Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon,
he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore.
Once we meet Jesus he will begin to ask us to involve him in our lives. Jesus had already healed Simon's mother-in-law and dined together with him at his house. Simon had good reason, then, to call Jesus "Master" and to put his boat into the service of Jesus's mission. He was at least somewhat familiar with the wisdom of Jesus as well as his miraculous power. Many Christians have only come thus far, recognizing Jesus as a wise master and worker of miracles. But Jesus would have us know that he is more than that.
After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon,
“Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”
Simon said in reply,
“Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing,
but at your command I will lower the nets.”
When Jesus takes our incipient faith and initial understanding of his identity to the next level he often does so with a new invitation to trust him. It is not that we didn't trust him before, but rather that this trust now takes on a new character, related to the circumstances of our lives and the condition of our hearts more deeply than before. That is to say, what was previously something that seemed more external becomes deeply personal.
“Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing,
but at your command I will lower the nets.”
Now our day-to-day lives, our patterns of behavior are implicated and come under the auspices of Jesus himself. As they do our hearts are exposed, hearts that have been heretofore unable to satisfy themselves, no matter how hard or how long we have worked through the night. Jesus now hopefully finds us ready for him to motivate in us actions which we would not have chosen, we seemed in our eyes to be impractical. On our own, casting ours nets once again might have pushed us past the breaking point of despair. But when Jesus asks it is different.
When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish
and their nets were tearing.
When we open ourselves to respond to Jesus in faith Jesus can act in ways that seize us with astonishment. It is when we truly give our hearts over to him by such acts of trust that he is able to reveal himself in a deeper way, a way that transcends even the miraculous catch we may experience in response.
When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said,
“Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
It wasn't just because Jesus knew where to find fish that Peter experienced this deeper revelation of the identity of Jesus. It was because what Jesus asked of Peter addressed a frustration and longing deep in his being, something for about which he frustration with fishing was a mere symptom, ice above the surface of a larger iceberg beneath.
When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said,
“Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
Peter was so moved that he went from calling Jesus "Master" to calling him "Lord". Indeed, what he experienced was a theophany. He experienced his own lack and the abundance of Jesus himself. He came to see himself not as one who deserved something from Jesus, but now as one who was overwhelmed by the outpouring of grace. He stood in the presence of a holiness so profound that when Moses experienced the like he had to remove his shoes, a holiness not altogether different from what Isaiah experienced in his vision.
Then I said, “Woe is me, I am doomed!
For I am a man of unclean lips,
living among a people of unclean lips;
yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
Note, however, that both Isaiah and Peter saw the holiness of God first, and then and only then did their need for purification become apparent. It was not the case that they so cleansed themselves as to be ready for God to manifest as he did. It was rather that in both cases God himself would provide purification that could only even be received by those who had seen him enough to know of the need in which they stood. At no point were Peter or Isaiah meant to be cast back on themselves and their own efforts to make themselves worthy of such a vision. It is true that is the pure of heart who will see God, but it is only God himself who can make hearts pure.
He touched my mouth with it, and said,
“See, now that this has touched your lips,
your wickedness is removed, your sin purged.”
For Isaiah and for Peter the Lord did not dwell on what might have made them unworthy, but instead directed them to a new positive reality. He gave them both a commission that contained within itself the power to become who they would need to be.
Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid;
from now on you will be catching men.”
When they brought their boats to the shore,
they left everything and followed him.
Perhaps the Lord has been asking to use our boat for some purpose of his. Has he been asking to involve himself in parts of our lives that are so fundamental and fixed that we are reluctant to cede control to him? Do we perhaps worry that doing so will turn a night without fish into a full-blown experience of all-consuming despair if it leads to one more experience of frustration? Assuredly the Lord is very much looking for us to trust him in such situations, in the nitty-gritty of our so-called 'real lives' so that he can manifest himself to us at the very core of our need.
For I am the least of the apostles,
not fit to be called an apostle,
because I persecuted the church of God.
We may flee from the invitation of the Lord because of our own sense of unworthiness. But we are called to see in the examples we are given today, Peter, Paul, and Isaiah, that the Lord himself is more than able to make up for any insufficiency on our part. It is precisely this experience of grace that can take our faith to the next level, leading us into an ever more clear vision of the Holy One himself. May we join these great saints in the deep waters to which we too are called.
But by the grace of God I am what I am,
and his grace to me has not been ineffective.
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