Tonight’s message is very simple. The thing I want to say is this: “You can’t grab hold of Jesus if you don’t have empty hands.” Which sounds like a very old-fashioned preacher thing to say. You can’t grab hold of Jesus if you don’t have empty hands. Let’s see if we can make some sense of that.
Last year I was invited down to the high school to be a part of a career fair. There were folks there from Purdue and NASA and the military – all there to talk about what they do and what sorts of things they look for in new recruits. These job fairs are a strange combination of exciting and overwhelming. I remember them from my campus ministry days, too, and I remember the way students came away from them with very mixed feelings.
Why is it that preparing for a career can be so exciting but actually getting one can sometimes seem so disappointing? In the abstract jobs can be places where dreams are fulfilled and where aspirations can be lived out. Often it’s the vision that moves us into careers. It’s not just that our careers will make us money…they are supposed to allow us to put our talents to work, contribute to the community, transform the way we work with one another, change the way we think, change the world. But moving from the thrill of those things to the realities of training, conforming, and paying the bills is a little less enticing.
You go to job fairs and what’s the first thing you ask yourself: Is this me? Could this be me giving my life to public interest work? Could this be me joining an accounting firm? Could this be me working for a Fortune 500 company? Could this be me joining the Navy? The Peace Corps? Could this be me doing full-time ministry in the Church? Is this me? That’s the question…isn’t it?
And a surprisingly large percentage of the time, the first response is…No…this is definitely NOT me. What I see in this new job, this new career, is something I don’t understand and am not sure I want to follow. What I see is an organization that doesn’t know me…that doesn’t really know what I can do. What I see is a future I’m not sure I want. I don’t think this is me. And so we rarely leap at the first opportunity that presents itself.
That’s what makes Jesus’ disciples so frustrating. Just who did they think they were dropping their nets, leaving their boats, and following Jesus at the first word of invitation? What kind of model is that? There is no deliberation. No questioning. No figuring out the cost. No reckoning on what this is going to do their Social Security earnings and their 401(k) plans. We know that at least Simon Peter was married. Don’t you know he heard about it when he finally went home?
What did they think they were doing? They were being downright irresponsible, dropping everything to follow a traveling teacher who could do a nifty trick with a boatful of fish. Didn’t they know they were setting a bad example for the rest of us? I mean, how are we going to say, “No, I can’t follow you like that, Jesus,” when they pick up and leave their boats at the first sign that the fishing in Galilee was really picking up? It’s something to think about when you’re wandering around the job fair. What does it take to follow a path you’ve never seen before?
It’s an interesting story that Luke tells us in the gospel reading. Jesus has begun to teach and heal around the Sea of Galilee and the word has started to spread. Folks are starting to claim some pretty amazing stuff for this young man. Some say he even preaches with the authority of one who knows the very word of God.
Then one day he shows up by the lake where several fishermen have pulled up on the shore to wash out their nets after a very unsuccessful night of fishing. A crowd is following him. They’re pressing in on him. They can’t get close enough. So Jesus gets into one of the two boats there and asks one of the fishermen, Simon, by name (though you might know him better by his later name of Peter)…he asks Simon to put out from the shore just a little bit so that he can have some room to reach. Simon obliges and Jesus sits down in the teaching position and teaches the crowds.
Some time later the crowds start to disperse and Jesus decides to provide a miracle for the fishing fleet. As miracles go, it’s not one of the most spectacular….Jesus just tells Simon where to go to find the fish. Now this was in the days before bass trackers and fish radar, so folks who made their living on the sea had to rely on their knowledge of the shoals below, the habits of the fish, and just plain luck. So when Jesus points them to fish after a night of fishing futility, well, that’s impressive, but it hardly ranks as the sort of thing that would cause a person to leave behind everything and follow.
What is impressive about the catch is the quantity of fish. This story tells us about straining nets and sinking boats all because of the great load of fish…more than any of them had ever seen in their lives. But would it really have been enough for you to follow…enough to make you send word back to the folks at home that you wouldn’t be home for dinner…ever?
