August 18 – Luke 5:1-11

This Sunday we kicked off a new sermon series, Humans Being. This series brings the full force of the “lived” portion of our year-long theme, A Lived Amen. Having encountered Jesus throughout the year, it’s time we turn our attention to the real-world way of life into which Jesus invites his followers. The fundamental goal of this series is to make the way of life and the teachings of Jesus tangible like Jesus himself did for his disciples. When Jesus first asked Peter, James, and John to follow him, there were only two basic commitments: 1) be near Jesus, 2) practice his way of life.

Over seven weeks we’ll look at various facets of Jesus’s way of life, things like place, worship, and rest. This week we’re catching the overview of Jesus’s way of life in general by looking at his calling of Peter in Luke 5:1-11. Importantly, this is not the first time Peter has met Jesus; back in Luke 4:38-39, Jesus came to visit Peter’s family and healed his mother-in-law (which is an often-overlooked detail of Peter’s discipleship—he didn’t just leave his boat but his family cause dude was married!). That’s a crucial detail and it makes this encounter far more approachable, i.e. if it took Peter a couple times before he realized who this Jesus was then maybe it’s okay if it takes us a while too.

So while Jesus has met Peter before, in this specific story he reveals himself in a new, powerful way before officially calling Peter to be his disciple. The whole ordeal with the fish was a big deal for a Jewish audience because God alone has power over the natural world; immediately Peter perceived this not as some magic trick but a revelation of Jesus’s messianic, perhaps even divine, power.

And in discussion we’ll focus on this curious turn in Peter’s experience with Jesus. Once Peter sees the fish pouring in, he falls down at Jesus’s feet and confesses his sin. Why is that? Again, this shows us Peter’s awareness of the situation, since his response is so remarkably similar to the way people often responded to God’s presence in the Old Testament. Like Isaiah when he saw the Lord in the temple (Isa 6:1-7), truly encountering God reliably exposes the ill-fitting nature of a sinful human stepping into the presence of a holy God. We rightly feel the incongruity, our need for mercy just to be in his presence, and awe over being granted a moment with a holy God—“Who am I, O Lord?” (2 Sam 7:18)

Interestingly, the first thing Jesus says back to him is what angels often say to the terrified people they visit: “Do not be afraid” (cf. Luke 1:13; 1:30; 2:10; etc.). Jesus doesn’t dispute Peter’s sinfulness, but of the many things Jesus could have addressed, whether Peter’s sin or his ignorance over who Jesus really was (ex. Matt 16:22), Jesus speaks a word of peace to a troubled heart. “Don’t be afraid Peter. Yes, you have no business being in my presence. But you’re safe with me, and I have some business I want to do with you.”

We’ll use this experience of Peter feeling exposed and Jesus dealing gently with him to reflect on the ways we’ve experienced Jesus, whether that’s in moments of awe, or when we’ve also felt exposed, or being welcomed with tenderness by him. The goal here is for us to remember together how it feels to be in Jesus’s presence and to remind ourselves of Jesus’s gentle, trustworthy nature (Matt 11:29). We’ll also finish by tying this all back into following Jesus—the initial call of Jesus on our life isn’t merely an invitation or recruitment; there’s no onboarding process where the job benefits are laid out. Instead, the first call to Jesus’s way of life is to enter into proper relation with him, to be brought to our knees in repentance and declaration of Jesus as Lord. Back to similarities with Peter’s story, hopefully we can arrive at a similar position of surrender, one in which we can hear a word of reassurance from Jesus and, despite our sinfulness, receive his call to follow him.

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