“If you say so, I will.” Simon Peter in Luke 5:1-11, today’s Gospel.
To help others belong ‘requires reciprocation…. It is about allowing newcomers to affect you on your native soil, to change you.’ From Dina Nayeri’s ‘The ungrateful refugee’.
Today’s Gospel reading is the extraordinary encounter between Jesus and Simon Peter, the fisherman. Jesus has been talking with the crowds following him beside the Sea of Galilee and the throng is so great that the crowd is pressing in on him. So, seeing the fishermen washing their nets after an unsuccessful night, Jesus gets into Simon’s boat and asks him to put out a little way from the shore so that the crowds can see and hear him more clearly. When he’s finished teaching them, Jesus tells Simon to put out into deep water and lower the nets for a catch. At this, Simon protests that they have worked all night and caught nothing – it must have been exasperating for him, as a professional, to be told what to do by someone who has never worked in this way. Not only would he get his cleaned nets dirty again, the fish would be sheltering in the shade or under rocks in the heat of the day and the likelihood of a catch was low. It didn’t make sense to him – but, nevertheless, he does as Jesus suggests and replies, “If you say so, I will…” The catch of fish is then so great that the nets begin to break and Simon has to ask his partners James and John in the other boat to come and help them as they begin to sink with its weight.
The fact that Jesus tells him to lower the net in deep water would mean that there would be plenty of fish there avoiding the heat of the day and so Jesus does know what he’s talking about. It has a profound effect on Simon, who immediately falls on his knees confessing that he is a sinner because his own efforts have come to nothing. He, James and John then leave everything, despite the catch, and follow Jesus after being told not to be afraid and that they will henceforth be catching people rather than fish.
What happens immediately changes their behaviour. The fishermen don’t even stop to count or unload their valuable catch – they simply leave it all behind and follow him. Perhaps there were others who would finish this for them, and perhaps their families would be glad of this financial benefit – for how will they now manage without them? But it seems that what has happened makes these fishermen realise that Jesus will provide for their needs no matter how unlikely it may seem so, “they left everything.”
There may be times for all of us when circumstances suddenly change profoundly and drastically transform our lives, thinking or actions. As with Simon Peter, it may be for the good but, as in Southport when three children were killed and others stabbed by a teenager, this may also have drastic negative consequences. In Southport, deliberate and false rumours in the media lead to some of the worst racial unrest seen in recent years in the UK and, although some communities gathered in support and to repair the damage, uncertainty in the Middle East and elsewhere has lead to renewed religious and racial conflict as well as fear in many places.
In these uncertain times, Isaiah’s call that God’s “house will be called a house of prayer for all nations” (Isaiah 56:7) is timely for Racial Justice Sunday today, founded in 1995 after the racial killing of Stephen Lawrence. The findings of the MacPherson enquiry arising from this explored institutional racism and gave three examples of it: the colour blind approach where people claim not to notice colour but don’t then respond to particular needs; the stereotypical approach where the needs of others are assumed without verifying what they are actually are; the saying, “We’ve always done it this way,” as a reason for resisting change.
Perhaps these comments apply to our responses too? For there are sometimes occasions when someone suggests we do something we find hard, like Simon Peter, and it may be easy to dismiss them accordingly with similar reactions. Might it be that, in doing so, we dismiss the voice of Jesus, too? How often do we respond, as Simon did, “If you say so, I will” and discover where that could lead to? We’re asked this more often that may be realised, implied as it is in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” What kind of kingdom and society are we building and whose will is being done?
With my prayers; pob bendith,
Christine, Priest Guardian.