5th Sunday after Epiphany – February 8, 2025

Most scholars think that Luke didn’t just record a biography of Jesus when he wrote around 80-90 CE, but shaped the story of the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles to address circumstances in the church of his time. If we think about it, it isn’t that different from what we do if we were to tell a story. And so, we should listen to the call of the first apostles from the viewpoint of how Luke intended this passage to function in the larger narrative.

Two important issues in the community to which Luke wrote were mission and authority. Mission is what the community should do in its context. And authority tells us who the community should believe or who should have the power to shape what the community believes. These questions were important, as the congregation of Luke was in a network of competing claims and tensions regarding Judaism, the Roman Empire, and in fact within the congregation itself.

Luke has introduced us to Jesus as a prophet whose mission is to announce the coming reign of God and to invite people to repent and join the movement to God’s reign (Lk 4:14-30).

In ancient times, leaders often gathered followers who could further the mission by learning the content of the teaching and the way of life that supported it, and then could adapt the teaching to fresh circumstances. Jesus chose twelve figures whom Luke designates as “apostles.” Just a side note, in Luke, the term “disciples” refers to the much larger group of Jesus’ followers – the twelve play a special role and have their own term.

The first four apostles were in the fishing business. They were similar to middle class business owners today. They owned their own boats. They had no particular religious credentials that put them above others in Jesus’ selection. They were typical representatives of the old age – living under Roman rule and oppression (including taxes), and beset by other forms of social conflict and economic distress. I think that if we think about it, many of us can identify with the situation of the apostles.

So why did he choose these twelve? Luke seems to imply that they were chosen by Jesus under prophetic inspiration. Because Jesus had ascended to the right hand of God, he could still work through the apostles through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Lk 24:50-52; Acts 1:1-11, 7:56). The early church expected the second coming to occur “soon”, but it was delayed, and Luke uses these figures to represent the continuation of Jesus’ authority in the delay. And so the telling of Jesus’ calling of the first four apostles authenticates them as authorities for the church.

Luke portrays these apostles as guiding and authorizing the church’s responses to Judaism, Rome, and even its own internal conflicts. They are set aside and showcased as the model for witness and common life; they organize a congregation; they legitimize the mission; and they certify Paul as a great missionary (Acts 2:1-47; Acts 6:1-7; Acts 10:1-11,18; Acts 15:1-29).

Now, getting into the story, Jesus directed Simon to put down the nets in the deep water. And just like in the entirety of the Hebrew Bible, we get a person who is told to do something complaining about it – they had fished all night and caught nothing, so why do something different? Yet, in the end, they do what Jesus asked. In the midst of an unpromising situation, where they could have just given up, they let down their nets. And they catch LOTS of fish. Their old nets couldn’t handle the catch and began to break.

And what do we learn? We learn what we – as disciples – are to do. The event establishes the authority of the apostles. The soon-to-be-apostles indicate their willingness to follow Jesus by doing what he tells them to do. He demonstrates the reign of God by giving them the abundant catch. And the four of them model what the disciples and the church are to do: they/we are to do what Jesus says, even in the face of unpromising circumstances, even when it seems dumb or hard, even when we don’t understand.

Why should Luke’s church pay attention to the apostolic tradition as interpreted by Luke? Because that tradition was confirmed in the experience of the apostles from their first encounter with Jesus.

Luke spells out the mission of the apostles in a well-known image: “from now on you will be catching people.” This image of fishing recalls earlier instructions from God to prophets to bring people together for judgement. The ministry of the apostles becomes the model for the disciples and the church: as the apostles pulled their nets from the sea teeming with fish in Luke 5:1-11, so the church in Acts fills its nets (so to speak) with people.

I’d argue that if we return to the crux of Luke’s writing, where I identified he was writing to address mission and authority, we are not much different now. We still work on figuring out what our mission is and doing it. But even more importantly, we have a critical need to figure out who has authority. As the pandemic proved, our modern culture is much more accepting of a pick and choose spirituality model, and we don’t blindly put our faith in or accept parts of religions with which we don’t agree. And so, we are – in a sense – our own authority. The focus is off the priest or the bishop as we work to discern within ourselves the way in which we practice our spirituality.

You’ll hear many preachers say that this is the downfall of modern religion and culture, but I embrace this change. Because in doing the work to figure out what it is we like, we learn what it is that we believe. Yet, you’ve also heard me say over and over that discernment is something we do in community, not alone. So how do we determine who has authority?  The notion of church as gathering is emphasized by Jesus’ saying: “Where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them” (Mt 18:20). This suggests that the church is a gathering of disciples under the authority of Jesus (see Eph 4:15, 23-24).

Our mission – however we choose to identify it – is dictated by Jesus. After all, the church gathers to be doers of the word, to spread the ideas of Jesus. Our job is to drop our nets into the chaos of life today. We are to witness to the reign of God and invite others into the movement towards that reign. Chaos is evident wherever we look – relationships among races and ethnic communities, international relationships, and even between neighbors on our streets. Luke emphasizes that the church continues our tradition when it offers individuals, families, and communities the values and practices of God’s reign as an alternative way of life.

God often calls us to do things that are often simple for us to do but important. The simplest tasks we do for God can result in a revelation, discovery or even greater faith. Obedience to even the simplest of orders results in great rewards from God. When we obey God, we will become fishers of people, and the catch we will get will be even greater than Peter’s great catch of fish.