02-07-10 Caught By Grace Luke 5:1-11

As we pick up the threads of their story, I'm not sure that Simon and the others were that exhausted, but I do suspect they were suffering from a different kind of fatigue; the kind that comes when, despite your best efforts, you come up empty. No matter how many resumes you send out, you don't get any calls for job interviews. No matter how diligent you are in following your eating plan, you don't lose a pound. No matter how hard you pray, healing doesn't happen. No matter how many books on parenting you read and how hard you try to do the right thing, your teenage son gets hooked on drugs or your teenage daughter tells you she's pregnant. No matter how many times you give in just to make peace, the abuse still comes. It's the kind of fatigue that no amount of sleep will erase.

It had been a long, frustrating, fruitless night. Their nets were empty, but they still had to be cleaned. There were no fish to sell, but their families still needed to be fed. It's not hard for most of us to imagine how Simon and the others were feeling and what they might have been thinking when all of a sudden their quiet beach became an amphitheater for the crowds that came seeking help and healing from the carpenter from Nazareth. It's not difficult for us to guess what Simon might have wanted to say to Jesus when he stepped into the boat and asked him to put out from shore and sat down, the way the rabbis did when they were preparing to give a midrash on the scriptures. But this was the man who had healed his mother-in-law, so he owed him something, didn't he?   With any luck, it wouldn't be too long and he could get home and get some rest before nightfall. Yes, he'd do this good deed and then he'd be even. In no way was Simon prepared for what was about to happen.

As the story unfolds Luke doesn't give us any idea what it was that Jesus said to the crowds that day, but maybe, just maybe it had something to do with God's power to take their bone weary lives and turn them around. Maybe just maybe it had something to do with the way God receives whatever we are willing to offer and uses it to bless us and the world. Maybe, just maybe it had something to do with the overflowing abundance of life in God. Maybe, just maybe it was the promise that in God's love - a love we're called to share with everyone - there is more than enough; more than enough forgiveness, more than enough healing, more than enough grace for each and every one of us. But whatever it was, it moved this seasoned fisherman to trust a land-loving carpenter and head into the wrong place in the lake at the wrong time of day only to discover that it was indeed God's time and God's place which is always the right time and the right place for miracles to happen.

Whatever he thought or hoped for, even though he was exhausted, Simon followed the command he was given and when he let down the nets they were filled to overflowing; so much in fact that his boat and the second one that came to his aid both almost sank. What would you do in the face of such a miracle? Would you try to find a rational explanation or would you simply join Simon and fall on your knees suddenly aware of your own failures and faults in the face of such power and love? I love the way Eugene Peterson translates Simon's words: "I'm a sinner and can't handle this holiness. Leave me to myself."

But that's not why Jesus got in Simon's boat is it? Jesus has no intention of leaving Simon to himself, because he sees in Simon, what Simon can not yet see in himself. And he says, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people."[Luke 5:11] With that simple yet profound re-orientation of life, Simon left his nets and followed Jesus. Caught by God's grace, his life would never be the same!

When we experience the overwhelming, abundant love of God, like Peter we can do nothing else but fall on our knees and proclaim that we are not worthy of such love and grace. But that's just the point; God meets us where we are and loves us in the fullness of all we can be. God showers us with blessings beyond anything we can ever hope for or imagine, so that we will once and for all be caught by grace; caught and stopped in our tracks, turned around and transformed into the fullness of all God knows we can become.

As Simon stepped out of his boat he stepped into the fullness of who God dreamed he would become. But it was not disconnected from who he had been. The very gifts and skills that he employed in the fruitless effort to secure his own future are the gifts and skills that God wanted to employee in the fruitful endeavor to create a grace-filled future.

Now I've really never liked the image of fishing for people, but perhaps the truth is that fishing was simply the metaphor Jesus used for Simon, because that's what Simon understood, that's what he loved, that's what he did. And so Jesus was simply inviting him to take what he knew and use it in a way that brought more love, more grace, more compassion, more healing and more life into the lives of those people he met.

What do you love to do? What brings you joy? How might God want to work through you?

Rev. Terry Fullam, Rector of Saint Paul's Episcopal Church in Darien, Connecticut, tells the story of a parishioner who approached him one Sunday after he'd given a sermon on God-given gifts.

"I just don't have any gifts," she declared.

"What do you like to do? What are you really good at?" Fullam asked her.

"Well, I like to cook and entertain -- and my husband says I'm good at it," she replied.

"Well think about how God may want you to use your cooking and entertaining," he advised.

Think she did and to make a long story short, this woman founded a feeding ministry which has fed thousands of homeless people.

In the midst of our tiredness and exhaustion; in the midst of our concerns about finances -our own and this congregation's; in the midst of our frustrations and failures; in the midst of a world that tells us there is never enough, I believe Jesus is here standing by our boat, asking us to set out into deep water, asking us to put down our nets, open our hearts, do all we do with love, trusting that as we give what we have and share who we are we too will be caught by God's abundant grace and we will never be the same. Amen.