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March 16, 2003
On Fishing in the Shallows
On Fishing in the Shallows
Psalm 13 / Exodus 18: 13-24
Luke 5: 1-11
March 16th, 2003
When Jesus began His work in our troubled world, He was in a situation somewhat like Moses’ many years before. Moses had the task of leading Israel from a life of bondage in Egypt to a life of freedom in the “Promised Land.” The people of Israel were just like people today, sometimes wonderful and sometimes impossible. He gave them the Ten Commandments and the rest of God’s laws. This was a high responsibility. But he had to settle disputes that came up. This was the toughest job. So, as Hannis just read for us, Moses’ father-in-law told him to select good and wise men to help him. It would be from this cadre of helpers that the future leadership of Israel would come.
Well, Jesus faced a similar task in leading the new Israel to a new life of freedom. The blessing to all nations that God promised to Abraham was about to burst out of the narrow boundaries of one nation, Israel, and start to reach out to the whole world. If Moses found leading one small nation difficult, how much more difficult Jesus’ task was that would embrace the whole world. Jesus would lead by an unseen presence, using these men and their successors to shepherd His people along in this new, world-embracing venture.
So early in His ministry Jesus started to choose the ones to train for the task of extending God’s blessing to Abraham to the whole world. What kind of people should He choose? Surely Jesus should choose the finest leadership possible.
The passage we just read from the Gospel of Luke shows us Jesus choosing the finest leadership possible. Jesus’ choice astounds us.
Jesus came on three very discouraged fishermen, the ideal candidates to lead a world-changing task. They had just spent a whole night toiling, and caught nothing. Toiling is not just going through the motions, but diligently doing everything they knew to do. Our word “copious” comes from the word Luke used here. These were experienced fishermen. They spent the night practicing all the tricks they’d learned from their dads and uncles—fishing lore passed down from generations. Still they had no fish to show for their efforts. I wonder if they had spent only one night without success, or was this the most recent of several unsuccessful nights?
They were so discouraged that when morning came, they pulled the boats up on the shore, and too tired to mend their nets—a continual task, they were washing them. Perhaps this means pulling out seaweed or debris. Fishermen would often have to do this or to mend their nets, but now Luke tells us they were washing them. It may have been a superstitious act to rid them of the fault of not catching fish. It was like casting a good hex, purifying them of the fault that kept them from catching fish. The word for “mend” Luke uses can mean this.
Peter, James, and John, who would later be the pillars of the Church, were three very discouraged fishermen when Jesus chose them. As I pondered this story, a number of the details faded and two revealing facts seemed to arise. Are we to notice that when they threw their nets on the other side of the boat at Jesus’ command, they were successful? Are we to notice that Jesus needed one of their boats from which to teach the people on shore—and Peter willingly let Jesus use his boat? I suppose two other sermons could address these questions. A number of early Church fathers saw a lot of symbolism in this story.
But today I see here first that Jesus chose leaders we probably would not have chosen for the greatest success story in the history of the world. Second, a low point in the lives of these men was the beginning of their greatest usefulness. Let’s think about these two facts that are pertinent to you and me.
When we look at how Jesus chose the twelve men we call Apostles, we can’t help but notice the difference between our Lord’s and our way of choosing leaders for any cause. We look for signs of distinction, evidence of success already. We read of Jesus as a lad that “He increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” That’s how we want it, rising from success to success. Let our leaders be the cream of the crop.
But look at how Jesus chose the disciples. Luke, “the beloved physician” who seemed to see the details in the story more than the other Gospel writers, informs us that not only did Jesus choose the Twelve from the uneducated sector of His country—Galilean fishermen, but also He chose them at the bottom of their success curve.
The Apostle Paul would later write to his early converts, “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters, not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.” It’s not that Jesus valued incompetence—there’s nothing of this here, but that in the project of changing the human heart, He needed to find teachable people. Self-confident, successful people are not always the most teachable.
