February 4, 2007

What a Great Catch
 

by Rev. Dr. Jim Carlson

Luke 5:1-11

Let’s say you’re in the food business in Japan. You get paid to figure out ways to get Japanese consumers to buy more ramen noodles. As you might imagine, there is a very competitive market for selling ramen noodles in Japan.

People are already running TV and radio commercials They advertise in magazines and newspapers. That’s all been done before and will continue to be done. So how do you get a leg up on your competitor? How do you get the consumer’s attention in a way that your competitor hasn’t thought of? How do you lure the largest number of consumers into your net?

The solution? Eggs. Yes, eggs. The marketers of ramen noodles know that consumers who buy their products probably eat eggs. So if you want to get the attention of the consumer, rather than buying another ad or putting up another billboard, why not just plaster an ad on the eggs people buy at the store?

I know it’s hard to believe, but if you buy some eggs in Japan and you get up the next morning to make yourself an omelet or something, you may notice a sticker on the shell of the egg inviting you to go back to the store to buy some ramen noodles.

Now some people will say, “Jeez, is no space sacred? What else are we going to rent out to advertisers?” these days you see advertisements in schools, at the stall in the bathroom, on the placemat in the restaurant. Some businesses even agree to buy paper fans and pay a fee to a church in order to advertise in the pew of the sanctuary.

You can make of that whatever you want. Whether that’s bad or good depends on who you talk to. But the common theme, from egg advertising fans in church is the same: the purpose is to most effectively reach the population with the message that they need something, and you have what they need.

The key is to communicate that message in the way which convinces the largest number of consumers to purchase your product. In the 21st century we call that good marketing. But that kind of marketing is the result of research and strategy creativity.

In contrast, the ministry of Jesus, which, by the way, also reached throngs of people and filled a great need in society, was not grounded in research and marketing strategy. Instead, it was grounded in the larger context of God’s plan for the salvation of the world.

No one sat down at a board meeting and said, “Now we’re going to figure out what people want and then figure out the best way to convince them that we have it.” The Bible talks about the work of Jesus similarly to the way it talks about Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt.

The people are being abused and oppressed. They suffer from demon possession and poverty and sickness. God hears their cry and responds by sending someone to save them. In Luke, Jesus comes on the scene as someone whose ministry has been destined by God to change the world and bring salvation to the afflicted Jewish people.

Jesus declares from the beginning of his ministry that he is there to bring good news to poor people, to heal disease, to drive demons out of people, and to free people who are being held as captives. That’s what he says he’s there to do.

And the stories leading up to this story show him going around the Galilean countryside healing people, bringing good news to the poor, casting demons out of people, and telling people that the rule of God was beginning to become a reality in their community.

The response to all of this, as Luke tells us, was phenomenal. Luke talks about throngs of people crowding around Jesus wherever he went. Jesus spent day after day healing any sick person who was brought to him.

Of course, someone with those kinds of powers would also be sought after for their teachings. People would have assumed that Jesus also had some kind of heavenly knowledge that went along with his unmatched ability to heal people.

In this story, Jesus is standing at the shore of the Sea of Galilee where huge crowds of people were gathered to hear him speak. Now since they didn’t have modern technology for amplifying voices, people needed to get close enough to hear Jesus. So they crowded closer and closer together.

Eventually, the people crowded so close to Jesus that they basically began pushing him into the water. So Jesus looked around and saw some empty boats belonging to local fishermen. They fishermen were not in the crowd; they were off to the side preparing their nets so that they could go out and try to catch more fish.

Jesus asked one of the fishermen, a guy named Simon, if he could borrow one of the boats. Simon agrees, and he helps Jesus take the boat just off the shore so that Jesus can teach the people without being overcrowded.

What’s interesting is that Luke doesn’t tell us what Jesus said or how the crowd responded. He just says that when Jesus was done he asked Simon to go out a little deeper into the water and try throwing out his net.

Simon said, “We’ve bee fishing all night and haven’t caught anything. But if you say so, we’ll give it another try.” Again, Luke doesn’t tell us why Simon is willing to give Jesus the benefit of the doubt on this. I think the reader is left to assume that Simon was somewhat inspired by Jesus’ teaching. But that’s only a guess.

Now, I want you to think about the practicality of Jesus’ request. Sure, Jesus was a great teacher. But what did he know about fishing? If Simon and his partners were skilled fishermen who made a living fishing and knew where and how to pull in the most fish, and if they had been unsuccessful in catching fish all night, why would they listen to someone who clearly wasn’t a fisherman and wouldn’t have known anything about fishing?

Those of you who have worked with children know what I mean. As a parent or a teacher, you’re obviously more knowledgeable about most things than your students are. That’s why you’re in the position of authority.

And when you run into a situation where you don’t seem to be able to solve a problem, where you’ve tried the same thing ten times and it hasn’t worked, you’re not going to be receptive to a child who says to you, “Why don’t you just try it again? This time it will work.”

Well why would it work this time when it hasn’t worked the last ten times? You can imagine Simon rolling his eyes when Jesus tells him to throw the nets out again. At the same time, Simon seems to have caught on that something extraordinary is going in here. This Jesus guy is clearly not like other people Simon has met.

So just out of pure curiosity Simon takes Jesus out into the deeper water, despite his exhaustion. They let down their nets, expecting to pull them up empty just like they had before. Instead, they feel this tug on the line. Before they know what hit them, the nets feel like they’ve just bagged a whale.

