A sermon by the Rev. Guillermo A. Arboleda, written for and delivered at All Saints' Episcopal Church, Tybee Island, GA, on Sunday, February 9, 2025, the 5th Sunday after Epiphany (Year C).
Primary Bible Reading
Luke 5:1-11
Once while Jesus was standing beside the Lake of Gennesaret and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, 2 he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets. 3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. 4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” 5 Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” 6 When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to burst. 7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. 8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’s knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” 9 For he and all who were with him were astounded at the catch of fish that they had taken, 10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” 11 When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.
Catching People with Love
By the Rev. Guillermo A. Arboleda, Program Manager for New Starts, ELCA
I have been thinking a lot about fear in the last several weeks. As many of you know, I have the privilege of working with around 200 new churches from all over the USA in my “day job” with the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America). About 70% of those new Lutheran communities that I serve are made up of people from marginalized communities, like recent immigrants and refugees, non-English speakers, members of the LGBTQ+ community, etc. When I have visited these churches or spoken with their leaders virtually, fear has been a common thread. They are afraid of arrest, afraid of deportation, afraid of harassment because of how they dress or which bathroom they use, afraid for their children and their future, and afraid that we might lose rights we have taken for granted. Reading, watching, and listening to the news hasn’t done much to minimize my fear. Maybe you are afraid too, even if the reasons you are afraid are different from the ones I named. Fear is a universal human emotion and it is a powerful motivator, both for good and for ill.
So, I was struck by this week’s Gospel story. It is one of many, many biblical passages in which God tells us, “Do not be afraid” (Luke 5:10). That part isn’t unusual. But I was surprised to find “do not be afraid” in this story. It just didn’t seem like it’s a very scary story. Of all the wild and crazy things that happen in the Bible (wars and famines, visions and dreams, ghosts and zombies, parting seas and splitting open the skies), this one is pretty tame. If I were ranking the top 100 frightening stories in the Bible, this probably wouldn’t make my list.
When Simon Peter saw the enormous haul of fish, “he fell down at Jesus’s knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’” (Luke 5:8). He and his companions were “astounded” at what happened. So what caused Simon Peter to move from astonishment to fear?
Technically, Jesus performs a miracle… technically. The fishers had tried fishing at night, which is normally when the fish are easier to catch, but they hadn’t caught anything. Then Jesus tells them to go back out and fish during the day, when the fish should be sleeping, and they catch giant hauls in their nets. But like, is waking up some fish really a miracle? And if it is, is it a scary one? Am I supposed to be afraid? Those were all my initial thoughts, but the closer we read, the clearer our picture becomes.
Here’s a detail that might be easy to overlook: Simon Peter, James, John, and all their fisher buddies had already been on the shore of the lake with a bigger crowd of people listening to Jesus preach. Simon had already lent Jesus his boat to use as a sort of pulpit from which to speak. They had been listening to Jesus’ message for a while. What was he preaching about? We don’t know exactly, but immediately before this story, Jesus said, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also, for I was sent for this purpose” (Luke 4:43, emphasis mine). And a few verses earlier (in the Gospel passage from two Sundays ago), Jesus declared, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19, emphasis mine).
That is a powerful message: release, recovery, setting free, God’s favor. But Jesus is far from the first person to say that God loves poor people and that God will set the world right. In Luke 4, Jesus is actually reading a passage from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. But what made Jesus different is that he wasn’t just about talk; he was about action. He didn’t just say that God loves poor people. He used his divine power to help tired, hungry, hand-to-mouth fishermen bring in a great haul. By giving them all those fish, Jesus gave them a windfall of food and cash. He was helping to cure their poverty.
And that made Jesus’ whole message hit home for Simon Peter and his friends. Jesus is not playing around. This is not a game. He really wants to change the world, and he really can do it. Simon realized that he was standing in the presence of God in the flesh. He suddenly realized that he did not feel worthy of God’s love and favor. Simon Peter thought of his selfishness, brokenness, and sin, and he got on his knees begging for mercy (Luke 5:8). That’s when Jesus responds, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people” (5:10).
That means that, in a surprising twist, Jesus was telling Simon Peter, “Do not be afraid of me.” Don’t be afraid of my judgment and wrath, my power over nature itself. Simon Peter understood that controlling the fish was just a nod to the greatness of Jesus’ power. He understood that God could crush him on a whim. But Jesus steps in to remind him that God is not just power and wrath, but God is love (1 John 4:16). God’s mercy and lovingkindness mean that Peter did not have to fear. Instead he was called to a new purpose, using his skills at catching fish in large nets to start catching people in the net of God’s loving embrace.
The First Letter of John puts it this way: “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has nothing to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love” (1 John 4:16b-18). The love of God casts out our fear of God’s wrath, but also our fear of one another. The love of God shared in Christian community makes us brave to stand up to forces of evil on earth. The love of God empowers us to resist fear mongering messages that surround us. The love of God emboldens us to resist the ways that fear divides us and tries to get us to hate one another. Love conquers all.
So Jesus says, “do not be afraid,” but that’s not all. Then, Jesus calls Simon Peter and the other new disciples to “catch people.” Once you release your fear, I have a mission for you. You have an action step. Notice that this verse is a little bit different than the more common phrase from the other gospels: “I will make you fishers of people” (Mark 1:17). And this difference in phrasing is another clue about how God’s love is the remedy to our fear. The Greek word the Luke uses for “catching” (zogreo), shares a root with the word for life/alive, the same root word behind zoo, zoology, Zootopia, and the name Zoe. It’s about catching fish alive in dragnets, not killing it or injuring it like you would with fishing hooks. This connects to Jesus’ promise that the Good News is about abundant life: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).
Even though people wield the powers of death (harassment, arrest, imprisonment, exile, and even execution), Christ Jesus invites us to live boldly and love boldly. Jesus reminds us that no earthly power is greater than God. Jesus calms our fears, but doesn’t just want us to sit on the sidelines and rest on our laurels. Love is still a verb. We still need to act in the name of Love. We need to act to defend our loved ones and those we might not know but who are still God’s beloved children. We must continue to proclaim that God’s love extends across all borders and all human-made divisions. That is Good News for the overlooked and the marginalized. That Good News is worth leaving your boats, nets, fish, and fear behind, and choosing to follow Jesus in his way of love.
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