Peter, James, and John had reached bottom, but not because they were lazy. When Luke tells us they had toiled all night, he chose a word letting us know they really tried. These fellows tried very hard—but were catching no fish. Jesus didn’t choose listless people. Perhaps what Jesus was looking for was consistent effort despite discouragement, so that when he found fishermen who kept on trying all night, though they had no success, He found the kind of men who could lead the Church in discouraging times.
When you and I have really tried and not succeeded, it is very different from not trying at all. To try and not succeed may be the best preparation of all for some future task. I spoke with a young man this week who is an excellent student, in his senior year, who didn’t get in to any of the graduate schools he applied to. I thought he would get into them all. After four years of earning a high GPA, and doing very well on his Graduate Record Exam, no welcoming letter from graduate schools where he knew he would do well. I told him of this story in Luke where we see Jesus gathering the cadre of men who would carry the Gospel to the world.
I wonder if Jesus found in these three people just what He was looking for because their hearts were really pliable. Trying without success humbled them. They were contrite, washing their nets because they thought they might have done something wrong that needed cleansing. This might appear a superstitious idea. But, after all, we too are sometimes secretly superstitious when things are going wrong. It’s a common human quirk.
The Lord told Paul, “My strength is made perfect in weakness.” So Paul wrote, “I am content with weaknesses . . . for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” No doubt Paul would have been a roaring success in the line of work in which he’d become a leader when he met Jesus. Paul was a rising star in Jewish leadership, a student of Gamaliel, the most esteemed Rabbi is Israel. Had he stayed that course we would no doubt be reading his name in the Mishnah, the book recording Jewish oral tradition. His keen intellect and strong work ethic fitted him for success. But God had to knock him down many notches to find him of use.
Am I talking about anyone here? You’ve been trying hard, but it’s been an up-hill battle all the way, and you aren’t a roaring success? Maybe the years are rolling along, and you’re wondering what’s up. You may be a candidate for something more that God has in mind.
The second fact we see here is that a low point in the lives of these men was the beginning of their greatest usefulness. We are living in a time when people quite easily think they’ve reached the bottom. The ranks of the unemployed are well populated with hard-working people. Events seemingly ahead of us do not offer great promise for economic recovery. But it’s not just that. Even our successes can point toward perilous consequences.
I read about the remarkable successes Purdue and other great institutions are having in advancing the frontiers of science, and I wonder how all of this advanced knowledge is being applied. It is very discouraging to learn of the advanced systems of destruction the nations of the world have developed with all their advanced learning. Nanotechnology is opening up smaller and smaller realms of sophisticated possibilities. Now what are we doing with our cleverness? Is life now better all over the world, spiraling into realms of glory? I put side by side the stories of our technological advances and the soaring rates of starvation in Africa and AIDS epidemics there and far beyond, and I wonder, “So what?” We can now take our pick of ways to destroy the enemy. Nuclear weapons, biological agents, or simply high explosives can be delivered by bombs or guided missiles wherever we want. While the spectacular advances in science impress me, I wonder, to what end?
Then I observe with great discouragement the effects of evangelism. Jesus told us to make disciples of all people. In response to this, there were the great missions efforts that began in the 19th century—William Carey, Henry Martyn, and Reginald Heber in India, Adoniram Judson in Burma and China, and David Livingston in Africa. My parents went to India in a second wave of student involvement in missions. The names of these missionaries from the 19th century were table talk in my home as a boy. What fruit do we see of these labors?
Open the pages of Christianity Today, the most widely read Christian magazine, and you see page after page of seminary advertisements of schools that arose in the 20th century. We have mega-churches galore in every city and many smaller towns. Bible study groups meet all over in homes and businesses. To what end? I look for evidences of the Kingdom of God and find some, but there are many aspects of the Church’s story today that make us all grieve. I think of other tendencies that might have taken over Jesus’ followers during the past two thousand years.
Why doesn’t the Church follow Jesus’ example with the Samaritan woman and the Roman centurion in the way we respond to people of other faiths? How gracious Jesus was to these two who did not share His religion. Why isn’t the Church conspicuously this way toward Muslims?
Why hasn’t Jesus’ attitude toward sinners influenced our system of justice? Why, under the influence of Christians, do not those who make and enforce our laws delight in rescuing the perishing, pulling them out of the miserable bogs of defeated living rather than tossing them into jails for painfully long sentences, crushing hope, destroying their lives along with their families?