Simon realizes the catch is so heavy that he’s not going to be able to haul it into the boat on his own. He calls his partners, James and John, to come help him. They pull up the nets, and fish start pouring out the nets into Simon’s boat. When Simon’s boat is full of fish the net is still not empty. So they start emptying the fish into James and John’s boat. The nets continue to pour out fish until even their boat is full.

Simon cannot believe what he has just seen. Now Luke doesn’t talk about this great catch of fish in terms of a miracle. He doesn’t use the same kinds of words in other places where Jesus performs some kind of miracle.

But he lets us know Simon thought this catch was evidence that Jesus had some kind of power beyond his own humanity. And if so, Simon figured this power was given to Jesus by God. Suddenly Simon felt like he was in the presence of God himself. And he felt very unworthy to be there.

Simon tells Jesus to leave because he doesn’t think he should be favored by God in this way. Simon knew about his own sinfulness and his apparent indifference to whatever God was doing in the world.

Now it’s interesting to see how Jesus responds to Simon’s insecurity. He could have said something like, “Yes, you’re lucky to be in the presence of someone like me. From now on you’d better straighten up and fly right or something bad will happen to you.”

Instead of a word of judgment, Jesus tells Simon that in the future he will be catching people. In other words, this situation with the fish and the nets is all an analogy to the call God has on Simon’s life.

If Simon follows Jesus, Simon can count on impacting the lives of people he meets just like he impacted the lives of those fish he caught. Simon watched Jesus speak to this huge crowd of people and give them what they needed. If Jesus had this much impact on the fish that day, just imagine the kind of impact he could have on the world!

Simon and his partners knew they had a life-changing kind of choice to make that day. Either go into town and sell those fish for a huge profit and keep on bringing fish into their boats, or leave those fish in the water, drop the nets and boats off at the shore and help Jesus bring schools of people into the kingdom of God.

As the story ends, they take option B. They drop off their nets and boats, leave everything behind, and follow Jesus in his ministry. That choice, as you read through the rest of Luke and its sequel Acts, changed not only Peter’s life, but the course of history. Peter became one of the founders leaders of the church, second in importance only to James, Jesus’ brother.

Now, I want you to consider what Luke is trying to tell us here. He’s not saying you should quit your job, leave your family behind and become a pastor, although if you are interested in doing so, see me after the service.

Luke was trying to describe the kind of impact Jesus had on the world. Jesus had changed the lives of people who had not been reached before. People flocked to him more than any other person if his day. It was like the fish flocking into the nets after having avoided them all night.

The exciting part of this story is that we can claim it for our own. This gospel was being written many decades after Jesus died. But it reflected the fact that the Christian faith was still attracting people just like Simon’s net did that day.

The same is true for us today. We live in a world of people who are hurting and in need of healing. In that sense they’re just like the rest of us. People want to hear something meaningful, they want a word from God. They want to know that God still is taking an interest in this world and in their lives. We all want to be reassured of this.

In order for them to swell into the nets and experience the kingdom of God, we need to be willing to follow Jesus, even if it takes our lives in a radically different direction. Jesus still says to the church, “I understand you’ve been doing what you’re doing for a living, and that’s fine. But from now on you’ll be catching people for me.”

So how does the church go about doing that? If Jesus had such a tremendous impact on his world, why don’t we have throngs of people bursting through our doors like the fish in those nets?

Isn’t that the $64 question? It’s part of what we dealt with last Saturday at the church retreat. For those of you who didn’t make it, the retreat was a great time to talk about where the church had been, why number had declined, and how we might go about luring fish into our nets again.

What I wanted to do is just highlight some of the ideas that were proposed. By the way, these are no my ideas. These are ideas proposed by the people at the retreat, based on what they thought God had gifted us as a church to do. It was also based on their sense of calling and the character of this congregation.

Two ministries ended up surfacing as ministries we thought we might do well at. One was a ministry somewhat like others in town. We plan on maintaining a list of projects that need to be done, home repairs for shut-ins, work projects, maybe even something around the church that needs to be fixed. We will publish that list, in the bulletin, in the newsletter, in the Merrill Room, and ask that you contact friends, neighbors, etc. to help you with that project.

You go with them, you work on the project, maybe they meet other people from the church who are doing the same thing. This gives them the opportunity not only to meet the people of our congregation in a non-threatening way, but also to do something they’ll feel good about.

If you’re interested in helping us get that off the ground, see Sharon Ladwig. She and I will be trying to get that ministry off the ground.

The other ministry that surfaced is a ministry to the down and out, the over stressed, the lonely of our community. We’re still playing with the name of this ministry, but it’s modeled after the parable of the lost sheep. We want to figure out a way to invite the disconnected of our community to a monthly meal, not necessarily a potluck.

At this meal we’ll fellowship with them, listen to their stories, maybe pray with them, and possibly plug another event here at church. But mostly we want them to experience the kingdom of God the way the people in this story experienced the ministry of Jesus.

We don’t have all the logistics worked out. But we have a lot of hope and a sense that there are schools of people waiting to be brought into the boat on this. If you’re interested, please see Eric and Pat. I’ll be working with them to get this ministry off the ground.

I think we as a church are in the position Simon was that day. We’ve seen lots of people respond to the ministry of Jesus in other places, other churches, other charities. We don’t want to replicate what they’re doing, but we do want to cast our own nets out in our own community.

We don’t need to feel unworthy, the way Simon did. Jesus didn’t blame Simon and his partners for the fact that the fish didn’t bite all night. Jesus just told them that in the future they would be luring people into God’s kingdom. And we’ll do the exact same thing if we’re willing to drop everything and follow him.