1st Sunday of Luke
Scripture: Luke 5:1-11
The Sermon in a Nutshell
(1) Though it’s usually a part of life, no one likes performance reviews or employee evaluations, especially if you have a very critical supervisor and you know that your weaknesses are going to be brought to the forefront.
(2) Today, Peter faced a sort of performance review. When confronted with Christ, he found that he didn’t measure up. He discovered that he was a sinful man.
(3) Peter was sure that his sins prevented Christ from loving him, so he pushed Christ away. Pushing Christ away led Peter to fear. It also led to amazement, which, in Greek, means that he was rendered immovable. His spiritual growth was stunted.
(4) But, the revelation of sins didn’t actually prevent Christ from coming to Peter as he had thought; rather it gave Christ a deeper insight into his soul, allowing Christ to give him a greater purpose in life.
(5) It’s the same for us. Our encounter with Christ—either through prayer, scripture, the Divine Liturgy, or confession—gives Christ an opportunity to bestow upon us a divine calling as well.
(6) This call shows us that Christ has freed us from our sins, and that he has made us into something much greater: a child of the living God.
(7) As a child of God, our excitement can’t be contained. Like the rocks, we can’t help but shout out the praises of God and let the world know who is so great a God as our God!
Full Text
(1)
In one of my favorite movies about a ’90s software company, consultants are brought in to essentially downsize the company.
However, the executives at the top don’t phrase it this way. They simply tell the employees that consultants are coming in and will be interviewing everyone.
As soon as this is announced, though, all the employees know what this means: their jobs are in jeopardy. The announcement is so bad that you could have cut the dread in the room with a knife.
As the interviews begin, everyone’s stress level is really high, so much so that even the good employees start to bomb the interviews, and, in the end, a fair number of them are let go—laid off.
While we don’t have to worry too much about them—they’re only movie characters—this sort of situation plays out for all of us. At some point in our lives, we have to deal with performance reviews.
This could be a quarterly review at your place of employment, or it might be a report card from your teacher.
Whatever the exact situation may be… no one likes them, especially if you have a very critical supervisor and you know that your weaknesses are going to be brought to the forefront.
(2)
Today, Peter faced a sort of performance review. By trade, he was a fisherman. We want to assume that he was a successful one, but, I guess scripture doesn’t tell us one way or the other.
What we do know is that in this particular case, Peter bombed. He was out fishing all night long and didn’t catch a single thing. In this world, it meant that he had nothing to sell at the market. It might have meant he would’ve gone a little hungry that day.
But as Peter packs his gear and fixes his nets, along comes a carpenter named Jesus. And, can you believe it, this carpenter has the guts to tell a fisherman to get back into the boat!
What would a carpenter know?
And, besides, as every fisherman knows, there are good times and bad times of the day to fish. And, now is a bad time.
To Peter, I’m sure this felt like a performance review. He was probably already feeling bad about not having caught anything, and now he has to take heat from this Jesus fellow.
Yet, he decides to go back out. Perhaps muttering under his breath, “I’ll show this carpenter. You can’t catch fish at just any old time of the day!”
But, a miracle happens, and Peter catches so many fish that he has to signal to his partners to come and help.
Peter the fisherman has been defeated by a carpenter. He has “missed the mark” in the fishing game, or, in church lingo, Peter has sinned.
This miracle has a profound impact on him, and it’s probably because this carpenter isn’t just any old fellow; he’s the Son of God. The gravity of Peter’s sin starts to weigh on him … not just his fishing deficiencies, but all of his shortcomings throughout his entire life.
Peter has discovered that he doesn’t measure up.
(3)
Peter was convinced that his sins prevented Christ from loving him, so he pushed Christ away.
“Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
Pushing Christ away led Peter to fear. It also led to amazement, which, in Greek, means that he was rendered immovable. His spiritual growth was stunted.
Sometimes, we feel this way. Most of us know what our shortcomings are. Most of us realize when we’ve messed up and know how we could’ve done better.
And sometimes, we respond the same way Peter did. We feel unworthy. We fear God, so we push God away. Perhaps, we stay away from church. Or perhaps, we don’t feel worthy of approaching the chalice.
But pushing God away isn’t good for us. It just makes us feel more miserable and more forsaken.
At its worst, it becomes an unbreakable cycle: the further we push God away, the harder it is to be healed.
(4)
But the revelation of Peter’s sins didn’t actually prevent Christ from coming to him.
Instead, it gave Christ deeper insight into Peter’s soul, allowing Christ to give Peter a greater purpose in life.
In other words, Christ saw what was broken in Peter, which enabled Him to heal it.
Peter may have felt inadequate as a fisherman, but Jesus knew that Peter was worthy of a greater calling.
Throughout the rest of Scripture, we see Peter fail repeatedly. He told Jesus that he would try to prevent the crucifixion. Then, at Jesus’s arrest, he cut off a man’s ear. And later that night, Peter denied Jesus three times.
Yet, each time, Jesus showed compassion for Peter. And, before He ascended into heaven, He gave Peter a chance to redeem himself by asking him to feed His sheep. As we know, Peter later became the bishop of Antioch and died for Christ.
This happened because Peter allowed Jesus to come close, despite being a sinful man.
(5)
It’s the same for us. We’re also sinners, people who have missed the mark. We know that if we were given a life performance review right now, we’d fall short.
Yet, our fallenness doesn’t push Christ away. It gives Him the opportunity to see what’s broken so that we can be healed.
Our encounter with Christ—either through prayer, scripture, the Divine Liturgy, or confession—is a healing encounter with our Lord.
And through this healing, it’s an opportunity for Christ to bestow upon us a divine calling as well.
(6)
This calling is evidence that Christ has freed us from our sins and has transformed us into something much greater: a child of the living God.
Perhaps this is no more evident than in the life of St. Moses the Ethiopian.
Moses was a slave in the 4th century, but after he committed murder, his master threw him out on the street. In other words, Moses’s performance review didn’t go so well.
Now, without a home, Moses became the leader of a band of robbers. Their reputation spread quickly, and the entire town feared them.
Yet, Jesus didn’t push Moses away. He allowed this sinful man to enter one of his monasteries, and this encounter with Christ changed Moses’s life. He repented and wept tears for his sins.
At first, the other brothers of the monastery weren’t convinced. They tried to push Moses away, but Christ wouldn’t let them. Jesus saw Moses’s repentant heart and healed him.
In the end, God called Moses to be one of His own priests and a saint. He is no longer known as a robber and murderer but as a great man of God.
(7)
Now, all of us are being called. We’re called to draw near to our Lord. We’re called to be healed so that we can receive a higher calling: to become children of God, just like Peter, just like Moses.
And now, as children of God, our excitement can’t be contained.
Like the rocks, we can’t help but shout out the praises of God and let the world know who our God, so great and mighty, is!
Amen!