Fishers of Men: The Calling of Simon Peter

Introduction

In Luke 5:1-11, the calling of Simon Peter begins not with success but with a night of total failure. After a miraculous catch of fish that nearly sinks his boat, Peter falls to his knees, confronted by the holiness of God and his own unworthiness. Through a striking theology of work, this sermon explores how faith and failure intersect — and how Jesus transforms an exhausted fisherman into one who will be fishers of men.

If you’ve ever known what it is like to fail, to try your best, to struggle and persevere, and yet for it all to come to nothing, then this story is for you. This is the story of the calling of Simon Peter and the first disciples. And if you can picture the scene, it is a beautiful morning on the shores of Galilee. The sun is rising over the eastern hills and glittering on the water. It’s beautiful, but not for Simon Peter. He is a fisherman. He runs his own business with a small fleet of fishing boats. And he and his partners have been up all night. And you know what? You know what that feels like. And they have caught almost nothing. He is exhausted and feeling desperate and a little anxious and even ashamed. And he just wants to clean his nets and go home and go to bed.

And I imagine the last thing he wants is to be around people. But he hears voices. He looks up. And he sees. He sees what appears to be a great crowd of people coming down the lake towards him, pushing and shoving in order to catch a glimpse of this strange, wandering rabbi that everyone has been talking about. And then they arrive where he is. And they trample on his drying nets. And then it seems without even asking permission, that rabbi, Jesus, climbs into Peter’s boat. He’s having a very strange morning.

Jesus asks Peter to push out so that he can have a little bit of distance and so that he can preach. And Peter does. And then he settles down. And it may well be that he drifts off to sleep. I wouldn’t blame him for that. But there is, I don’t know if you noticed in the reading, a sort of an odd gap between verses 3 and 4. St Peter has Jesus himself in his boat preaching a sermon, which I imagine was quite a good sermon. Peter makes no mention of the content of the sermon whatsoever.

Until he is jolted awake. A little bit like when you are drifting off in class and the teacher suddenly asks you a question. Verse 4, when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon Peter, put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch.

Now, I know what Simon Peter is thinking, and I suspect you do, too. He’s saying, listen, Jesus, you’re a great preacher and all, but I don’t tell you how to do your job. I’d rather you didn’t tell me how to do mine. But of course, that would be rather impolite. And so what he does say in verse five is, Master, we have worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. And then there’s an awkward pause, but Jesus is still looking at him. And he says, but because you say so, I will let down the nets.

And so he does, pushes out into the deeper water, lets down his nets once more, as he has done many times over the course of that night. And he is, I imagine, feeling a little foolish. His partners and the other fishermen are watching and thinking, what on earth is he doing? You do not catch fish at this time of the day. It’s daylight. Any fish, if there are any, will be asleep in the depths. But Simon Peter does it anyway. I don’t think out of any great faith, simply out of some grudging respect for Jesus.

So you can see him there, standing in his boat, holding his nets with everyone watching him. And he’s thinking, this is awkward. How long do I need to do this for? But then he feels a tug on the nets. And he begins to pull. And the nets simply won’t move. And he thinks, oh, great, they’re caught. But he pulls harder. And he realises it’s fish in the net, and not just a few. He starts to haul them in. And more and more fish come up in the nets. In fact, he’s never seen a catch like this. The boat starts to fill up with fish. He calls his business partners and says, come. And they throw nets as well. And they’re all hauling in more fish than they have ever seen in a single catch.

But then Peter stops. And he looks at the fish. And he looks at himself. And he looks at Jesus. And he stands there, open-mouthed. What on earth is going on? What does this all mean? Is it some kind of joke? Because I suspect if you’ve been able to see Peter standing there with his mouth open and a boat full of fish. In fact, the boat is starting to sink because there’s so many fish. It would have looked fairly entertaining. What does it mean?

Let’s reflect a little on the nature of work. So we all have a mixed relationship with work. It is a really good thing, and it grants us dignity and a living, and good work can be satisfying, and if you have spent any time out of work, you will know how much of a blessing it is. But on the other hand, it is hard and often frustrating, and often doesn’t work out as we’d hoped it would, or offer us the rewards that we were anticipating.

