Scripture 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 gone 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 break. 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’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For he and all who were with him were amazed 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.
Sermon
On the night of November 12, 1833, Araminta Ross—Minty to her family—slipped out of the house she was living in and stole through the woods to her mother’s home. She did not live with her mother because she had been born enslaved—unfree. Her owner, the Brodess family, rented the eleven-year-old girl out to distant estates where she did outdoor work, chopping down trees, hauling lumber—the kind of heavy labor usually done by men and boys. But Minty missed her mother and soon discovered that the night provided her a kind of cloak of secrecy that allowed her do what she needed to do, to ease her homesickness.
While Minty visited with her mother, one of her brothers stood guard outside, to alert her if they caught a glimpse or heard the sound of anyone who might be out looking for her. But suddenly her brother called out loudly, that Minty should come outside right away. Her biographer writes,
“Minty slipped out of the rude dwelling, and found that the darkness was no longer solid. A spray of lights pierced the night and rained down to earth. With her brother beside her, Minty saw the stars, all shooting every which way, a moment she would remember forever after. Scores of other enslaved people across the south saw the celestial pageant, too, remembering the event as ‘the night the stars fell’ or ‘showered down,’ and disappeared like sparkles. Minty, her brother, and people of all races and statuses across the country were witnessing an astounding astrological phenomenon, now known as the 1833 Leonid meteor storm. In the wee hours of the night and early morning, on November 12th and 13th, nearly 100,000 blazing stars plunged toward the earth, like a blaze of firecrackers… Throughout the country, many of those who witnessed the star-shower saw an invisible hand at work. Churchgoers in the south, north, and west attributed the event to the hand of God… Experience of the event was preserved in the African American oral tradition, through the stories of formerly enslaved people, and perhaps, through the spiritual, My Lord, what a Morning.”[i]
For Minty, it was a moment that may well have caused her to ponder the two questions that had been forming in her heart for several years. The first was, “Why should the world be this way?” a question she asked herself after witnessing the tragedy of her three older sisters being sold into a chain gang. And the second, developing from her already blossoming faith, “Will there be deliverance?” Minty, who eventually took her mother’s first name, Harriet, and later married a man named Tubman, would ponder these questions her whole life long. She would eventually understand herself as called by God to answer them, first by escaping to the north, and then returning to the south to help hundreds of other enslaved people to become free.
In today’s gospel passage we read the story of the call of Simon, later called Peter. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus takes his time calling disciples to follow him. Instead of the familiar story of the boats on shore, with fisherfolk mending their nets, we have a story that depends upon Simon’s observance of nature and knowledge of fishing. It’s likely Simon grew up on and around boats and nets and fish. Simon’s father was probably a fisherman, and any sons Simon had were probably being prepared for life at sea. As this story begins, Jesus is preaching, as we heard him, last week in Nazareth. But this day he’s preaching by Lake Genessaret (another name for the Sea of Galilee). There’s such a large crowd, Jesus decides to step into a boat and have its owner row him a little away from shore, so that he could be seen and heard by the people. The owner of the boat is Simon.
Here's how pastor-poet Steve Garnaas-Holmes imagines the scene:
A little boat, not grand,
grimy with fish scales,
the patina of sweat and gunk.
Simon didn't see it coming,
the sudden request to commandeer
his ordinary little boat,
from which the rabbi spoke words
that healed hearts,
that ignited miracles,
Simon noodling the oars
to keep the boat steady,
staring at Jesus' back.[ii]
Simon is tired. He and his companions have been fishing all night. Simon knows the waters. Simon knows the fish. He knows when to throw in the towel and go home for some food and sleep. But after Jesus is finished with his healing words, he turns to the exhausted fisherman and tells him to put out to deeper water and let down his nets.
Again, Simon knows the waters of Lake Genessaret, when they are ready to yield a catch and when they are content to leave the fisherman frustrated. He explains the up-all-night situation to Jesus. But he also speaks to him with the respectful title “Master” or “Lord,” depending on your translation. And he says, “If you say so.” I wonder what Simon heard while noodling the oars around that caused him to think, “maybe;” that caused him to let go of knowing better and instead, yield to this interesting preacher who, after all, everyone was talking about.
