February 10, 2019 “One More Cast” – Luke 5:1-11

Luke 5:1-11
“One More Cast”
February 10, 2019 – Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

This past October, a cold wind had been blowing across East Lake for a couple of hours. But I was out there in my float tube, bouncing up and down on the little waves, doggedly finning my way back and forth across it with fly rod in hand. I would pull the line up hard for each cast, then sling it forward with the wind. I let my big brown leach-like streamer sink for a few seconds, then started moving again, retrieving and trolling the fly through the water. I was hoping for a really big fish as reward for my effort. About an hour in, I got a good solid bite, but that fish quickly let go. That was it. No bites after that. I was getting skunked, as we fishermen really don’t like to say.

Finally the moment came. I was cold. My bladder was at full capacity. It was time to go in. But I did what most serious anglers do at that moment. I thought to myself, “Just one more cast.” This was going to be it. I carefully navigated to the spot where I thought I had that nice strike. I hauled the rod up to let line peel out behind me, then brought it forward to land the fly in the perfect spot. I counted down as it sank. Then with every nerve ready to set the hook, I started my retrieve, pulling my offering through the water.

I’d like to tell you that last cast did it, that I hooked a big beautiful fish that took me another five or ten minutes to land. But it would just be a fish story. I caught nothing that afternoon, except chilled bones and a sore casting elbow. I kept trying to convince myself that the saying is really true that “a bad day fishing is better than a good day at work.” But even that thought didn’t really help my weariness and disappointment.

It turned out different for a fisherman named Simon one day on Lake Gennesaret, what we usually call the Sea of Galilee. As our text begins, in verse 1, we find Jesus preaching on the beach. Unlike the scene last week in His hometown of Nazareth, the people there on the north shore near Capernaum were eager to hear Him. The pressed around to listen and Jesus felt himself pushed closer and closer to the edge of the water.

Jesus looked around and found a solution. There were two fishing boats drawn up nearby. The fishermen were cleaning their nets. As we read in verse 3, one of those men was Simon. As you can read at the end of chapter 4, Jesus had recently healed his mother-in-law. Simon had some idea of Jesus’ power. He may have landed his boat near the crowd so that he too could hear what Jesus said while still attending to business.

Simon was like many of us. We hope we can hear Jesus while still going about our usual activity. We can read a Bible verse or two as we make breakfast in the morning, throw up a quick prayer as we wrestle a slippery child into his pants and shirt, drive to our next appointment with Christian music playing, or pause at our desk to check an on-line daily devotional. Like Simon and the other fishermen, we imagine we can keep on washing our nets, tending to our business, while listening to Jesus with one ear. It doesn’t always work out that way. In verse 3, Jesus got into Simon’s boat.

That’s how it reads. Apparently, the Lord stopped talking, walked up the beach, stepped over the nets, and climbed into the boat. Only then did He ask Simon about it, requesting him to pull the boat out a little way. Then with a little space between Himself and the crowd, Jesus sat down on the boat’s bench and began to preach again, picking up where He left off. I for one would like to know what He said in “The Sermon on the Boat.”

Simon’s business had been interrupted. He couldn’t keep washing his nets. He certainly could not go back to fishing with a preacher sitting in the middle of his boat. His fishing business was taking second place to God’s business. His boat had been commandeered for a purpose he never expected.

There is no such thing as business as usual when Jesus comes along and gets in your boat. We don’t know what He taught the crowd there, but He taught the fishermen a lesson about what really matters. He didn’t just borrow a boat and interrupt that day’s work. Jesus was about to interrupt their whole way of life.

When the sermon was over, Simon started pulling up the anchor and getting ready to row back to shore. Picture his shock when Jesus told him in verse 4, “Put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Jesus’ work was over and now He wanted to do a little fishing to relax.

Simon protested. He was the professional there in that boat. Jesus was a carpenter. Simon was the fisherman. As He told Jesus in verse 5, his professional opinion was that it would be a waste of time. “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.” Simon expected that Jesus’ request for one more cast of the nets on Gennesaret Lake would be like my last cast on East Lake, a fruitless exercise in frustration. They had been fishing all through the prime hours, in the cool of the night. What makes Jesus think they will catch anything now in the hot middle of the day?

The fisherman thought Jesus wanted to catch fish, but He really wanted to catch the fisherman. The very way his protest started shows Simon had already taken the bait and was about to be hooked. He called Jesus “Master.” He had already accepted Jesus’ authority. Now his acceptance was being put to the test. He agreed to make that one more cast just because it was Jesus the Master who was asking. “Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” He was about to enter into deep water in more ways than one. He was about to go fishing like he never had before.

The next part is of course a fisherman’s dream. They let down the nets. Fish dashed from every corner of the lake to fill them. The fish knew the Lord of creation had called. Siimon soon knew it too. The nets were breaking. He stood and waved at the other men on shore and they came as fast as they could in the other boat. Together they hauled up a catch like nothing they had seen before, filling both boats until water began to lap over the sides. It sounds like they barely made it back to shore.

