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Around Christmas time a friend of mine told me about a TV series available on the Internet called “The Chosen”. It’s not the one you can binge on Netflix right now simply called “Chosen”. “The Chosen” is a multi-season show on the life of Jesus put out free by Angel Studios. You can just livestream it with your computer and smart TV. They’ve so far produced two of seven seasons. I recommend it.
But, enough of the commercial. In the series they present Peter as a bit troubled and debt-ridden. He, like most fisherman back then, lived day to day dependent on the catch. Two brothers running a fishing business was break-even at best and then you had to throw on top of that the Roman tax and the fact that the religious authorities wouldn’t allow you to fish on the Sabbath. Many fishermen had taken to fishing during the night on the Sabbath so that they wouldn’t get caught.
Well, Peter had financial problems that got him into trouble. In order to make ends meet he occasionally took to gambling. That didn’t go well so he eventually became a false-informant for the Romans to help catch people fishing on the Sabbath. This was actually a scam. He would go out with the Romans and direct them to places where he knew people had been fishing so that they just miss catching them in the act. Then, the next day he would tell the people he had saved them from being caught and ask for their catch or next time they wouldn’t be so fortunate. The scam caught up with him when the Romans began to suspect what he was doing because they never seemed to catch anybody. That’s when they gave him the “pay your debts or else” speech.
This is the point in the series when we encounter our story in Luke. Peter had been fishing all night desperately trying to get a catch to pay off his debt, but nothing. There’s a couple of minutes of film catching Peter’s very heart-breakingly disappointing prayer-filled night of fishing in which Peter let God have it for not being faithful to his people and him under this Roman oppression. In the wee hours after Peter had finished his rant, Andrew, James and John, and their father Zebedee came to join him on his last night of freedom. When morning came, they returned to shore to clean the nets. They came ashore where Jesus was teaching a small group and he asked Peter to take him off shore a couple of feet so the people could hear better. Peter did and sat and listened as Jesus taught about how the Kingdom of Heaven is like a net. You cast it out and it gathers in.
Peter was familiar with Jesus because Andrew had had a significant moment with Jesus. So, it’s not like Jesus sprung one out-of-the-blue on him when after he finished teaching, he turned to Peter and said, “Peter, I have a gift for you. Put out into deep water and try again”. Peter was reluctant. “I don’t have a quarrel with you, Teacher, but we’ve been doing this all night…nothing.” Jesus said, “I know” and gives Peter the “Aw, come on” look. Peter says, “Alright. At your word.”
Exhausted and resigned to the fact that he was a done deal with the Romans and with his fellow fishermen for scamming them, Peter did as Jesus said. The next thing you know he's got a catch bigger than he and Andrew could handle so they called in James and John and their father Zebedee who came alongside to help. They could barely get the fish into the boats. The nets were about to rip and the boats were about to sink. Suddenly, Peter no longer has debt troubles and he’s financially set for quite some time. Quite a gift Jesus had for him. They came to shore and Peter had his “I’m not worthy” moment. Then they left it behind for Zebedee to look after and began to follow Jesus.
To be a bit personal, as I watched this episode, when Peter said, “We’ve been doing this all night…nothing”, it hit me and I started to cry a bit. I watched it again a couple days ago to make sure I had the story right and it got me again even knowing what was coming. Why? I’m a minister. I know what it’s like to be faithful and to work, to pour yourself into what your doing, hoping and hoping and hoping for some sort of catch…but nothing. That shaking your fist praying at God thing that Peter did while fishing in the dark hoping for a miracle; I know that too well…too well.
Today, I’m in my mid-fifties and, to be honest, I’m not where I thought I would be at this stage in my life. When I started out, I thought by now I’d likely be teaching somewhere. I always felt my gift was feeding the people who feed the people. But with the decline of the church, teaching positions have dried up. I also thought that if I wasn’t teaching, I would then probably be the minister of a financially secure but generous, couple hundred-member church like we used to have back in the ‘80’s. But those churches are few and far between today. When I look back at what I’ve done, the way I tell my story is that God seems to call me to places nobody else will go to do what nobody else will do and something beautiful comes of it.
And then there’s that guy down in Chattanooga, TN whose been in the news the past couple of weeks. He’s only forty-one years old and the head minister of a two site several thousand-member mega-church thing. He’s rolling in the money because his weekly sermon which he gives after a 45-minute Christian rock praise concert, always seems to wind up being “tithe 10% to my church and God will fix your life and give you abundance”. Nobody ever sees where the money is going. He is certainly rolling in abundance himself. He owns several houses in different States and some really nice cars. He’s got the catch. Two boats full of it, if that’s what you think the catch is.
But…well, he got caught at his house in his underwear with a staff member of one of the churches who is not his wife. She was wearing only a towel. They said they were making chili and it spilled all over them. He’s done nothing but lie and delude people. His scamming only makes life more difficult for me, for us, as people see what he’s done and throw the baby out with the bathwater. That man needs help and healing that he can only find in the company of compassionate people and I hope God gives him that and in the midst of that fellowship I hope he finds his way to Jesus and forgiveness and wellness.