Of course, I have a theory. I think this miracle took all the fun out of being a fisher. After this, could any of them ever told another story about “the one that got away”? No, it was over for them as soon as there was a catch in which none of them got away. The old story was broken. The old cycle of fishing the lake, with good days and bad, and always wondering what more could have happened, was not the most meaningful story in their lives anymore. A new story had begun. So when Jesus says, “From now on you will fish for people,” it was a new day beginning. The old way was done.
What I don’t think is that the disciples need excuses from us to justify this wild and dangerous thing that they do. “Maybe,” some interpreters say, “Maybe there was something in Jesus’ teachings from the boat that caused them to recognize that Jesus was different. Maybe they had heard stories about his healings and were impressed by his credentials. Maybe Jesus had an aura around him like in the old painting of Jesus that hangs in so many old Sunday School classrooms. Maybe he had a glow.”
But if that were so, why didn’t everybody pick up and follow? What made the disciples different? The rich young ruler came to Jesus to follow him but couldn’t bring himself to leave his riches behind in the hands of the poor. Some people, maybe even most people, were able to resist the temptation to drop everything and follow this man.
So no, I don’t think we need to give the disciples an excuse. I think what made them follow was not anything outside of them, but something inside of them. I think these disciples were desperate people. When Jesus happened upon them in the midst of their everyday lives they saw an answer to a deep, gnawing need that they couldn’t hide from themselves any longer. Jesus called and they followed--not because they were foolish and irresponsible--but because they honestly could not see any other way of living except in the footsteps of Jesus. Like Roger Miller wrote and Janis Joplin sang in “Me and Bobby McGhee,” “Nothing’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” and these disciples had nothing left to lose.
So they let the nets fall to the ground. They didn’t go back to the village to tell the best fish story they ever had to tell. They even left the fish for somebody else to clean. And then they had the empty hands they needed to grab onto Jesus. That’s what this sermon is about in case you forgot. Empty hands for grabbing on to the one who brings new life.
But it doesn’t make it any easier to follow these disciples. They can tell us what they dropped, but it doesn’t help me to discover what I’m holding in my hands. Where is that place of quiet desperation in me that waits for the call of a fishing master? Where is the clear, compelling path that reveals itself as my path? Who am I and what is it that I have to give, that I have to give, that I need to give?
What is it that you’re holding onto? What is it that blocks your line of sight, that obscures your vision, that keeps you from listening to that still, small voice within or that loud, booming voice without that tells you to follow? Deep inside, we’re all desperate people, and that’s O.K. Desperation suits us. Or maybe it’s desire. Desire for a life that is more than just the same stories told endlessly. Desire that is more than just a repetitive cycle with nothing new. Desire for life and hope and God.
In his book The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis writes about this deep desire that motivates him, and he believes, many of us. He is writing about heaven and he says:
There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else…Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it – tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest – if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself – you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say, ‘Here at last is the thing I was made for.’ We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.”[i]
It may not happen in the career fair. It may not happen in the classroom. It may not happen in our workplace or in the office with our financial planner. But somewhere in each of our lives, we are being called. To discover that place within us that responds to God. To leave behind the things that we clutch. To take a risk on a new story. And to take our empty hands and follow.
Put down the nets and step away from the boat. If your life is going to be different, it might as well start now. Thanks be to God.
Luke 5:1-11
Now it happened that the crowd pressed in on him to hear the Word of God as he was standing by the Lake of Genesserat. He saw two boats there by the lake, but the fishermen from them had gotten out and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, which belonged to Simon, and asked him to put out from the shore a little ways. Then he sat and taught the crowds from the boat.
When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Go out to the deep waters and let your nets down for a catch.”
Simon answered him, “Master, we labored through the whole night and caught nothing, but if you say so, I will let down my nets.”
When he did this, they caught a net full of fish, so much that their nets were breaking. So they nodded a signal to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. They came and filled both boats so that they began to sink.
But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell at Jesus’ feet saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord!” He said this because fear surrounded him and all those with him at the sight of the catch of fish. So also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, the partners of Simon.
Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”
And they brought the boats into shore and, leaving everything, they followed him.
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