Sunday, February 6, 2022
/The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
Isaiah 6: 1-13; Psalm 138; 1 Corinthians 15: 1-11; Luke 5: 1-11
The Rev. James M.L. Grace
In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.
This past summer I took some of my kids fishing at the Trout Haven Fishing Pond in Colorado. The Trout Haven Fishing Pond is well stocked lake that is (no pun intended) packed to the gills with fish to catch. You drop your line in the water and within seconds a fish is on your hook, and you real it in. The Trout Haven Fishing Pond does not allow catch and release fishing, which means that you must pay for each fish you catch. We were there maybe twenty minutes, and we had almost two buckets full of fish!
Any experienced fisherman or woman knows fishing an artificially stocked lake like the Trout Haven Fishing Pond is nothing like real fishing. In real fishing, you drop your line in the water and you wait. And you wait some more. The waiting is worth it, because nothing matches the excitement of feeling that tug on your line when you set the hook and reel in your catch.
Today we hear a fishing story in which Jesus is on the Sea of Galilee, sitting in a fishing boat, teaching a crowd of people who had gathered near. After he had finished, he told Peter to take the boat out into deeper waters and to throw their nets in and see what they might find. Simon Peter protested, saying, we were out here all night, and we didn’t catch a single fish. Jesus said to Simon Peter, “don’t worry about what happened last night, try it again.”
Simon Peter dropped the nets, and we know the rest of the story. The nets caught so many fish they had to get people in other boats to come by and help them pull all the fish out. They pulled in so many fish that the boats began to sink! And immediately, Simon Peter grew afraid. He felt he didn’t deserve all the good that was happening to him.
Jesus reassured him, saying “Do not be afraid, from now on you will be catching people.” This is more than just a really good fishing story. This is a story about abundance, and how abundance comes from listening to God and doing what God asks you to do.
Elsewhere in the Bible, in a much older book called Ezekiel, the prophet Ezekiel writes about a vision of God’s holy temple. In the 47th chapter, Ezekiel writes about a river which flows out of God’s temple. In v. 9, Ezekiel says: “wherever the river goes . . . there will be very many fish. People will stand beside the sea, it will be a place for the spreading of nets; its fish will be of a great many kinds.” It sounds like Ezekiel is describing the Trout Haven Fishing Pond in Estes Park, Colorado, but really the prophet is offering a beautiful description of the abundance offered to all who humbly follow God and do the hard and difficult work of listening.
Peter’s life after answering Jesus’ call was not easy, not did Peter always demonstrate faithfulness to God. But neither do we. God’s promise is not that our lives will be easy, but that they will be abundant.
The earliest statement of belief in the church that we know of went like this: “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior. The Greek acronym of this creed “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior” spells the Greek word for fish – “icthus.” This led to the drawing of a fish as the earliest symbol Christians used as a sign of their identity, predating even the cross.
Even in the Winter, Trout Haven is open for ice fishing and ice skating. It seems to never close. There are always more fish to be caught. AMEN.