Grace and peace to you from God, our creator and sustainer, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit that abides in each of us.

As I was working with our texts this week I thought a lot about all those Saturday mornings when I was a kid that my Dad and I went fishing.  Dad would come into my room, which I shared with my younger sister, about 3:30 a.m. and with his gruff voice would say, It’s time to go fishing.  I would slowly get up and somehow, half-asleep, I would get dressed and wander down to the kitchen where Dad would already have our breakfast and lunch packed and his thermos of coffee ready to go.  Then, in the dark of the cool night, the two of us would get in the old ‘65 Rambler wagon and drive an hour or so north to the lake.  I remember one time I was really tired, and as we were driving I asked my dad why we had to always go so early.  He told me that if you want to catch fish, you go when the fish were out and ready to eat.  I guess that meant the fish liked to eat when it was still dark and cold. 

Personally, I never caught many fish when I was young, but I still love to think about those cold Saturday morning fishing trips.  Now, as I got older, I still tried to go fishing when I could and, although not as persistent as my dad, I even tried to take my son fishing when I could.  The problem for me was always that I never did get the hang of actually catching fish.  (Slide #1, fishing picture)  That is, until I took a fishing trip to Alaska in June of 1994.  In some ways, that trip was just like those cold Saturday morning fishing trips; every morning we would be on the boat by 4:45, and the captain would then take us to various spots for the next five to six hours where we would fish for certain kinds of fish.  In the shallower waters, we would fish for salmon.  Once we caught our limit there, we would move to deeper waters where we would fish for snapper and cod, and then we would move out to the really deep water where we would fish for giant halibut.  Every day we would return to the dock with a catch every bit as big as the day before.  Now, I know this looks like it was a lot of fun, and it was, but I have to tell you, as the day went on and those fish got bigger, we had to work harder and harder to actually get those fish in the boat.  Those halibut are like pulling up the bottom of the ocean.  They are flat, and often those big ones would take an hour or more to catch.  In Alaska, I learned that fishing was hard work.

In our Gospel lesson this morning, Luke introduces us for the first time to some fishermen of Jesus’ day.  But on that particular day, as experienced as those fishermen, Simon, James and John, were, they learned about a new style of fishing that would become the hardest work they had ever done.  Now, many people have labeled this story in Luke the “Call of the first disciples.”  Personally, I don’t hear this as a call story; I think this is a command story or an announcement of what we are to be.  (Slide #2, Luke 5:10b)  Nowhere in this story does Jesus invite Simon, James or John to think about doing this work of “catching people.  Jesus says, “Do not be afraid, from now on you will be catching people.”  In other words, Jesus said, Let me tell you what it is that you will do.  As fishermen, they understood that if they wanted to catch fish they needed to go fishing when the fish were biting, and they had to find where the fish were before they could catch anything.  Jesus wanted them to know that as people of faith they needed to apply that same thinking to life in general.  God expects his people to go wherever they are needed to “catch” people for Christ’s sake. 

Now, as I mentioned earlier, on my Alaska trip we caught a lot of fish, but we didn’t catch fish every time we threw our line in the water.  Many times we would fish in a spot, and after a while the captain would say, Pull your lines in, we are going to move.  You see, the fish didn’t come to us; we had to go to the fish.  We changed locations, we changed gear, and we often changed the bait, and as we got into the deeper, more treacherous waters, the fishing got more difficult. 

This is exactly the work of the church.  Our job, our call, our mission, is to get up early and go find “fish.”  We may have to keep moving, we may have use different gear, and we may even need to change our bait, but our job is to catch people.  Our job is to discover where we need to be and then determine what bait we need to use.  Oftentimes, those that need us most are those that are in the deepest waters.  These are the people who are most different from us.  It is often scary to go in the deep waters.  Many of us are not good swimmers, and we feel safer in the shallows.  We do not feel qualified to go deep, but usually that is where God is.  As you have heard me say so often, God is at work in the world, and he desires you and me to work with him.  God is in the deep waters of our prisons, He is in those dangerous and fear-filled communities that you and I would rather not go to.  God is in the deep waters of those hospital rooms of the sick and dying that most of us would rather pastor go to visit than go visit ourselves.  God is in the deep waters of life, and he expects us, as we are, to join him.

When in the presence of the Lord, Isaiah quivered and proclaimed, “Woe is me!”  When Simon realized whose presence he was in, he dropped to his knees and shouted, “Go away from me Lord.”  Both of these men knew they were unqualified, unworthy, and unable to do what it was they were being called to do.  And truth be told, they were right.  But, God called them as they were.  Isaiah, as sinful as he was, was perfect for God’s work.  Peter, James and John were fishermen, and they weren’t in the synagogue or temples, they were at their place of employment, their boats, as God came to them and said, “Let me show you a better way to fish.” 

What is really interesting to me is that upon hearing God’s word, all of these men did more than believe with their minds; the acted differently afterward.  Isaiah became a prophet, and Peter, James, and John left their boats to go fishing for people with Jesus.  These men realized that day that God wanted more from them than just their faith; he wanted them to respond to their faith.  He desired that they be fruitful.

So how can we be fruitful?  I would say by going fishing more often.  I believe we need to look at ourselves and discover what it is that is keeping us from filling our nets as we cast them out.  Are we casting our nets where there are no fish?  Are we offering our ministries because they are easy and safe or are we seeking to really each out to those in the deep waters who most need us?  It is awesome that so many of us have brought canned goods to help feed the hungry, but how many of us will go into the deep waters and actually go meet those people face-to-face at the soup kitchen?  Like those disciples with Jesus that day, we are meant to be “fishers of people.”  Are we willing to start fishing?  Are we willing to be those who hang that sign on our door when others coming looking for us that says, “Gone Fishin’?”  I pray we are.  Amen.