[With thanks to Leslie Leyland Fields, and Chapter Four of her Crossing the Waters: Following Jesus through the Storms, the Fish, the Doubt, and the Seas (2016).]

I don’t ordinarily talk about this.  I’m among you to talk about Jesus, not about myself.  There was a time when I didn’t know Jesus, when I had never seen him, hadn’t heard anything about him.

Then, one morning, just a typical morning, warm and sunny, we were there by our boats on the beach, tending to our nets, and this crowd is coming our way.  They didn’t seem angry.  They were quiet.  That was strange.  Had I missed something interesting, or were they on their way to see something?

A man was out in front of them several paces.  He was coming towards us.  He wasn’t dressed to work.  He looked dressed for travel.  Who was he?  What did he want?  Where was he going?  I didn’t like crowds.  Crowds meant trouble.  Things broken, property damaged.  Penalties.  Prison.  Romans.  Bad business.  We were working on our nets, not far from our boats.  These were how we lived.  Our lives and our families’ lives depended on these things.  Here was this crowd, spreading out, coming our way, and I was getting nervous.

This man who had been ahead of the others stopped about twenty-five yards away.  He turned to them and said something, but I didn’t quite hear what.  The ones at the back of the crowd were pushing in toward the front.  They wanted to see and to hear better.  The people hadn’t really stopped; they were all trying to get out front, to get ahead of one another, to be first.

The man turned towards us, walked our way, smiling, said good morning to us, and climbed into my boat.  He called out to us, asking to take him out.  I was going to tell him he needed to get out of my boat, but I guessed he wanted to go to the other side.  Maybe he had some money.  I could get a little something, then: something to show for all my wasted time.

“You want to go somewhere?” I asked him.

“Yes, I have to go somewhere,” he said.

“There’ll be a price,” I told him.

“Yes.  There will.  Please push out into the water a little, so I can speak to these people.”

If all he wanted was to speak to them, he could just as easily do it on the beach than in my boat, but I told Andrew to help me shove off.  Andrew was just standing there, looking at the man.  “Hey!  Shove off!”  James and John were looking at us, but I shook my head.  They shrugged and put their boat in the water, anyway.

“This is good.” the man said.

“You’re not going to the other side?” I asked.

“Later.”  He sat there in my boat on the water.  He started talking to the people.  They were all quiet, listening.  I thought I would listen, too, but then my thoughts floated off in other directions.  I was tired.  I had worked all night, worked in the dark, like so many times before.  Had nothing to show for it, like so many times before.  The fishing wasn’t so good, anymore.  Obed and Zechariah had stopped fishing.  What was I going to do?  If I could catch just three hundred more fish, I could probably make it the rest of the year.  I owed thirty denarii to Asa, who wasn’t too understanding.  I needed something to keep him happy.  Then there were the taxes—that leech, Levi!  I still needed to fix the door of the house, but I had to get the lumber for that, at least half a denarius.  That money-grubber, Jonathan!  I should just go out and cut my own wood.  But I needed to get my ax head sharpened; how much would that cost?

After a while I started to feel even more tired.  The sun was getting hot; the glare off the water was getting stronger.  I wanted to get back home, eat, drink, see my wife and children, sleep.  The man had been talking the whole time.  I caught bits and pieces, when I wasn’t thinking about other things.  Something about God, or sins, or sparrows.  Something about blessings.  A religious man, then.  A rabbi?  They liked talking!  What did any of them know about work, about life?  I kept the Law, too!  What made them better than me?  Oh, yes!—only they knew what the Law was really about.  They picked through it for bones for us to choke on.

This rabbi was talking about a father, a father in heaven.  What did that mean?  God?  Who speaks of God like that?  Maybe I had heard about this man, after all.  People had been talking about a man who had come to Capernaum.  He had come from the Jordan, or the wilderness, or Nazareth—someplace!  They said he had a lot to say—that much was true!  Some were saying he was a prophet.  Andrew had been saying something about a prophet: a lamb of God, he said.  Dreamer.

“Take the boat out into the deep water.”

I realized he wasn’t speaking to the people on the shore but to me.  “What?  What did you say?”

“Take the boat out into the deep water, and let down your nets.”

Was he trying to mock me?  After I had let him get in my boat?  Your price just went up, prophet.  “You mean take you to the other side?”

“No, out.  Out into the deep water.  To let your nets down, there.”

Whoever he was, he didn’t know anything about fishing here.  The fish weren’t in the deep water.  No one caught fish in the deep water.  It was dark there, and cold.  There weren’t many fish anywhere in the lake, right now.  It wasn’t the right time.  And the deep water wasn’t the right place.  Wasted effort, wasted time, wasted life.

I stood there, looking at him.  He sat there, mild, peaceful.  What did he know?  Who was he?  When was I going to get paid?  I decided that the crowd wasn’t the trouble: he was.  Why did trouble always come looking for me?  But, if I was going to get anything from him, I had to humor him.  “Well, because you say so, I will, but, honestly . . .”[1]  Foolishness.  A fool and his foolishness.  Lord knows what a fool I am, so why not?  Yes, why not?  I wasted my night for nothing; I might as well waste my day, too!  Simon the fool, who fishes where there are no fish because he catches no fish where they are.  But here was my chance to teach a rabbi a lesson.  Out here, I was the one who knew things.

Out we went, then, into the deep water, not 32 feet, not 82, but 140 feet down, where who knew whose bones lay in the mud, where who knew how many storm-smashed boats had come to rest in the murky blue.  I would never have gone out here if there had been even a hint of a storm coming, no matter who asked me or told me to.  “Alright Andrew, let’s get a net in.”  My brother looked at me with his mouth cranked to one side, then shook his head and laughed, and got the net in.  I sighed.  What would the rest of them say when they heard about this?  Should I just laugh it off over some wine, or maybe just curse them all and close the door on them—only I couldn’t, because the door won’t close!  That bloodsucker Jonathan!  I should just go and—

“Simon!  Simon!”  Andrew shouted to me.  He was bracing himself in the boat, grunting.  The boat was starting to list.  His arms were straining.  I got over to him.  “What—” but I saw.  I saw.  The net.  It was full, alive and thrashing with silver!  I got my hands on the line, on the net, helping Andrew pull.  I needed to get the other nets in!  Fish!  There was no time to waste.  We heaved the net into the boat, gritting our teeth.  We looked, our eyes wide, grinning.  I stood up, turned, put my hands to my mouth and called out to James and John to come, to hurry.  I turned back to the nets, the fish.  We dumped out another net into the boat—beautiful! Wonderful!  We put the nets in again.

We worked hard, quickly, I hadn’t seen so many fish in a long time.  Hauling in, the nets were heavy.  I hadn’t worked at all during the night—all that was futility.  Here was work.  The sons of Zebedee were close enough now to call over to them.  “Get your nets in!”  Soon, I heard them whooping, delighted.  They were already pulling their nets back up.  They didn’t laugh after that.  All our effort, all our attention, was upon our work, upon our fish.

Later, I was hauling in still another net, fish flopping into the boat.  “Stop!”  Andrew shouted.  I looked.  Water was coming in over the side of the listing boat.  I looked around.  We had too many fish.  Too many!!  “Bail!”  We had to get back to shore, get my fish back on shore.  All my prayers had been answered, and was this the outcome?  To sink with all my fish?  All this money?  All this meant to me, meant for me—and was it now going to ruin me?

It was then that I turned and saw the man who had gone out with us, who had told us to go out, to go to the deep water, to let down our nets.  Amid all our work I hadn’t thought about him—I had forgotten all about him.  There he was, still sitting, fingers laced in his lap.  Looking at me.  I couldn’t read his face.  That wasn’t really my talent.  Not frowning, not exactly smiling.  Kindly, maybe.  He looked interested in what was happening, but like he was thinking about something else, too.  I looked around me, all the fish—wading in fish.  All my dreams and hopes, all my prayers.  All my life: all that my life was about.  All it had been about for how many years.

I felt a catch in my chest; my eyes were wet.  There he sat.  Who are you, Lord?  I thought to myself.  I fell down before his knees, seated there in my boat.[2]  “Go away from me, Lord!  For I am a sinful man!”  Whoever you are, you are holy.  Whoever you are, you have wisdom and power beyond anything, anyone, I could have conceived before today.  What have I to do with you?  What have you to do with me?  Why are you here?  What are you doing to me?

“Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”  That was what he said, there in that nearly-sinking boat filled with flopping slick silver fish on that bright lake ringed by the yellow hills under the sun and the blue sky.  Was I afraid?  Yes!  What man could do what that man sitting in my boat had done?  He had told us to go, to fish where there were no fish, and here were fish beyond anything I had known in a lifetime of fishing on that sea.  I was afraid my boat would sink, under all that fish.  I was afraid of myself, because my thoughts and heart were all on those fish, and not on the one seated there right in front of me, looking at me.  And that was just to skim the surface of my sin!  I was afraid of this one sitting there in my boat, because he was from God, and what was I, and what had he come to me for?

He had come to me, because he had come for me, for all of us there on the water with him, that morning.  He told us we would be catching people.  We didn’t know what that meant; we didn’t know what to make of that.  It didn’t sound very appealing.  He taught us what he meant.  He showed us.  He is teaching and showing you.

We rowed back, pulled the boats ashore, and left everything to follow him.  That sounds incredible, I know!  Who could do that?  But I knew this, because he had shown this to me: if this one could, in less than one hour, give me all I ever wanted in life, and in that giving show me there was something, someone vastly greater than all I had ever wanted in this life, and that this someone vastly greater was with me, right there with me, then I knew that this one could and would give me whatever I needed, as I followed him.  What could compare?  He had just shown me that abundance, blessing, did not depend upon my skill or knowledge or experience or strength or determination.  Certainly not on my righteousness!  Abundance and blessing had everything to do with him, his presence, his word.  He came to me, for me, not because I was worthy—I was a sinful man—I am a sinful man!  He came to me, for me, because he is worthy.

Following him, I haven’t always eaten, but I am fed.  My body has been cold, but there has been such warmth, in my heart.  Trying to do as he said, I haven’t always succeeded—I fail miserably, often!—yet he did not and will not abandon me.

I know Jesus, the living and enduring Word of God, and now you know Jesus, too.  He is the one who feeds you, who gives you warmth that cannot be taken away; he is the one who will not forsake you.  He is the one in whom there is abundance.  He is blessing.  He calls you because you know you are sinful: he has granted you the Spirit to confess, to know the truth.  He is the one who knows your sins and forgives them.  He is the one who says do not be afraid, the one right here, with you, who helps you to have a ready answer for those who ask you the reason for the hope that you have.  He will support you.  He is patient with you.  His power lasts forever and ever.  Be holy, then, and dedicate your lives to him.  And continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  To him be the glory, now and forever!

                [1] A common translation is “at your word”; Luke’s Greek here might roughly be translated “on the basis of your word.”

[2] Luke’s Greek says Peter fell down at Jesus’ knees.  Peter would, presumably, have fallen on his knees before Jesus, but that’s not what Luke writes.