If Simon knows nature, it stands to reason that he also knows what is clearly supernatural. So many fish the nets are breaking—such weight that even when a second boat joins the effort, the boats are sinking. How many times in Simon’s many years in and around the boats has this sort of thing happened? Perhaps never.
And then, Simon is on his knees. And his words are an echo of the words we hear from Isaiah in our first reading. “I am not worthy.” Simon and Isaiah, confronted with the divine, shown in glorious technicolor, right in the middle of their little, regular lives, have an instinct to shrink back. To say, No. Not me. You’ve got the wrong guy.
I think this response to God’s call remains common, even today. Years ago, when I was leaving Boston for the Binghamton area, I had a last gathering, a picnic, with women I knew from my graduate program—some, like me, studying pastoral care, some getting PhD’s in theology, a couple of chaplains—all wonderful, smart, faithful, and devoted. As a parting gift I received a tote bag they had all signed on the back. As I read through the words of fondness and farewell, what one friend wrote caught my eye. I read it aloud to the group, seated around a large tablecloth on which we were sharing our meal. It read, “Looking forward to the day when we won’t feel like impostors.” And everyone around that tablecloth nodded, and we had a long conversation about why this was so, why we should feel inadequate when our work and our evaluations and our professors were telling us clearly we were succeeding. I can only imagine that it has to do with what feels like arrogance—to imagine that God is calling us. US. How can that be? We’re just… us. Regular. Normal. Flawed. Not special. Not extraordinary. Not holy.
But guess what. That’s exactly who God calls to do God’s work. In the nineteenth century when this country was being torn apart by those who insisted they could enslave other human beings, one of those enslaved women felt God’s call—and she had a temper, and a disability, and a wily way of insisting that she was entitled to things like visits to her mother, though they put her in mortal peril every time she did them. But she also had a conviction that the God who freed the Hebrew slaves from Egypt also saw the plight of African people kidnapped from their villages, hauled across an ocean, and sold at auction, and wanted their liberation just as much as God wanted the liberation of the Hebrews. And she had the gifts of reading people and of reading nature—the stars, the winds, the waters, the trees, the clouds, and the wilderness. She was called, and she was gifted, and she was determined. And in many ways, she was completely ordinary.
We may all be completely ordinary. We may not feel particularly holy. But the work we are called to do is holy, in whatever capacity we serve. We are exactly the kind of people God calls. Today we ordain and install Andrew on the same day we will recognize all the work done by the members of this congregation throughout 2024. All of you who sing, and play. All of you who focus cameras and connect us to our Youtube channel. All of you who prepare the sanctuary on Sunday mornings. All of you who bring forward the offering. All of you who pick up food at the CHOW warehouse, and all of you who wrangle and unpack huge pallets from the Food Bank of the Southern Tier. All of you who serve our neighbors for whom food insecurity is so very real. All of you who bring flowers and a smile to folks who can’t get here for worship in person. All of you who offer to help Shannon with office tasks. All of you who go find the salt when the parking lot and paths are icy. All of you who teach our volunteers to do everything from setting up communion to ringing bells. All of you who stand up here week after week, leading God’s people in prayer and sharing the Word. All of you who show up for Board and Committee meetings. All of you who show up for Bible Study, and Lunch Bunch, and Worship, and the One Great Hour of Sharing event. We are exactly the kinds of people whom God calls. With our own quirks. With our strengths and our challenges. We who don’t feel particularly holy. But we are doing God’s work.
My Lord, what a morning: When God’s grace falls upon us. When God’s son teaches us. When God’s Spirit, Holy Breath, falls upon us to say: Yes, you. You are the exact ones I want. And Welcome to this ministry.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Tiya Miles; ed. Henry Louis Gates, Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2024.
[ii] Steve Garnaas-Holmes, “Little Boat,” Unfolding Light, February 4, 2025. https://unfoldinglight.net/2025/02/03/little-boat/