Sermon by Pastor Brian - February 26, 2025
Sermons
Religious Slurs
The Roman statesman Cicero made headline news by saying, “Fishing is a shameful occupation.”1 As a poor illiterate, Peter couldn’t afford or read the Empire’s newspaper. His work choices were few: filthy farmer, vagrant shepherd, or smelly fishmonger. On a moonless night, he slipped out of bed without waking his wife Perpetua, buckled his yellow slicker, stuffed his pockets with figs, and headed for the docks of Capernaum.
The Sea of Galilee was a busy lake, congested with trawlermen angling for the same paycheck. Peter wanted to be out on the black water first. If making rent on their hay-covered hovel meant working the graveyard shift, he’d sleep come sunrise. Motivated by the fish’s dim eyesight at night, Peter, captain of this expedition with lakemen James and John, shoved off into the darkness.
Twelve hours later, with rope-burned hands, dislocated backs, and throbbing feet, the crew returned to shore full of nothing. In the hardscrabble existence of fishermen, there’s nothing worse than dumping unused ice and cleaning empty nets. Unless you have an audience listening to your grunts of frustration and judging your public humiliation with pity.
The crowds came to hear Jesus, the upstart preacher and exorcist. He wasn’t frequenting the rabbinical seminaries or mingling with the high priests in Jerusalem. Instead, far removed from the seats of power, his Gospel spread horizontally among the trampled upon and routinely dismissed. Among failed fishermen. After using Peter’s boat as a pulpit, Jesus instructs him to cast out his nets one more time.
Defying common sense, Peter obeys. Without warning, his tackle begins to fray under the weight. As the deckhands haul the miraculous catch onboard, their dinghies start sinking. Rowing back furiously, Peter barely makes landfall. Then, abruptly, he steps foot on the sand and walks away from his family, equipment, and a boatload of cash. In today’s text, what prompts Peter to drop everything and follow Jesus?
Luke 5:1-11
Once while Jesus was standing beside the Lake of Gennesaret and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets. He 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. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to burst. 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. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’s knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For he and all who were with him were astounded at the catch of fish that they had taken, 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.” When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.
Congregational Responses:
Peter heard something in Jesus’ preaching he’d been listening for his entire life.
Because Peter was always hungry, and Jesus multiplied food wherever he went.
Fall 1987. The day began in Mr. Delvaux’s Bible class at a southern Christian high school. Throughout the semester, the students will learn about Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden, the original transgression infecting all of humanity, the world’s inevitable damnation, and how Jesus, the sacrificial lamb slaughtered on the cross, substituted his life for our salvation to appease an angry Lord. But before starting on the conservative syllabus, Mr. Delvaux clutched a glass vase and said, “In the beginning, God created us in [His] perfect image. But then, the Fall.” While still finishing his sentence, he violently threw the vase backward, smashing it into a brick wall. Glass shards flew in every direction as the students leapt in their chairs, gasped, and let out primal screams. After a terrible silence, the teacher continued, “This is our situation now [and] no one can put it back together.” Johnny, reflecting on the religious trauma of that school day thirty years later, said, “Nearly all of my classmates still struggle to see ourselves as anything but a broken mess that no one could love.”2
Peter, too, was a broken mess. As a dutiful Jew, he walked the one-hundred-plus miles to Jerusalem. Arriving at the temple, a priest asked for his offering. “Sorry,” he’d say, “Can’t afford it.” “Oh,” the priest continued, “you’re a lowly Galilean fisherman. You handle blood and animal carcasses. That makes you ritually impure. According to the Torah’s strict commandments, you’re dirty and unworthy of inclusion into the chosen people.”
Back in the boat, surrounded by an extravagant yield of thrashing fish, Peter denounces himself as a “SINNER” since that’s what the Jewish elite labeled him. Refusing to participate in the identity shaming, Jesus, the holy contrarian, affirms Peter by giving him a righteous promotion. “From now on, you’ll catch people as the Rock of my Church, be my beloved companion in ministry, and the only person I trust with the keys to the kingdom.”
Justo Gonzalez, the Latino theologian, says Peter drops everything because “Jesus is calling, as his lead disciple, the very person deemed irreligious by religion.”3 For those of us who’ve endured the same kind of slurs- unlovable, backslider, blasphemer, heretic, reprobate- hear the Good News: those names are a lie. The same degenerates last in line, according to the Institution, are the same people Jesus picks first as his followers.
While Catholics and Protestants continue to argue about Apostolic Succession, the line of continuity from one generation of apostles to the next, beginning with Peter, Luke’s Gospel is unyielding: Jesus is hiring sweaty laborers, salty roughnecks, and shady lowlifes. In fact, he’s scanning the shoreline right now, inviting himself into your boat, praying the answer is yes.
You, who the world has spiritually injured, are the very disciples Jesus has been looking for to transmit the Gospel, in welcoming love and humble obedience, horizontally. You are the one. You are the one. You are the one. Will you drop your nets for the cause?
1 Cicero, On Duties, 1.42
2 Johnny Shields, Interview. 20 Feb. 2025.
3 Justo Gonzalez, Belief, A Theological Commentary on the Bible, Luke (Louisville: John Knox, 2010), 75.