1 Kings 19:11-21; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; Luke 5:1-11
Listen here.
Then there’s Peter. If Elijah was seeking early retirement, Peter was trying to evade the calling altogether. “Lord, we’re the fishermen. We know how to fish, when to fish—at night—and where to fish—in the shallow water. We’ve been working all night and this fishing trip was just a dud.” And then, when the Lord demonstrated that He is the Lord of all creation—that even He can bring a great catch of fish, and in broad daylight and from the deep waters—then Peter slumped into his own pity party. “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” This was most certainly true, of course. But still beside the point. Just as beside the point as Elijah thinking he was the only believer left on the face of the planet.
The point is not that Peter is sinful—he is. The point is that Jesus is gracious. The point is that Jesus is Lord of all creation and all of life, and He overflows with gifts for all. He showed this with that boatful of beautiful flopping fish and the torn nets that had been so carefully mended and stowed away earlier that day. No, Jesus was not going away, as Peter requested. Instead, Jesus wanted to take Peter and his fishing buddies away with Him. Now Jesus would take Peter on a fishing trip—not for fish, but for people. “From now on,” Jesus tells Peter, “you will be catching men.” Literally, it says, “you will catch people alive.”
So, with hearts uplifted and sins forgiven, Peter, Andrew, James and John, got up, walked away from their past, their careers, their incomes, even their families. “They left everything and followed Him.” They put one foot in front of the other and walked behind Jesus. And Jesus began their three-year intensive teaching. What was He teaching them? All about the net that they would toss into the sea of humanity to bring up a catch for God Himself. Let’s call it the net of the Gospel.
In our second reading today, St. Paul does some pondering on this net. Folks have always looked at the message of the Gospel with a good dose of skepticism. They wonder, “You really think you can do something with that—a message about a guy dying on a cross and somehow making you right with God?” “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
The Word of the Cross. That’s the net that our Lord Jesus put into the hands of Peter, Andrew, James and John. It’s the net He’s put into the hands of His preachers and pastors in all the years and centuries since. It’s a net of words—nothing but words—cast into a world drowning in words. But these words are different from all the rest. These words—the net of the Gospel—actually have a divine power in them, a power to grab hold of people’s hearts and haul them out of the sea of sin in which they live and bring them into the boat of the Church. And once in the Church, people learn to live from those words and from them alone. “For [the Gospel] is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16).
This net, though, is an affront to those who think themselves “wise” in this world. God would actually choose to save people through “the folly of what we preach”? Now, this folly does not refer to the men who are preachers making fools of themselves in the pulpit (They might very well do that from time to time.). No, the folly refers to the content of the Church’s message. That God would choose to send His Son into the world and take on our human flesh and blood? That God would have His Son suffer and die on a cross? That He would actually rise again on the third day? That’s precisely the net of the Gospel—the content of the Church’s message. That’s precisely how God catches people alive and saves those who believe.
“Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom.” And we? “We preach Christ crucified.” And, by the way, the message of the cross is not about any empty cross, no matter what some well-intentioned but misguided preacher may have tried telling you. Not only were empty crosses a dime a dozen, but also empty crosses catch no one for God’s kingdom. Empty crosses can mean only one thing: that the person once nailed to it was taken away. We do not preach an empty cross. We preach a cross on which hangs the Crucified One. He, not the cross itself, makes the cross full of power and salvation. WHO is hanging on that cross and WHY He is hanging there—that’s the net, the story, we cast out into the world to haul people in for the Kingdom of God.
He who is on that Cross is “the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8). The Lord of glory confesses that He who is on the Cross is the One who created us at the beginning, the One through whom all things were made. “He who hung the earth upon the waters is hung upon the Cross. He who is King of the angels is arrayed in a crown of thorns. He who wraps the heavens in clouds is wrapped in the purple of mockery.” So the Church sings in an ancient hymn for Good Friday.
It is God-in-the-Flesh, the Eternal Son, our Maker, who hangs on that tree. That should lead each of us and all of us to wonder indeed. But the message of the Cross goes beyond the Who to the Why. “Lord, WHY are You hanging there? Why do You permit this outrage? Why did You come into our flesh in the first place? Why, O Lord?”
Are you ready for His answer? He says, “I came to be the Lamb of God who would take away your sin and the sin of the world. I had no sin, but I came to bear your sin and sins in My body on the tree. I came so that you might die to sin and live for righteousness. I, who had no sin, came that I may be made sin for you, that in Me you might become the righteousness of God. I came to pour out My blood and thus blot out the handwriting of the Law that was against you. I came to be wounded for your transgressions, crushed for your iniquities, that upon Me would rest the chastisement that brings you peace, and that by My stripes you may be healed. I came because you—every one of you—like sheep have gone astray, turning to your own way. So the Lord has laid on Me the iniquity of you all. Since you were under the curse—remember, cursed in the person who does not continue in all the things written in the Law—I came to become a curse for you, for cursed is everyone who hangs upon a tree. Thus I would free you from your curse by means of My own.”
So we cry out: “But why, O Lord? Why would you do this for us? Why would you embrace this suffering and death, this terror and darkness, to free us from what we clearly deserved?” And again comes His answer, both sweet and profound: “Because I love you. Because I want you to share with Me the joys of a life that never ends. Because I did not make you to live for a few measly years and then suffer and die. I made you to live in the joy of My Father’s house forever. And I am utterly committed to doing whatever it takes to bring you there. You matter to me, and I hold you precious.”
That’s the net! That’s the story—not a fiction, but it is a narrative—that He gives us to cast into the world. And is it ever one powerful net, one powerful story! We know its power first hand. After all, it has plucked us up out of the sea of this world and landed us in the boat of the Church. And we have come to believe this story and are even now being saved by the power of this story.
But once in the boat, He bids all of us also to join in casting this net of the Gospel, to bring yet more and more to know this story, to love this Savior, and to find through faith in Him that life that never ends. “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching [people alive].” Armed only with this, our holy net, we go forth from this place to cast it with joy. After all, it is the power of God for salvation! Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment