Fish Story (5th Sunday after Epiphany, 9th February 2025)

5th Sunday after Epiphany - February 9th, 2025

Fish Story

Wolf Kirchmeir

Isaiah 6:1-8, (9-13); Psalm 138; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

O Holy Spirit, assist us we contemplate your word, that we may be enlightened by your truth. Amen.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today’s Gospel is about fishing.

It feels like everybody has a fish story.

Even people who don’t fish have fish stories.

Now, I don’t know whether Luke ever fished. The tradition is that he was a physician, and a physician’s apprentice was unlikely to be told to go fish. Maybe Luke fished when he was a boy.

Here we have a fish story told by Luke. I think it resonates, as we say these days. It resonates with me in many ways. I grew up next to a lake.

I watched the fishers morning and evening going out in their flat-bottomed boat haul and set their nets. They were a couple. She was short and round, and he was tall and thin. They pumped square shovel-shaped oars to move the boat.

They hung the nets to dry on frames made of spruce poles. The nets bleached in the sun, and waved in the wind. When the fishers mended the nets, they used a flat piece of wood to carry the line back and forth, and over and under to make the knots. I never could figure out how that worked.

I still can’t figure it out.

The fishers stuck the smaller fish on pine splints which they ranged in the smoke house. The smoked fish was a delicious snack, sweet and salty and smoky. Sometimes the fishers gave us children one or two to share between us.

In England, I saw fresh fish laid out on marble slabs at the fishmonger’s. They were bedded in crushed ice, which glistened even when there was no sun.

Fish was on the menu at least once a week. Granny had a limited kitchen repertoire, but what she cooked tasted good. I still think that fish should have as little added flavour as possible. Except for kippers, which should taste sweet and salty and smoky.

Fishing was and is important business all round the Mediterranean, and also on the inland Sea of Galilee. So I don’t think it’s much of a surprise to read that Jesus met up with fishers. He asked Simon to put the boat out from shore a little ways so that he could teach the people who came to hear him. Good choice. Sound carries over water, as anyone who lives on a lake knows very well.

Afterwards, Jesus asked Simon to set his nets again.

Simon wasn’t sure what to do. “We’ve been out all night, and caught nothing,” he said. “But since you say so, we’ll do it.”

Then, when the catch was almost too much for Simon and his partners to land on shore, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”

And Jesus answers, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men.”

I suspect that when we hear this story, it’s the miraculous catch that first attracts our attention. And when Jesus says that from now on Simon and his partners will be fishers of men, that seems to be the point of the story. Well, it is, and we’ll come back to it.

But first, I want to consider the exchange between Jesus and Simon.

When Jesus said, Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch, Simon answered,  Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.

Not exactly an enthusiastic agreement, is it. I mean, I recall when my mum asked me to do something I didn’t think was worth doing, or didn’t really want to do. But I did it anyway, because, well, because she was my mum. “Well, okaaay ....”

That’s Simon’s attitude.

Let’s pause a moment and think about that.

How often do we grudgingly agree to do something just because of who’s asking? Or because refusing would cause a problem? Or because, well, it’s just easier to agree? Or because we have this awkward sense of duty?

Too often, I think. But we sigh, and do what we’re asked to do, and we think that, well, we did it, so we should get some credit for doing it, and we should get some extra credit because we did it even though we didn’t really want to do it, which is a sacrifice, really, and sacrifice is good, really, isn’t it? So more points for us.

I’m not at all sure that this line of reasoning is, well, let’s say God-approved.

And what happens when we aren’t exactly enthusiastic about what we’re doing? I think we all know the answer to that question. Mistakes, and shoddy workmanship, and more.

Not good.

So Simon and his partner row out some distance, and set their nets, and then haul them in. And the catch is so large that their nets begin to break. When their partners on the shore put out to help them haul in the catch, the catch is so heavy that the boats ride low in the water and are almost swamped.

Simon’s reaction is I think a bit strange. You’d think he would be pleased at such a huge catch. A very profitable one, probably a week’s worth of fish. What’s not to like?

You might expect Simon to say something like, Well, that worked out better than I thought it would. Thank you very much! 

But Simon says Go away from me. And he adds, I am a sinful man.

