After a full night of fishing with no success, Simon hesitates when Jesus tells him to put out into the deep water for one more try with the nets, but because Jesus says so, he agrees. And what the earlier healing had not done, the miraculous catch of fish does. Simon Peter (the name Peter appearing here for the first time) now senses the holy and dangerous, divine presence, and so he falls on his face and says, "Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!"
Jesus does not dispute Simon's assertion. Instead he says, "Do not be afraid; from on you will be catching people." In some ways this story in Luke looks like others in the Bible where people encounter God. Moses and Isaiah come to mind. But those other stories seem more concerned with issues of purity and sin. Moses must remove his sandals and remain at a safe distance from the bush, and Isaiah has an ember from the altar touched to his lips to purify him prior to receiving his call. But Jesus simply says, "Do not be afraid; let's go catch people" and Simon, James, and John drop everything and go with him. They walk away from what must surely have been the biggest payday of their fishing careers, and go with Jesus.
I am struck with how often Jesus seems oblivious to the normal purity issues of religion. He clearly practices his Jewish faith and honors its traditions, but when grace and gospel come into conflict with rules, he seems always to side with grace and good news.
You're a sinner? No matter; come with me. You are a leper and unclean? No matter; touch me and be healed. You need help, today, on the Sabbath? No matter; I will heal you. You're an adulteress condemned to death by the Law? No matter; I do not condemn you.
Now this doesn't mean that Jesus thinks anything goes, that he doesn't care how people act or behave. Clearly he does. He tells that adulteress, "Go, and sin no more." But Jesus' focus is rarely on religious ritual or religious purity rules. Jesus is focused on the kingdom, on God's new day when loving God with all our being and loving neighbor is how things will be, when all human life will be lived by the pattern of Jesus' life.
Just like the religious institutions of Jesus' day, churches often seem to worry more about institutional things, about rules, boundaries, and such. And while we do have concern for the sick and the poor, we tend to place this at the edges of our institutional practices. Unlike Jesus, who could regularly be found among the poor and outcast, we make occasional forays into the world of those poor people, those less fortunate than us. We worry a lot more about self preservation. We cannot even conceive of losing our institutional selves, of dying for the sake of others.
My denomination has just changed its rules for who may be ordained, removing explicit language requiring such people either to be in a marriage between a man and a woman or to be chaste in singleness. Debates around this have occupied us for over three decades. And while I believe this change aligns us closer to the ways of Jesus, I still lament the energy for sharing the good news of the Kingdom that was lost to our institutional arguing.
I sometimes wonder if we don't have too high a view of the church. And by church I'm not referring to that Spirit formed community of all the saints from every time and place, but that visible thing, that institutional thing, we construct. In this broken world, I know that structures are necessary, that we must define and help people learn what it means to live as a member of the community, seeking to help members' lives become more and more Christ-like. But at times, I wonder if we don't need just to drop everything, and follow Jesus.
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