Well, it’s worth a moment’s thought on what exactly “the catch” is. In our Western, and dare I say predominantly “American” understanding of the church, Jesus’ metaphor of “catching people” seems to mean having the personal charisma to get people to buy your product meaning get people to make a decision to dedicate themselves to supporting your religious organization with their finances and abilities. In Western culture, an historically tried and true means of doing this is to play to personal guilt and shame. It goes, “You’re a sinner and that has eternal consequences. There’s forgiveness available here. Buy in.” In the wake of the self-help movement, there’s been a shift in the message to “You are broken. There’s wholeness available here. Buy in or at least buy my book.” Now that we live in a consumeristic society where the majority of people live under that horrible institution of debt slavery, the message of “There’s abundance available here, if you buy in” is very effective. Then, there’s the really sinister “people catchers” who prey on people who have significant to life-threatening health issues, saying, “Believe and you will be healed, but you have to show your belief by buying in. What you’re not being healed? You don’t believe enough. Buy in some more.”
This Western and predominantly American model of “catching people” just seems to be little more than a belief that life’s problems can be made to magically go away through faith. This thing called faith seems to be little more than magical thinking with respect to God that that God promises to fix our lives and the fix can only be activated by a financial exchange offered to an individual with charisma who is making the promise that God will a fix to your life by giving to this ministry generously. Then, the validity or success of these efforts to catch people is judged by the size of the catch, which is the number of people you can get in the boat and of course the loot.
I’ve been using the terms “catch” and “catch people” because these are the terms Luke presents us with. In Luke’s version of the call of the first disciples, Jesus does not tell Peter and the others “Follow me and I will make you fishers of people” as he does in Matthew and Mark. Here, after a nothing short of a miracle “catch”, Peter comes and kneels before Jesus calling him Lord. He says, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a disrespectful man.” The only person a Jew calls “Lord” is God. Peter knows he is somehow in the presence of God. He knows he has lived dishonorably and probably, like we all do, blamed God for it. I used the word “disrespectful” here rather than “sinful”. “Sinful” is a word loaded with a lot of unhelpful, historical theological baggage from being used by coercive people in our culture to “catch people” by playing on our sense of guilt and shame. There are better words to use. Jesus looked past Peter’s confession and says, “Do not be afraid, from now on you will catch people.”
What Jesus meant by “catch people”, in my humble opinion, is not what we’ve come to think it means in our Western predominantly American system of individualistic, self-help, big business institutional religion that we call the Christian Church. In Greek there is a word for “the catch” which they brought in with their nets. There is a similar sounding word for the action of “catching” which means to take control of something. Now get this, the word Jesus uses here is an interesting mix of the word for “life” stuck on to the front of the word for “to catch” – to “life-catch”. I don’t think he’s meaning to live catch like snaring an animal to tame it or release it somewhere else. I think he’s playing with the word the way the that the word “fishermen” gets played on in Matthew and Mark. You were fisher-people and now you will fish for people. (Women go fishing too.) I think Jesus is wanting this word to mean “to catch and bring to life” as Jesus had just done to Peter. Usually when we “catch” something, the result is death. Or, as in the days of the slave trade, “live-catching” is to take control of the life of another in a way that leads to that person’s eventual death due to being worked to death and tortured.
But, the kind of “life-catching” that Jesus does is the opposite. He catches us to bring us from death into life. I just think there’s a word play going on here – to catch and bring to life. Jesus brought Peter out of the deep water of his troubled life that he might truly live in fellowship with Jesus and his followers.
Let me just put one more thought out there to you. Jesus didn’t mean for Peter to “life-catch” people into an institution called the Church with buildings and priesthoods and programs. We need to think about the work of fishing to understand what the church is to be. If we think of fishing as just hauling the catch into the boat, then we miss the point and wind up with an institution called the church. Taking a closer look at Luke’s account here, we see that fishing is done with partners. When Peter fished alone, well, let’s just say his personal charisma didn’t bring any fish into the boat. He had partners, his brother Andrew and James and John and Zebedee, and they did the work together. It was a fellowship. The Greek word there for “partners” is reflective of deep friendship – of true community which is indicated in the reading when James and John and Zebedee saw that Peter and Andrew were having trouble bringing in the catch and they came alongside to help.
The church is not a boat for the haul. The church is the fellowship of friends working together in Jesus’ work of “life-catching”, the work of bringing people to a personal encounter with Jesus that brings them to life. The church is where friends in Christ come alongside each other and help each other. It’s listening. It’s unconditional love. It can even be financial or whatever kind of support a person needs. We can’t regard the boat as simply the place we haul the catch of fish into. That Western predominantly American model of the church really seems to regard people as nothing more than fish for the catch. The boat is simply space where people come out of the deep water into life in the open air, the open air where fellowship in Christ is the new way of life. The net is just letting our fellowship, our friendship in Christ be open and available to others and actually including others as we go about this work of learning to love as Jesus has loved us each and amazed us with it.
I said earlier that when I look back at what I’ve done in life so far it seems God calls me to places nobody else will go to do what nobody else will do and something beautiful comes of it. This loving fellowship thing is the something beautiful I’m talking about. Hope-filled, loving fellowship that looks like Jesus is what I hope to leave behind me when God calls me to another lake. Amen.
