Our Gospel today details the wonderful effect Jesus’ divinely human
Personality had on a surprisingly humble man of outstanding character and enormous
potential.
Jesus was wanting to instruct the people who had gathered by the lake of
Gennesaret to hear Him and He was evidently having difficulty – for the crowd
was so big that He could not be seen by many of those gathered around Him, and only
a very small minority could directly hear Him.
Therefore, looking round:
Jesus saw two boats by the
lake; but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets.
The fishermen -- tired after a whole night’s fishing -- were not
interested in listening to this travelling preacher; for, on leaving their
boats, they had separated themselves somewhat from the crowd so that they might
be able to spread out their fishing nets
and set about the work of washing them clean.
Simon, leader of the fishing partnership, was, however, encouraged to
give at least some attention to Jesus, because, being, as it were, smothered by
the crowds gathering around Him, Jesus ;
Getting into one of the boats,
which was Simon's, asked him to put out a little from the land. And He sat down and taught the people from the
boat.
As I mentioned elsewhere, the Galileans were more
interested in the character – ‘what sort of bloke is he?’ – of new-comers,
rather than, as in Judea and, above all, in Jerusalem, ‘what does he think
about this or that question?’
Simon, after having seen and heard something of Jesus’ dealings with the
crowd which was exceptionally large for Capernaum, had now -- along with his brother
Andrew -- to leave the bulk of the net-washing-and-mending
so that they might take Jesus in Peter’s boat a little way into the waters of
the lake, where He could at least be seen by almost everybody and heard by
those nearest the boat, who then had the duty to pass Jesus’ words backwards to
those out of direct hearing.
As for Simon himself, however, although still able to clean some nets
with his brother in their boat, he gradually became interested by what he could
not avoid hearing, and he began to give more direct attention to what Jesus was
teaching the crowd from his boat. Jesus’
wisdom – overheard, in that way -- made a deep impression on Simon, for it
seemed to him that Jesus’ words did not just give expression to the thoughts of
His mind, but they seemed to come from His heart and indeed from His very soul
as He told the people His ‘Good News’ about Israel’s God now being revealed as Father.
Simon was ‘a big man’ in many respects, and the impression Jesus’ words, and the ‘Good News’ He proclaimed, was such that, having once penetrated the rocky
surface of Peter’s outer sensibilities, Jesus’ message found material – all of
it naturally combustive, of course, and even explosive! – that was ideally suited
for total love and commitment if fully inflamed and purposefully guided.
When He had finished speaking,
He said to Simon, "Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a
catch."
Now Simon was a professional fisherman, as was his brother Andrew, their
livelihood depended upon their skills as fishermen; Jesus was clearly not a
fisherman by trade and yet He was telling Peter to move out to deeper water and
let down his nets. Simon, Andrew, and
their whole local team had been fishing all night and had caught nothing; and now
it was bright daylight and quite unsuited to fishing -- fish don’t normally swim joyfully into
nets they can clearly see! -- and here was this man telling Simon to go further
out from shore and take a catch!
Simon answered, "Master, (notice
the reverence Jesus’ Personality and teaching had awakened in Simon’s attitude!!) we toiled all night and took nothing! But
at Your word I will let down the nets."
There might have been a very slight touch of irritation in those words,
but there was most certainly a large, indeed great, measure of respect. Simon was indeed a strong, even forceful
character, but he was not a proud man … and there in that boat, having
been listening to the words of Jesus, he had come to recognize something
mysteriously different about Jesus which led him, Peter, to reply with
words beginning to witness fissures – nay, serious leaks -- in the hitherto rock-hard
outer surface of Galilee’s master ‘fisher-and-business-man’:
Master, at you word I will let down the net.
Yes, Simon was humble in the presence of this one Man of strange
dignity and superior authority!
Later on, being known as Peter, he would give full expression to those
early intuitions, vague feelings, by those world-famous words:
YOU ARE THE CHRIST, the Son of the living God!
For the present, however, his still vague feelings were about to be totally
shattered before being deepened and confirmed, when taking up the nets, for he and
his brother found:
A large number of fish, and their nets were breaking.
Peter and Andrew had to call to their partners in the other boat to come
and help:
And they came and filled both the boats, so that they
began to sink.
This was indeed most wonderful: a partnership of professional fisherman
having failed to catch anything overnight were being literally swamped by a
daylight catch made thanks to a local rabbi!!
However, there was no dancing from delight at such success from Simon; for
his heart and mind had now become too big to be filled with thoughts of fish, profit or prestige, for he had become --
irrevocably, in the depths of his own most self-secure heart -- a disciple
of this new Galilean, proclaiming the only, truly GOOD NEWS!!
There was something yet more strange to come however., for:
When Simon Peter saw it, he
fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man,
O Lord!"
Notice how, for the first time Simon has been called Peter, ‘Simon Peter saw it’. Simon the son of Jonah at this point becomes Peter
the disciple of Jesus. Now we begin to
glimpse something of the character of the man whom Jesus would make into His
foremost disciple, now we begin to catch sight of the essential Peter and also
to understand what was that mysterious aura he had sensed about Jesus as he had
listened to Him speaking from his boat to the people on the lake shore. It was indeed an aura of authority
which had led Simon to obediently let out his nets again; but that was not all;
no, there was pre-eminently, an aura of holiness which now compelled
Peter, or rather, drew him, to:
Fall down at Jesus' knees,
saying, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!"
Now we can recognize something of the significance of this Gospel
event. If Jesus had difficulty speaking
to a crowd by the shores of Gennesaret, how would He speak to all men of all
times and places? He would need a boat,
a platform, some means whereby He could address, save, and guide, the whole of
mankind, and that platform, that boat was to be His Church. Jesus would choose Peter to be the head of His
future Church because His Father had brought this fisherman to
Jesus’ attention, he had generously served the needs of Jesus’ preaching, and
what was far more, he had shown himself to have been led to an awareness of and responsiveness to Jesus that was
more than natural; here was a future leader, big-hearted on the human level but
humble before God; a man able to be guided by the Spirit of Jesus, and one who
– thanks to this day’s events -- would never fail to recall
and recognize his own complete dependence on Jesus for fruitful harvesting, for
plentiful fishing.
Let us now have a final look at all three readings today from this point
of view.
Peter, Paul and Isaiah, three wonderful men of God, three specially
chosen to proclaim the glory of God once they had learned humility before God:
Isaiah had a vision of God in heaven, Peter recognized the holiness of God in the
mystery of Jesus, Paul was led to acknowledge the holiness of the Church, which
would come to be known as the Body of
Christ because Jesus was and is absolutely vital to her very being.
My dear People, when we are gathered here as Church, with Jesus in our midst, in the Eucharist and by His Spirit we are, indeed, in the presence of God, Do we respond to Him, in the first place, with humility, with an awareness of His supreme holiness and our own sinfulness, or are will still blind or hard-hearted … chatting with our neighbour, watching others around us, aware of so many people but not of God? Let our worship today be such as to lead us to ever greater, deeper, and more sincere, humility, so that God Who sent Isaiah, Peter and Paul to proclaim His glory, and to prepare the way for the coming of His Kingdom, may also be able to use us for His glory, for the exaltation of Mother Church in our world today, and for our own salvation.
