theology might try to argue that a Christian team will be a winning team, thanks to God’s blessing. However, Christians are more often called to suffer in the world for their beliefs, and the truer testimony of the Rockies is not whether they win, but rather how they stand up under adversity.

Endnotes

1 - Strangely, the only other place the word is used in the Bible refers to Satan snaring us (2 Timothy 2:26).

2 - Jake Curtis, who is taking culinary arts at the high school, told me this week, "The reason you keep fish on ice is that the flesh decomposes exponentially faster for each degree that they are above freezing."

Gov. Mike Huckabee, Republican candidate for President, during an interview by Glenn Beck on TV on Oct. 19th, said, "Baptists are like fish; they begin to spoil as soon as you take them out of the water."

3 - We labor after worldly things, thinking that their attainment will fix everything. However, frequently achieving our dreams changes nothing—if anything our troubles increase. For example Jack Whittaker, the $315-million Powerball winner in 2002, pledged 10% of his winnings to Christian charities. However, his life has been a tangled mess of arrests & court suits ever since.

4 - Herein is the paradox:

Until our hearts are right, material success cannot bring happiness; if anything, prosperity brings greater trials because we have greater temptations, and nothing has changed for us spiritually.

After our hearts are right, material success is inconsequential to happiness. If anything, prosperity brings greater opportunities to give to others, because we already have what we need.