In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Amen.
“Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net.”
St. Luke’s account of the miraculous catch of fish is a parable about beginnings. Christ stands over the Sea of Galilee, which has yielded nothing to the belabored fisherman, and at His word calls forth from the empty water an abundance of sea life so full that the fisherman can hardly draw it back to the shore. So too, at an earlier time, Christ, the Word of God, stood over the face of the formless and vacant depths and through Him arose the whole Creation. The God who brought forth all life now brings forth a new life for St. Peter.
God’s work is a pattern of bringing forth order out of chaos, abundance from emptiness, life from death. In the Kingdom of God, the small things are reflections of the big things. Even so, to see God’s grand drama brought forth in particular moments is often a difficult task. Sometimes we see ourselves like the fishermen, laboring in apparent futility and without a sense that what we are doing is of any profit. Too often, though, we are tempted to stop at this point and to summarize our life circumstances as a toiling in darkness without reward. Yet this is only half the story. The Gospel reveals to us that sometimes it is this very crisis of heart, this temptation to despair, that proves to be that from which God brings about a new thing.
God is Creator. We should not be surprised to find Him, then, where we suspect there is nothing, for He is the one who creates out of nothing. In such a way, it can be that our near-despair becomes the very place in which we find Him. We need this larger context of God as Creator and Redeemer of all things as we approach the particulars of life because God’s calling for us in such places is always to trust Him. This type of trust is not blind, though, rather it is predicated on the reality of who God is and how He works. St. Peter had to trust the Lord in this way, and act upon that trust by letting down the nets. We see in his moment of decision three crucial aspects of faith: recognition, profession, and action. St. Peter recognizes Jesus with a rabbinical title, acknowledging Him as a teacher and possessor of the knowledge of God. While this is, of course, an incomplete picture of who Christ is, it is yet enough to form the beginnings of trust. St. Peter then professes this recognition through a rudimentary statement of belief: “nevertheless, at thy word, I will let down the nets.” It is as though he said, “this is the situation, and it is a bad one, but even so, if you say so, I will obey.” This disposition toward belief is fulfilled in action as Peter and his partners set back out on the water and let down their nets again, and meet with great success. This is the heart of faith: a recognition that manifests as trust in both word and deed.
We would be mistaken to think, though, that the whole point of faith is merely the satisfaction of our temporal needs. Some have used the miraculous catch of fish to support the idea that if I believe in God, He will give me whatever I want. Moreover, since fishing was a means of financial gain, the story has been used to validate the notion that God’s purpose for us centers on financial comfort and economic prosperity. This is a misreading of the Gospel. If we take into account the whole story, we see that Christ performs this sign to inspire St. Peter and the others to follow Him so that He might make them “fishers of men.” Christ uses the present circumstances as the means by which to draw them closer to Him. It worked, and the fisherman abandoned what would have been a very lucrative haul of fish on the shore to rot. They saw the real point of their sudden prosperity and followed. By their example, we can see the paradoxical truth about temporal objects: the things of this world are good and useful to us so long as they do not become ends in themselves. As we grow in the life of faith, we become able to see better and better this total reality of things as they are and the good they serve here and now, but also their purpose in the context of God’s plan to bring us and all things into union with Himself.
This is all well and good, in theory. Like St. Peter, though, we have to experience faith in practice, will all of its ups and downs, if we are to grow in it. The Epistle lesson makes this very point. We get to see in his writings the man of faith that St. Peter became after his tentative beginnings. The message of the epistle is this: no matter what is happening around you, keep your sight on what is true and act on it. These were no small words at a time when the world, especially for Christians, was a very dangerous place: full of persecution and suffering. At the same time, St. Peter is using his own experience to teach us. The same man who struggled so many times with faith, who fell away, who denied Christ, and who was restored again, now exhorts us that in times when darkness and chaos seem to prevail, nevertheless, we are to hear the words of God and believe.
Regardless of the scale, the trials we face call us back to that early moment in the boat with St. Peter, toiling in apparent futility. Out of our hardships, and yes, even in the bumps and scrapes of ordinary life, Christ stands over the face of the waters and calls us by grace into the new thing He is working. God is always creating, always making things new. The Redemption of God is at hand in every moment: it works in us and through us to the world around us if we will but look to Christ, hear His words, trust, and obey.
“Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Amen.