When I first came to this point in today’s Gospel, I was puzzled. It was not obvious to me why Simon would say Go away from me. Admitting he was a sinful man, well, that seems easy. It amounts to saying something like I don’t deserve this bounty. 

But Go away from me?

Then, as so often happens, I was thinking about something else entirely, when a little voice in the back of my head said “Simon is ashamed.”

Shame is an unpleasant emotion. One of its effects is wanting to be invisible. To have nobody see you. To disappear. That’s why Simon wants Jesus to go away. It’s so Jesus can’t see him any more.

Shame is unpleasant, but it does have its uses. One use is to keep us in line. We are ashamed when we violate what the comment sections call “community standards.” The fear of shame, of being exposed, usually makes us behave better. 

At the least, shame prevents us from annoying other people, and it may prevent something worse.  You can see, I think, that a sense of shame is good for all of us.

But there’s also a more personal side to shame. I think that’s what is eating at Simon. I think he’s deeply ashamed by his ungracious acceptance of Jesus’s advice to set his nets again. I think it makes him feel that he has betrayed his sense of himself. He has not acted as he wishes he had acted.

That, I think, is why he says I am a sinful man. Or, I am not who I want to be.

I think we can empathise with Simon. We may grudgingly do our duty, but we don’t expect a good outcome. In fact, we may even hope for a less than perfect result, just to prove that we were right to have doubts. And when good things happen, we may look for the flaw that proves we were right. Instead of being grateful that things went well, we may carp and niggle and nitpick.

That’s ingratitude. It’s wrong.

Did Simon react that way? If so, he realized he was wrong. I am a sinful man, he says. I think we may read that as his awareness of the sin of ingratitude.  If we see Simon’s words from this angle, we can understand his anguish. Like Simon, we may feel the same shame when we realise that we’ve acted reluctantly, unwillingly, grudgingly. Because we felt we had to, not because we wanted to.

 But I hope we can also accept the grace that Simon received. For Jesus says, Don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men.

That is what this story leads up to, and there’s a lot to unpack.

Jesus says Do not be afraid. Afraid of what? What does Simon fear? I think he fears Jesus’s anger. But instead of imposing punishment, Jesus offers Simon forgiveness, and more than that, he offers the grace of working with him to redeem humankind. You will be fishers of men, Jesus says to Simon and his partners. And they leave their boats and follow him.

Jesus offers us the same grace. I came not to judge but to save sinners, Jesus says in another place. And he means it. Do not be afraid, he says to us. Do not fear punishment, but follow me. Do the work that I have given you to do.

Well, what is the work that Jesus has given us to do?  It is to proclaim the Good News. It is to catch men. It is to gather in the lost and the strayed, so that they too may be citizens of the Kingdom. It is to welcome the prodigal children, so that they too may be members of the family. That is what Simon and John and James went on to do when they left their boats and followed Jesus.

Today’s Gospel is one of several that tell how Jesus assembled the Twelve and gathered many others round him. There are two common threads in these stories. One is that Jesus didn’t seek out the respectable or influential people. True, some respectable and influential people sought him out, and some became his followers. But they had no special status.

Nor did Jesus look for moral and ethical qualifications. The Disciples, including the inner Twelve, were ordinary people. Simon and his fellow fishers made a decent living catching and selling fish. They knew their trade, and that was about as far as any qualifications went.

Several of Jesus’s followers were people on the margins of society, and some were despised. The respectable folk repeatedly wondered that this prophet, this truth-speaker, this insightful teacher of the law and the prophets, that this Jesus hung out with disreputable people.

But his followers did have something in common, and that’s the other thread. They knew they were sinners. Go away from me, for I am a sinful man, says Simon.

That self-knowledge, that confession, is what Jesus looks for.

For Jesus does not impose his redemption. He offers it. It’s up to us to accept it. And when, like Simon and James and John, we do accept it, we like them will become fishers of men.

We will do the work that God has given us, each according to our gifts.

And by so by word and deed, we will witness to the love that seeks out sinners, not to judge them, but to save them.

And that witness, by God’s grace, will draw people to that love.

Let us pray.

Creator God, grant us the grace so to follow Simon’s example that we may be faithful followers of our Lord, and like Simon be fishers of men, by our witness drawing people closer to your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.