Why isn’t the spread of the Gospel, the Good News of eternal life, of freedom from sin and heaven to come producing better effects? Why isn’t there such a radiant light beaming onto the world from all these Christians so that the world nudges steadily toward a fulfillment of the project Jesus began at such cost? Where is the Kingdom of God in all this? It sometimes seems like many good Christians are toiling all night at fishing without any success.
But then this week I pondered this story that shows us three fishermen at a very low moment in life, when they felt like total failures. And it was just then that Jesus found them where he wanted them. They were finally useable for a work much more important than catching fish. Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid, from now on you will be catching people.”
I remember what one of America’s most beloved pastors of the 19th century wrote of his own experience. After a brilliant academic career as an undergraduate at Harvard, Phillips Brooks failed utterly as a schoolteacher. He simply couldn’t handle the discipline problems. He was powerless to teach when his students didn’t want to learn. He felt useless, a total failure. What was the point of all his student successes when he couldn’t make it in the real world? Largely in discouragement he went to the seminary in his hometown. There he felt inferior in piety to his fellow students. They could preach with great enthusiasm, and were forever leading Gospel teams and holding prayer meetings. He felt a misfit there.
God took this discouraged, hard-working young man and made of him a preacher whose influence was not only strong in his day, but continues today. Phillips Brooks is one of the two most influential people on my own ministry. But he had no inkling of any such usefulness when he had reached life’s shallows. Without hitting bottom would he ever have given the world so much?
It’s as though there is some law of the universe at work here. It is out of failure that God finds the potential for success. It is from the ranks of those who have bottomed-out that God finds pliable hearts that He can turn to best account.
Of course, this does not mean that those who have tried all their lives and found success are useless in God’s hands. But I wonder how many of you who have succeeded very well look back and recognize that your steps forward came after you thought you had fallen. When we come to the end of our lives and look back to see where we have really accomplished something, will we find that it was in the area of our career successes? Or may we discover that it was in the areas of our failures that something seemed to rise up that we are really glad for?
Two people who credit me as the one who led them to faith in Jesus Christ found this influence that turned their lives around in a time I consider among my most difficult in the pastoral ministry. I had no idea at the time I was doing anything of use. Perhaps the greatest good must come when we’re not aware of it because we become so easily proud. When we get proud of ourselves, everything that is good evaporates. God needs really humble people to use for His greatest success stories.
Perhaps you see that your own life has reached a very shallow time. Much that you’ve tried seems to have failed. You’ve been anything but lazy, but what do you have to show for it? You find little comfort in my proposing that this is where God can find you most useable. Yeah! Easy for me to say.
But you cannot deny that when Jesus chose the three men who would later be called the pillars of the Church in Jerusalem, He chose three very discouraged fishermen. And when God chose a man to lead Israel to the Promised Land, He chose Moses, a man with a speech impediment, an orphan not only from his family, but from his people too. He was a convict, a murderer who fled for his life. And it was during a desert experience, while herding the sheep of his father-in-law that God tapped him for arguably the most important leadership any man in history has exercised.
Paul heard it clearly. “My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Now, don’t give up. Present yourself to God, taking off the limits you have set already. You say, “I’ll do this, but not that.” But God has in mind “that,” rather than “this.”
Perhaps we are in a situation today that is a harbinger of something God is about to do, better than we can ask or think. We see war looming ahead, but God holds something else in store, better than we know to ask. It is good to leave to God what only He can do, and to accept the fact that He will use not necessarily what we find our finest gifts, our strengths, but perhaps best of all, our weaknesses. Keep on trusting. Keep on hoping. Faith, not sight, is our guide. Faith trusts God, and the greater your helplessness the greater the faith possible. Keep on being available for that task that you can’t imagine, that God may need your present state of heart and life as the perfect condition to find you useable.
Let us pray: O Lord, we bless You for the wisdom by which You created this world, and by which You order our lives. We trust You, and ask to be found useful. Take our discouragement and forge whatever You will. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at March 16, 2003 09:30 AM