Fish for Everyone!

Isaiah 6:1-8; Psalm 138; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

“When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.”

They left everything – they left their boats and their nets behind, the tools of their trade, and followed Jesus. What happened to the boats and nets, we don’t know, and it doesn’t seem like Peter and his friends really cared. But presumably somebody put them to good use and took over their fishing business. But they also left behind two boatloads of fresh fish. Did you ever wonder, what happened to the fish? Did they just leave them there to rot in the sun? What happened to the fish?

It won’t surprise you to know that I have a theory about what happened to the fish. It’s just a guess. But I think it’s a good guess.

All four of the gospels tell us that the early ministry of Jesus centered on the fishing villages that surrounded the large fresh-water lake that goes by several names, usually the Sea of Galilee. Or, as Luke calls it in today’s reading, “the lake of Gennesaret” – it’s the same place.

I don’t know how I didn’t know this until this week, but in 1986, it seems, some amateur archeologists discovered on the shores of the Sea of Galilee the remains of a fishing boat that dates to the first century. It’s now in a museum, and for those watching the recording of today’s service, we’ll edit in a photograph of it. This particular boat is 27 feet long, up to 7 feet wide, and contains 10 different types of wood – suggesting it was beaten up and patched together many times over the years. It’s shallow so it can be used to fish near the shore.

In the time of Jesus, fishing in the Sea of Galilee was controlled by the Roman Empire. Rome taxed pretty much everything that went into the Sea of Galilee and pretty much everything that came out of it. Every fishing boat that went out needed a license, which was expensive, and every fish that was caught was taxed. Most of the fish was processed and preserved so it could be exported for cash, with the money mostly being used to pay the licensing fees and the taxes to Rome. The fishermen and their families lived on what was left over, which probably wasn’t very much.

When Jesus returns to Galilee after his visit to John the Baptist in the wilderness, after he’s been baptized by John and spent some time in the wilderness himself wrestling with what he experienced there, wrestling with the devil himself – after this, Jesus returns to Galilee with a message. Mark summarized it as: The kingdom of God is here; repent – literally, change your minds, change your ways of thinking – and believe the good news – literally, put your trust in the nearness of the kingdom of God, be willing to act as if the kingdom of God really were at hand. Luke summarizes it as: The time of God’s favor is at hand, the spirit of God has anointed me to proclaim this good news to the poor, liberty to captives, sight to the blind.

And if this message didn’t go over so well in Nazareth, as we have read in the gospel stories the last two Sundays, it really struck a chord in the fishing villages along the Sea of Galilee. For people who lived every day trapped by powers greater than themselves, eking out a difficult living mostly for the benefit of far-away strangers, staving off the tax collectors, feeling burdened and stressed out and run down, Jesus came with a message that they were ready to hear: the kingdom of God is at hand, God’s promise of freedom and release is right here. All we have to do is change our thinking and just believe and trust that God’s will can be done here on earth as it is in heaven.

And as people began to hear and trust this message, things were starting to change. Eyes were being opened – literally and metaphorically. People who had been paralyzed got up and started moving – literally and metaphorically. People who had been captive to evil forces experienced being set free – literally and metaphorically. People who had worked hard all through the night and accomplished nothing started to wonder – could it really be true that God has something better in mind for all of us, even for me?

So one day, Luke tells us, Jesus was at the lakeshore. A crowd had gathered around Jesus, Luke says, “to hear the word of God.” What word of God? Presumably the same word Jesus was giving everywhere in Galilee in those days: the kingdom of God is here.

On this day, there happened to be two fishing boats there on the shore. I gather that acoustically it would be easier for Jesus to be heard by the crowd if he could sit in one of these shallow fishing boats a foot or two from shore, so Jesus asks permission to borrow the boat. This is the first call Jesus makes to Peter – nothing dramatic, a simple favor, “Sir, can I use your boat?” And Simon Peter does it.

We are not told what Jesus talked about to the crowd on that day, but presumably it would not have been any different from what he talked about all the time – the kingdom of God, what it is like, how one lives in it, the good news that it is right here and we can live in it by faith right now. Perhaps he made the point, as he often did, that in the kingdom of God there is enough for everyone, that we do not need to covet and hoard and compete with one another for survival – that God has made enough in this world for everyone to have plenty. And what a great ending to this sermon it would have been to say, So, Simon Peter, you trusted enough to let me use your boat, how about going out a little farther and lowering your nets?

Well, Simon said, we’ve been doing it the old way all night and we have nothing to show for it. But if you say so, we’ll try it. And you know what happened. The other boat had to come and help take some of the fish so Peter’s boat wouldn’t sink. Peter changed his way of thinking and trusted that what Jesus said about the kingdom of God was true … and he found out it is true.

This is why Peter’s reaction isn’t to jump for joy, like somebody who just won the lottery. When the Publishers’ Clearinghouse people come to the door with balloons and TV cameras to tell you that you’ve won the sweepstakes, nobody ever opens the door and says “Leave me, Lord, for I am a sinful person.” That’s because Peter recognized that Jesus didn’t just do a miracle for the fun of it. Jesus was demonstrating to Peter that the good news of the kingdom can be trusted.

And if the good news can be trusted once, that means it can be trusted again – and Peter already can see that this is going to involve a lot of changing his ways. No, Lord. This is too much for somebody like me. Do you know how much I’m going to have to pay the tax collector for all of this? Do you realize what kind of trouble I’m in?

Step fully into the kingdom of God, Jesus told him, and now you can fish for people. And the fishermen did, they left everything and followed him. They would have many more occasions to need to trust the good news, and they wouldn’t always succeed. This would not be the last time that there would be a crowd and Jesus would ask them to provide for the crowd, and the disciples would again say “We don’t have anything to offer, we’ve worked all night and we have practically nothing, fives loaves, two fish.” And Jesus would have to show them again and again that the good news of God’s abundant kingdom is worthy of trust.

But for this day, they trust, they see, and they follow. And what happened to the two boatloads of fish? Well, I’ll tell you what I’m quite certain didn’t happen. They didn’t take it to the sardine factory and pay the tax collector for all the fish. Because if they also understood what Peter understood – that Jesus was demonstrating to them that the kingdom of God is real and can be trusted – I can’t believe the crowd gathered at the lakeshore did not also want to enter the kingdom of God.

So I think they had a fish fry. I think that, after Jesus and Peter and his friends left, the crowd ate two whole boatloads of fish that day. That they shared the goodness of God with one another, and forgot all about the tax collector.

I believe the Kingdom of God means: Fish for everyone! That’s the call Jesus gave to Peter, fish for people, trust the good news, gather people into the kingdom, leave no one behind, fish for everyone. And it’s the call Jesus left with the crowd – God’s good gift means not fish just for the tax collector, but fish for everyone.

And for us who gather together this morning, perhaps ourselves tired and stressed out and feeling like we’re working hard for nothing.  Like the crowd gathered on the seashore we come together to hear the word of God, and – Covid permitting – we end up eating and drinking together as a sign of the presence of the kingdom of God for us. In the process we too may be called to make a small sign of trust in the kingdom – can I borrow your boat? Would you do a reading? Or maybe a larger sign of trust in the good news. And maybe sensing the truth of that good news makes us, like Peter, a bit uncertain about how much will be asked of us if we go all in and really believe the good news. And in the end we are invited to experience the good news in food and drink, and go out ready to hear the next call God has for us, to change and to believe.