The boats had not sunk, but on the beach what had happened began to sink into Simon. The one he called “master” was more than he thought. In verse 8, Simon calls Him not just master, but “Lord,” the name of God Himself. Simon was not frightened when the boat filled with fish started sinking, but now here in the presence of Jesus, he was too frightened to stand up. In verse 8, “he fell down at Jesus’ knees,” right in the middle of all those fish, “saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!.’”

Did you hear the echo there in Simon’s words what to we heard Isaiah say? When he met God in the temple, the prophet cried, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am man of unclean lips…” As I said last week, that’s a healthy reaction when you meet God, to admit your sinfulness and plead for mercy. Lots of public leaders need to learn that today. But you and I should first worry about learning it for ourselves.

Simon forgot about catching fish. Jesus had caught him. Using the common tools of Simon’s own trade, Jesus fished for the man, fished for the men, because James and John were there too, Simon’s business partners. Jesus stood there on the beach reeling the three of them in, turning them from fishermen into disciples.

All those fish in the nets were Jesus’ way of saying that those men were to join in the work they saw Him doing. Those miraculous fish symbolized the crowd eagerly wanting to hear God’s good news. Even greater miracles would happen when the fishermen joined the Lord in gathering others into God’s kingdom. They would launch out upon the deepest water for the greatest catch there would ever be. In verse 10 Jesus told Simon, “Do not be afraid, from now on you will be catching people.”

Simon was hooked. Verse 11 says “they left everything,” the boats, the nets, evidently even the fish, “and followed him.” They had a new business now, new work for Jesus. We learn later Simon even got a new name. Jesus called him “Cephas,” “Rock.” We know that name in its Greek form, Peter. That day near Capernaum was not the last literal fishing Peter would do. Jesus asked him for one more cast at least a couple more times in his life, but from then on most of his casting would be to catch and save sinners like himself.

Jesus is still fishing. He’s fishing for you and me. He wants to walk right into the middle of our business and take over, like He did with Simon Peter. He doesn’t want one ear or a glance while we’re cleaning our nets, busy with something else. He wants to be the master of it all, boats and bank accounts, tools and toilets, papers and iPads. Jesus wants to walk into our offices, our shops, our schools, and our homes. He wants us to realize that with Him there it cannot be business as usual anymore. He is in charge now.

A Christian family I knew in Nebraska owned a small chain of pizza restaurants. Not long after they started business, they considered what to do on Easter. Not many people are interested in eating pizza on Easter Sunday, so it made sense for both faith and business reasons to be closed that day. Then the Lord walked into one of their restaurants and sat down. He asked them for an extra cast, to open one of their restaurants Easter afternoon and give a free meal to anyone who came in. The first year they fed perhaps a hundred people—and had a wonderful day. Each year after their catch grew. Local churches sent dozens of volunteers to serve and to make cupcakes for dessert. Hundreds of lonely, hungry, and homeless people discovered the love of Jesus in a warm meal. That family was willing to let Jesus interrupt their business and use it for His purpose.

My prayer is that you and I will be ready when Jesus climbs into our boat and asks us for one more cast. Who knows what that might be? An extra hour of prayer during Prayer Week? Another volunteer shift for the warming center? A position in church leadership? Teaching kids in Sunday School or caring for them in the nursery? Taking a meal to a neighbor you don’t know? An additional gift to a Christian ministry? Befriending someone who is not very attractive or pleasant? Speaking out for what is right when wrong things happen where you work? Trying some church task you’ve never done before? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure there is at least one, if not many more casts Jesus will ask you to make.

That additional cast for Jesus may be simply be taking one more step in faith down the long road of trust and discipleship you have already followed for a long time. I just heard from my best friend Jay that he recently learned he has severe heart disease. There’s blockage in the biggest vessel and some sort of dangerous arrhythmia. It hardly seems fair. Jay has lived a long faithful career of teaching in a Christian college, serving in his church, and taking care of his family. He’s the poster child for healthy living, exercising and staying thin, always eating what’s good for him in moderate portions. Yet there it is. Jay is waiting to see the cardiologist in a couple weeks and hear what happens next.

Several times when Jay and I have gone fishing and it’s been slow or we’ve gotten skunked, with no fish biting, Jay has said, “Steve, what we need is for someone to come along the shore and tell us to cast our lines one more time on the other side of the boat.” He was right. It’s what we all need. Now that One who always walks alongside the shore of our sea is asking Jay for yet one more cast, a cast of faith. Jesus is asking my friend to row out into deep water, let down his net and trust Him for what is drawn up in days to come.

I invite you all to join my friend Jay in answering Jesus’ call to take another cast for Him. I invite you to join with our new friend Lily as she casts her faith on Jesus by stepping deep into the water of baptism today. One more cast, that’s what He asks. Take it in faith, in hope, and in the blessed assurance that you will reel in more than you asked for, more than you expected, and more than you even imagined.

Amen.