In fact, there’s a really interesting line at the beginning of the Bible about the nature of work. So this is in Genesis, in that story of Adam and Eve’s rejection of God, and it says that one of the consequences of that rebellion is that work will become toil, that it is by the sweat of your brow that you will earn your living, that it will be hard, and it will be frustrating. You will plant good seed, and thorns and thistles will grow instead. Now, I don’t know, does that resonate with your experience of work at all?

And I think there’s this other problem with work, and that is that we make an idol of it. We think it’s the most important thing. It’s a means of being reliant on ourselves rather than on God. It rather makes us self-important and short-tempered with those who we think haven’t worked as hard as we have. We think that work validates us and justifies us, but it doesn’t, and it can’t. When we are successful, it goes to our heads. When we fail, it goes to our hearts.

And I think in this story, this is really important for Peter, because he is confronted with those things, and he is confronted with the power of God compared to the weakness of humanity. What Peter and his partners had spent all night trying to do, God was able to do infinitely more in just a moment. Confronted with his failure, he realises that he can’t rely on himself.

Never forget, it is neither he who plants or he who waters who is anything, but it is God who gives the growth. Work is a gift from God. Success and failure are in his hands. We should honour God in our work and depend on him when it is difficult.

It also shows us the danger of missing out on what is really important. I think Simon Peter, by nature, is self-reliant, a little proud, caught up in his own busyness. And it isn’t until he experiences failure that he is able to kind of open up to the possibility of something much more important. He is humbled in order to be blessed. There’s a great line in Tolstoy. It says, in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, and look around you. And you see that that’s what Peter has to do.

And when he looks around, what does he see? Well, he recognises the presence of God in this unlikely figure of Jesus. A figure with no outward glory and yet such powerful control over creation. And, like any good Hebrew, recognises the holiness of God and his own unworthiness. Verse 8, when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ feet, saying, go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man. Standing in the presence of greatness, he recognises his own shabby pride. Standing in the presence of holiness, he recognises his own sinfulness.

Did you hear he said, go away from me, Lord? And I think it’s because he thinks that his sinfulness or his recognition of that disqualifies him from coming to Jesus. But ironically, you know that that is the only qualification. That is the best qualification for coming to Jesus. So many other people come in a position of thinking they are righteous in themselves, thinking of their own worth. But Peter is better qualified than any of them because he knows he’s a failure and a sinner. And in that case, he relies not on himself or his own strength, but on the goodness of God.

This is the turning point of Peter’s life. And the turning point in all of our journeys of faith is that recognition that we cannot do this by ourselves, when we admit that our best efforts aren’t good enough and that we need God.

Simon Peter falls on his knees and discovers that Jesus isn’t going to go away. In fact, quite the opposite. Verse 10, Jesus says, do not be afraid. From now on, you will be fishers of men.

Peter, out of everyone in that vast crowd, is the one that Jesus invites to be a disciple. Peter, who was too busy with his work, who wasn’t even interested enough to pay attention to the sermon, is the one who Jesus invites to follow him. Jesus will take his skills, his gifts, and put them to work for the kingdom of God.

What does Peter do? Verse 11, he pulls up his boats on the shore, leaves everything, and follows Jesus. He leaves everything, even this greatest catch of fish of all time. It must have been worth six months of wages. But in Christ, he finds something much more important. He finds his true work, his true vocation or calling. He discovers the thing of greatest worth.

So what about you? What about you and your life and your work? What does it look like for you to recognise that you can’t do this by yourself? What does it look like for you to submit yourself and your life and your work to God? What does it look like for you to allow Jesus into the boat, to allow what God wants to be the most important thing in your life?

There is an afterward to this story, by the way, and it’s three years later. And Simon Peter finds himself standing in the great temple in Jerusalem, at the heart of that ancient, beautiful city on the greatest day of the year. And he finds himself preaching to thousands, proclaiming the death and resurrection of this selfsame Jesus Christ. And on that day, he had an even greater catch, because 3,000 people were converted and baptised, and the church was born. And Simon Peter spent all of the rest of his days proclaiming this Jesus, who he first met by the shores of Galilee.

Amen.