3rd Sunday after Epiphany
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.
Answering the Call
The path that I took to ministry was not a straight and narrow one. I’ve been involved with the church for pretty much my entire life, in one way or another, and I felt the call to ministry at a pretty young age, around fourteen or fifteen. But, as many of you know, I never liked school, especially when I was younger. School isn’t designed for people with ADHD, so it was often difficult for me, and I knew that becoming a minister meant even more school than a person would typically have to do. So, even though I knew that’s what God wanted me to do with my life, I started to bargain.
At the age of nineteen, I became a youth leader. I thought, that close enough, right? Being a youth leader didn’t require any extra school, and I would be doing the very important work of ministering to the youth of the church, the next generation. Surely, God would be satisfied with that. I liked being a youth leader; I tend to get along with most people, even the somewhat challenging ones. It always felt like God was sending the special cases to me, the outcasts, the misfits, and I could give them a place where they felt like they belonged. I loved going to youth worker conventions and learning about the latest trends in youth work. There would inevitably come a point where they would start asking people how long they had been doing this kind of work. They asked everyone who had been a youth worker for five years or longer to raise their hands, and so I did, but when they told people keep their hands raised if they had been doing it for ten years or more, I had to put my hand down. And, I would watch as they called out fifteen years, and more hands would go down. Twenty years. Twenty-five years, thirty years! Until, there were only two or three hands raised, and I would think, that’s gonna be me, someday. I’m gonna be that person who can keep my hand raised because I had been doing youth work for thirty years!
Unfortunately, a year or two after that convention, I and two other youth leaders were laid off, and /that was the end of my youth work career. They said they couldn’t afford to pay us anymore, but invited us to stay on in an unpaid capacity. It was especially hurtful because the congregation had just raised $100,000 to refurbish the pipe organ.
I started a cheesecake bakery, shortly after that. I thought that if I could make enough money baking cheesecakes, then I could donate lots of money to the church, and that would be my ministry. Surely, that would be good enough for God. And so, I spent the next two and a half years baking cheesecakes.
After the three of us youth leaders were laid off, the entire Christian Education team split off from the church to form our own little house church. I just couldn’t keep going to a church that would choose a pipe organ over children, and I suppose I wasn’t’ the only one that felt that way. Altogether, there were about a dozen of us, and we would meet at the minister’s house, have dinner and worship; it was all very fun and cozy. A few years into that, the minister and his wife asked me to consider becoming a commissioned lay pastor. I agreed, thinking that this was my last chance to do something other than become an actual ordained minister, because becoming a commissioned lay pastor had to be close enough to what I thought God wanted me to do. I mean, it was almost the same thing, right?
Discerning God’s call for your life can be hard. Answering that call after you’ve heard it can be harder, still. Our gospel reading today describes a scene by a lake with fishermen, a miraculous catch of fish, and Jesus saying, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” Hearing this, three fishermen leave everything behind, all of their possessions, their entire lives, to follow him. We know from earlier in Luke that Jesus already knew Simon, but we can only speculate about whether or not he knew the other two men prior to this. We don’t even know for sure if they knew who Jesus was. But, they had seen a miracle, and I suppose after seeing something like that, you might follow just to see what else might happen.
This story also appears in the gospels of Mark and Matthew, though shorter, and with some key differences. Mark and Matthew both include Simon’s brother Andrew, who also follows Jesus. And, we don’t have the first part of the Luke story, when the fishermen catch more fish than they’re able to deal with. The Mark and Matthew versions are simpler; Jesus simply tells them to follow, and they do. In Luke, it’s as if the author thought the fishermen needed a compelling reason to follow Jesus. It brings to mind questions of influence and free will. Did the fishermen actually have a choice, or were they always destined to follow Jesus?
The course that I had to take to become a commissioned lay pastor consisted of an eight-hour Saturday class each month, followed by independent study in between, typically a lot of reading and a written paper. Each month was on a different subject, which I later realized corresponded with the different subjects a person would take if they went to seminary. We took Old Testament and New Testament, theology, ethics, exegesis, which is the processes of pulling out as much information as you can from a specific piece of scripture, and hermeneutics, which is the fancy church word for preaching.
As the months went by, I found myself looking forward to these classes, and I realized that I was actually enjoying learning about all the things that a minister needs to learn. About halfway through the course, I realized that the little taste of all of these subjects that we were getting through this course was not enough. I wanted more. I didn’t want just a taste; I wanted the whole thing. So, despite all of my efforts to avoid it, despite my misgivings about school, I went back to college to get my Bachelor’s degree, because I hadn’t even done that yet. I had been avoiding seminary, but I didn’t have any other plan, and I didn’t want to go to school just for the sake of going to school. But, I needed an undergraduate degree in order to go to seminary, so that’s what I did, and then I went on to get my Master’s in Divinity.
As I look back at that whole process, the long winding road to ministry, I can see how God was subtly guiding me to do what I was always meant to do, even though I was resisting the whole time. God is tricky and clever, and when you and God come to an impasse, God usually wins. It makes me shake my head and laugh when I think back on everything that happened. So often, we want to make decisions for ourselves that just aren’t the best decisions for us, instead of trusting that God knows who we are, and knows us better than we know ourselves.
I often tell people that it was almost like I didn’t have any choice in the matter. I’ve often felt like my life just sort of happens to me, and I’m just along for the ride. I make choices, of course. I make lots of choices, like what books I’m going to read, or what movies I’m going to watch. I decide what I’m going to eat every day, and what I’m going to do with my friends, but when I look back at how the events of my life have unfolded, when I look back on the big sweeping moments of my life, the big life-changing moments, it sometimes seems like I have no more control over what happens to me, than leaf floating on the water down a stream. And, you know what, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
God knows who I am down to the very core of my being. God knows what is best for me, what I’ll enjoy, what will bring me fulfillment. God knows what I need. Maybe that’s what Simon, and Andrew, and James, and John felt when Jesus said, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Maybe they could sense that was where their greatest joy would meet the world’s greatest need.
God has a plan for us, and a lot times, we won’t know what that plan is. Or, maybe we do know the plan, and we just don’t like it. But, if we are open to God’s call, if we listen for where God is telling us to be, then we can fulfill our greatest purpose and find true joy. So, keep your eyes open for God’s direction, and God will show you the way. We just have to have faith, we just have to trust, and remember that God only wants the best for us. Amen.
~ Rev. Charles Wei
