(Before the Gospel reading)  Today’s Gospel reading, like the one from Isaiah, is about God’s call, only now Jesus calls fishermen to start fishing for people. In Matthew and Mark, the story is pretty straightforward. But Luke colors it by adding a great catch of fish right before that invitation. Luke knows that every call to discipleship requires leaving an awful lot behind.

There’s a reason we don’t do children’s sermons here. Kids are too smart. In one church, the minister talked to them about how to catch fish. Then he asked, “What would we need to do to catch people?” A hand shot up and the brightest of the bunch shouted, “Throw them in!”

Listen: (Luke 5:1-11) NRSV LUKE 5:1-11, CALLING THE FISHERMEN

5 Once while Jesus a(3512) was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, 2 he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. 3He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. 4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” 5 Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” 6 When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. 7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. 8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” 9 For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; 10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” 11 When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

The morning shift began, but weary fishermen hardly noticed. They were working with their nets.

The sun climbed over mountains east of the lake, like always. Women unbolted the front doors of their homes and swept out yesterday’s dust. Men ambled by on a path near the shore. A few people came over to the fishermen, dropped a coin in a ceramic bowl and helped themselves to a smoked fish from yesterday’s catch, now sold at discount like day-old bread.

Those fish (tilapia, mostly) would be lunch at a shop selling cheap cloth, or in a field being plowed, or by the community ovens where women baked daily bread. But long before the first worker arrived at any of those places, the morning “shift” had begun.

That shift started, not with a sunrise or day laborers walking by, but when Jesus showed up. It continued when he climbed in a boat, and put out in shallow water, and spoke to the gathered crowd about a kingdom he called heaven.

It picked up momentum when he told the fishermen to “go deeper” and to cast their nets over the water. Others, on shore, saw the shift for themselves when both the boats and the nets were filled to the brink.

But the real “shift” (if you catch my drift) was when Jesus said, “Follow me. From now on, you’ll catch people.”

It’s like what happens when you move sideways unexpectedly in a tipsy canoe, or try to load too many fish on one side of a boat – everything shifts.

The call of disciples sounds simple when Matthew and Mark tell it. But you and I know it isn’t. So does Luke. And he reminds us that at least one barrier to discipleship is economic.

For Simon Peter and others with him, it must have been hard to let go of that great catch after a night of economic downturn, when nothing came in. (No telling how long that night lasted for them. We know people whose night of meager income has gone on for months.) That moment of success would have created a tempting lure for them to keep fishing - not to drop everything and follow Jesus. Their stockbrokers and business partners (and creditors) would have found their behavior ludicrous. Outlandish.

Walk away from it all, in that moment of incredible success? Are you kidding?

But it’s like I said before reading the scripture. That’s how discipleship is. Following Christ isn’t easy. Or free. Dietrich Bonhoeffer called it “the cost of discipleship.”

Trying to land that great catch may swamp us, and sink us. But letting go is no piece of cake.

Imagine this: an individual dreams of his or her next big catch in the workplace, and gets carried away by it, like the main character in Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea. He focuses on the next promotion or payoff that’ll set him up good for life. She feels entitled to vast riches, with storage rooms of unused stuff (while working, say, as an executive at Koss). But the day of reckoning comes. And then what? It’s so sad.

Or a church amasses a huge endowment. And? They stop hearing the call to discipleship, and start plotting how to safeguard the money. They quit being disciples that do mission for others, and who risk everything in Christ’s name. They quit “fishing for people,” and try to reel it all in. They protect the church as an institution, serve the people who are already there. Pretty soon, they’re sinking! Like fishermen in a boat trying to scoop up a net with too many fish, they get in trouble. A generation later, where are they?

I like the fact that in the Gospel another boat tries to help. Churches are like boats; they need to work together and be connectional. It shouldn’t be each church for itself as is often the case. But sometimes we humans can’t do it ourselves, even when helping each other. In the scripture, both boats nearly sank. It’s not enough to pool our resources.

One more example: what about those who think Jesus wants us to have a great catch – a great financial profit – but who skip the part about being disciples? Right now, I imagine Joel Osteen is on TV, telling people that God wants everyone to be rich. God wants them to receive God’s abundance, not in a trickle, but a flood. But Joel Osteen doesn’t tell them that wanting it all can sink their boat if they’re not careful. He doesn’t say that the flood he wants them to have may come into the boat with them.

Similarly, the other night on TV, Sarah and I saw a commercial for a homebuilder who builds luxury properties west of the city. At the end of the commercial, by the address and phone number, there was a little fish symbol, the kind people put on cars to show that they’re Christian.

Putting a fish symbol on a car as a personal witness – that’s one thing. Putting it on your ad to help sell McMansions to the rich while moving them further and further from the poor – it made Sarah and me gag.

I’m sorry, but there’s something wrong about using Jesus as a tool to promote a business … to help haul more and more into your own personal boat higher and deeper. It ignores the point of today’s Gospel, and the shift toward serving others that took place that long ago morning, when Jesus said, “From now on, you’ll catch people.”

(I didn’t mean to go on so long about that. But I wanted to illustrate how economics and the drive for personal gain can get in the way of what Jesus intends for our lives.)

The amazing thing is that Simon and his brother Andrew, and business partners James and John didn’t fall in to that murky water. They “left everything and followed.”   EVERYTHING! Nets, boats, fish, family, future financial security …

Most of the time, they were bumbling idiots. But that morning, they were heroic! They made the shift!

My point, though, isn’t with the fishermen so much, but with Jesus. Whether he shows up at morning, noon, or night – there’s a good chance that things will shift. Especially in the morning, there’s a strong likelihood that Easter will break out.

·         It was morning, after all, when the stone rolled away from the door of the tomb.

·         Morning when women showed up with spices to anoint the body, and found abandoned grave clothes instead.

·         Morning when someone they mistook for a gardener told them to go and tell the others that Jesus was not there – and that he had risen, just as he told them.

·         And morning when Jesus called fishermen from their boats.

In fact, some scholars speculate that Luke has inserted an Easter story in today’s passage, as if to connect the initial call of disciples with the post-resurrection life.

Why do scholars say that? Because in the Gospel of John, there’s a story quite like it. Jesus comes to fishermen on the seashore, and points them to a miraculous catch of fish … after he has risen from the dead.

In Luke – and the other Gospels – the call to discipleship is not just a call to be busier and work harder. It’s a call to new life – eschatological life – life dripping with the sweet honey of a future they don’t yet fully see, and can scarcely imagine, but believe in because of what he did with the fish.

So, while the shift isn’t easy, my hunch is that Peter and Andrew and James and John aren’t alone in making it. Others do too … when they see God’s generosity at work, not as an end in itself, but as a sign that what they need will be given.

People can leave everything if they know God has other remarkable gifts to impart. God’s faithfulness in the past leads to trustfulness and hopefulness regarding the future. When you’re pretty sure that God’s gifts will be available tonight and tomorrow, there’s not the same urge to hold on to things this morning.

For me, that’s one of the rewards of the Lord’s Supper. This meal reminds me that God fed Israel in the desert after escaping from Egypt. God fed Elijah, the prophet, too, when Queen Jezebel was hot on his trail. God fed hungry disciples locked in an upper room, and sad disciples who sat at table with a stranger in Emmaus. God gathers the faithful from every generation, including many with names and faces we know, and feeds them as well at a banquet in heaven.

This table reminds us of all those other tables, and lets us know that God will continue to feed us, even after calling us through Christ to “catch people from now on.”

I don’t quite know what that means – to catch people. It sounds vaguely un-Presby­terian. But we’ll work on that detail some other day. For now, what matters is a shift that has begun, and each of us will decide whether to go … or stay … stay shallow or go deep … work for all we can get and keep it for ourselves … or trust God to provide for us, while giving ourselves to others.

It’s not an easy choice. Luke lets us know that. But he also lets us know that Jesus is near. And Jesus knows what it’s like to be “in the same boat.”

Which is good, because, sometimes it’s like the bright little kid said. We need someone who cares enough to throw us in.