Working hard; catching nothing

Peter and his companions are professional fishermen and do their work at night when the fish come to the surface. They have worked hard at the right time but have caught nothing. Now the expert fishermen are being told by a carpenter to put out nets during the day! Peter obeys the word of Jesus, and the word of Jesus comes home to him when they do indeed catch a giant shoal of fish. Peter recognizes the hand of God in what has happened and at the same time realizes his own sinfulness. And his pastoral advice to Jesus is to go away and not be bothered with the likes of him.

  Happily, Jesus does not take Peter’s advice to put distance between himself and sinners. Jesus has not come to be a hermit with an unreachable address in the desert; rather, his whole mission moves in the opposite direction, for he has come ‘’to seek out and save the lost.’’ (Luke 19:10). So, Jesus travels into people’s lives, not away from them. He entertains sinners, he enters their homes, meets their families, eats at their table, listens to their stories, and calls them to a new way of life. Throughout his life Jesus is never far from sinners. And on the cross, he will die between two of them.

  And Jesus wants Peter to share that mission with him, so he calls Peter away from fixation with his own sinfulness and preoccupation with himself. Peter has acknowledged his own unworthiness. That is enough. Jesus moves the conversation on and invites Peter to see himself as a leader who will bring people close to God. Jesus draws out the worth in Peter and challenges him to do the same by becoming a fisher of men. Can Peter draw out the best in people? And if it doesn’t make any sense for a fisherman to be far from fish, it won’t make any sense for Peter to be far from people. So, Peter follows Jesus. 

There is a marvelous teaching here for all of us. Jesus doesn’t write us off because we are sinners; he is broad-minded when it comes to working with people because he doesn’t believe that people should be summarized by their sin. Jesus has other plans because he believes that sinners have a future, not just a past. He can see beyond the sin to the worth of the sinner. As St Paul proclaims: ‘’Christ died for our sins.’’ Christ thought we were worth enough to die for us.

  Even though Paul admits his own destructive past in persecuting the Church, he is convinced that the love of Christ has overcome that. So, he writes to the Philippians: ‘’I believe nothing can happen that will outweigh the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus…… All I can say is that I forget the past and I strain ahead for what is still to come.’’ (3:8. 13).

  We too will stop doting on our past sinfulness only when we are convinced of the central Gospel message: Christ died for our sins.