Getting out of the boat part 1

 Me and the boys haulin' it in on a Tuesday afternoon

    So here I am, and I’ve picked up a piece of Luke that I haven’t paid attention to in the past, and I am going to try and cohesively share a few thoughts on it. It’s where Jesus calls the disciple Peter and some of his mates, where Luke’s account of this interaction is a lot more detailed than Matthew or Mark’s on how exactly Jesus does it. Before we start, John’s account of Jesus’s first interactions with Peter(John 1:42) give us a context clue that by this passage of Luke(Chapter 5 vv. 1-11), Jesus has likely already had a few interactions with the disciples he’s about to call, if not befriended them or at least made their acquaintances.

Okay, so, here we are, Luke 5:1-11:

On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, 2 and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. 3 Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. 4 And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” 5 And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” 6 And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. 7 They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. 8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” 9 For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken, 10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.”[a] 11 And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.

My person of interest here is Simon Peter. Dude is an - at the moment - unsuccessful fisherman in a backwater town in a relegated Roman subsidiary. He’s been working all night for absolutely nothing. He’s gotta be exhausted and frustrated and wanting to go home. Along comes this man Jesus, maybe Peter’s friend, maybe Peter’s local semi-interesting guru, and he wants to use your boat as a stage to a bunch of people following him around on shore.

Honestly, if I was Peter, unless this guy seemed really special, I’d say “Nope. Pick another boat, buddy. I need a nap.” and go back to my house, get out of the morning heat, and rest. Peter doesn’t do this. Perhaps he’s forced to volunteer his boat by his co-workers, or perhaps he’s got the good faith to say “What the heck, maybe this guy has something to say.” We can’t know.

We do know that Jesus then gives Peter a pretty absurd request given the circumstances; “Put out into the deep and let your nets down for a catch.” Peter is forced with a choice to obey or not obey this request; which is a pretty silly one. 

After working in manual labor, I can say that if you’re an outsider, it’s probably a bad idea to come in and give the veterans absurd requests, unless you’re Jesus, I guess. Peter submits to the command; saying “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!” Peter is exercising some healthy skepticism, and then “But at your word I will let down the nets.”

This little act of obedience to an outlandish request is what opens the door for the awesome miracle that follows. Peter’s response is almost two parts: the part I relate to; the healthy skepticism, and then the part I admire; the submission to the command despite it not being of any discernible use. 

If you look at other miracles similar to this one, like Jesus feeding the 5,000, or his turning water into wine at a wedding, you have a constant theme of abundance. You see Jesus providing enough and more than enough by his miraculous power. Why? 

Well, if his claims and teachings are to be taken seriously, we can infer that his miracles of physical abundance are signs of the spiritual abundances he keeps teaching about. If you read the old testament(A.K.A. the Hebrew Bible), you see that the last true moment of spiritual and physical abundance was lost when we left the garden, and since then the world has been locked in a giant battle of scarcity, starvation, and evil. Along comes a man who works against that battle of fear and brings enough and more than enough to satisfy. 

From an overarching narrative perspective, if it’s indeed to be taken seriously, Jesus’s miracles are reversing the natural order of loss and scarcity in the world, and ultimately, as we see in every gospel, the final loss to be reversed is death. This abundance of fish is just the beginning.

When I read the miracles I often don’t think how it actually must feel like to see one happen. Imagine if you’re Peter; tired, frustrated, and fishless, to suddenly feel that tug on the cast. It’s a tug so strong like you’ve never, ever felt before. You give the ropes a pull, but you can’t lift. The harder you pull only goes to confirm that you have no strength to get this net up. As a matter of fact, the boat is now listing, your bros are freaking out, and y’all begin frantically waving to your homies in the next boat over to help lift this damn net before the biggest score in your life slips out of your hands like, well, a wet fish.

We can’t know, but I sure am curious: what is Jesus doing at this moment? Is he helping pull the fish up? That’d make sense(The picture I stole for the top of this post has Jesus standing off to the left looking down at the guys with the nets, but I really don’t think that’s realistic so I cropped it out). What is Peter doing? Has he connected this strange friend who got in his boat to the thousand pound of fish in his catch? How fast does he correlate one- the abundance to two- the man Jesus? 

What we do know is that, as Peter looks at all the wet, slimy, smelly fish he just caught, he can see the cause of the miracle standing right in front of him, and he bows. These fish, these legitimate shares of material wealth for such a man as Peter, fortunately don’t distract Peter from the truth that this guy Jesus is special. This guy Jesus has some type of authority that is uncommon to man.

So, scaling up what's happening around him, and maybe doing some last minute soul searching, the kneeling Peter tells Jesus to “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” It’s a request made from a man that has been deeply humbled. Peter has toiled his entire life in this business, and here comes a guy who can get a grand slam of fish in less than the snap of his fingers. Peter’s probably seen these nets of fish primarily as a revenue stream and here comes a guy that makes them a sign of God’s divine abundance on earth. Fish. Stinky, sloppy, fish.

So, what did I learn from this? I don’t know. It’s unrealistic to come away from every passage of scripture every time you read with a Veggie-tales-like moral. I think scripture is a lot more intuitive than that(no shade on you, Veggie-tales, your earlier seasons still rock). What primarily strikes me is that Peter speaks twice in this passage, and both times, he says the right thing. He will not always say the right thing, but here he most definitely does. Way to go, bro. I feel like if I were in that situation, I’d probably act a lot more like a Jackass, but hey, that’s probably why I’m not in that situation.

So, yeah, that concludes this week’s edition of GOTB. If you’ve stuck around this long, thank you very very much! I’ve definitely gotten something out of this, and I hope you have, too. Feel free to harass me in the comments. Tune in next week, when I’ll be reviewing some piece of art of some sort.

Cheers,

Jonah