Broken but Called
Luke 5.1-11 (Isaiah 6.1-8 & 1 Corinthians 15.1-11)
Epiphany 5C; February 9, 2024
I haven’t been fishing in years. I don’t miss it much because, in all honesty, I’m a horrible fisherman. I probably went fishing 4 or 5 times in my childhood. I clearly remember going to a local fishing pond with the Cub Scouts. It was one of those man-made ponds stocked with lots of fish. We went to the bait shack and bought worms. I remember not enjoying handling them. They were hard to get on the hook. But with Dad’s help I got them on and cast my line out into the pond. Got a lot of nibbles, even a few apparent bites. But every time I reeled my line in, there was nothing there—not even the worm. Tried shrimp as bait—same results. Somehow the fish always made off with my bait but never managed to get hooked. Meanwhile, all my friends seemed to catching buckets full—at least, my frustration made it seem that way.
I also remember fishing off of a pier in South Carolina. Same results. I’d cast my bait into the ocean, eventually feel a tug on the line, start reeling it in, the tugging would stop, and the hook would emerge from the waves bait-less. An experienced looking middle aged man said something about rays taking my bait. Whatever. All I know is that those two experiences summarize my brief and inglorious fishing career: I am 0-fer; I’ve never caught a fish.
Of course our daughter Hannah goes to summer camp at age 8 and the first time she tries fishing, she reels in not one, but two fish! She must have got the fishing gene from Nancy’s side of the family!
Now, being a total failure at fishing is frustrating, but really not a big deal for me. I don’t depend on catching fish to make a living or to feed my family. For Simon Peter, James and John, one bad night was a totally different story. Fishing was their livelihood. They were partners, owned two boats and apparently had several employees. They knew exactly what they were doing when they went out that night and cast their nets into the abundant waters of the Sea of Galilee. Night was the prime fishing time: the fish were plentiful and active. But somehow, though they were out all night, they caught nothing, absolutely nothing at all. They could not afford such failure, or stomach such embarrassment.
Somehow, I doubt they were paying much attention to what Jesus said to the crowds as they cleaned their nets and wondered how it could have all gone so wrong. But then Simon heard Jesus call to him and ask to use his boat. He agreed and left his nets; why not, after all, Jesus had cured his mother-in-law of a dangerously high fever not too long before.
So they pushed out and Jesus addressed the crowd, his voice amplified by the step walls of the cove. When he was done, he turned to Simon and said, ‘Let’s go out to the deep water and you put out your nets.” I suspect Peter Woods is right when he suggests that Luke has cleaned up Simon’s response. [https://thelisteninghermit.com/2010/02/01/come-as-you-are-epiphany-5c/] After all, Simon knew his business—knew the waters, knew the fish, knew night was the best time to catch them—and he knew that all his knowledge had yielded nothing the night before. What did Jesus, a wandering rabbi, know? “Are you serious Jesus? We caught nothing last night. We sure as heck aren’t catching anything now!” Simon was still frustrated and embarrassed. The taste of failure was lingered, bitter and a little nauseating, in his mouth. But, he respected this man, and that won out over his fear and self-doubt. “Okay, if you say so, we’ll head out to the deep water.”
Simon couldn’t have been prepared for what happened next. He and his crew caught not just a few fish, but a multitude. In a panic, his boat foundering, he called out for James and John to come help. They do so, and together, the two crews barely make it back to shore, so great is the catch straining their nets.
Simon was overcome with awe and he fell to his knees before Jesus and begged him to leave him: “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” The miraculous catch has made the wisdom and holiness of Jesus more clear to Simon. At the same time, by way of contrast, his own faults, his own sins—the things he has done wrong and the good things he has not done— his own brokenness has also become disturbingly clear. Abundantly clear as well is Simon’s own inadequacy: he is fallible, ordinary. Maybe he’s not feeling like he’s much of a fisherman if this rabbi knows where to catch fish better than he does. And perhaps he’s also remembering how the leaders of the synagogue and the well-to-do folks in Capernaum view him: as a rough, untutored, unworthy man.
But this is when the real miracle of the story happens. Jesus looks at him with eyes of love and a heart overflowing with grace. “Don’t be afraid Simon. Come with me. From now on you will be catching people. You will be leading them to life, life more abundant than the huge catch that just frayed your nets. You shall catch them by sharing the Good News of God’s love in word and deed.” Then Jesus turns around and begins to walk away. And Simon, he gets up, and with James and John, he follows Jesus into the unknown.
This is the real miracle. Jesus meets Simon where he is—broken, full of doubt, weighed down by failure, all too aware of his own sin, burdened by a sense of unworthiness—and Jesus calls him anyway. Jesus chooses him—and James and John—for a mission, calls them, as they are, to live lives of compassion and speak words of grace. Robert Dannals recalls an old slogan used in ads for Zenith televisions: “The quality goes in before the name goes on” [“Fifth Sunday After Epiphany (Year C): Called and Sent,” Lectionary Sermon Series, 186]. But with the God who is revealed in Christ, the opposite is true: the name goes on before there is any evidence of quality [Ibid.]. We are claimed by God, we are named child of God and Christian, not because we have earned it, not because we deserve it, but because God is love and overflows with grace. God takes us as we are—broken, sinful, full of doubt, feeling unworthy—and God claims us, and commissions us to share God’s love, to embody God’s compassion, to speak God’s Good News, to offer God’s forgiveness right now.
The quality, well, that will come with time. The Holy Spirit will reshape us, a little bit at a time, into the image of Christ. As Justo Gonzalez observes, “When God calls, God creates….When Jesus calls these [fishermen], he also makes them something they were not before. Eventually, he will even tell one of [them], volatile and unstable Simon, that he is to be called Peter, which in Greek means “rock;” for he is to become like a rock. And Peter the Rock he became! [Luke hints at this coming transformation by calling him Simon Peter in the middle of the story at the point when he falls to his knees]….[It’s a bit of foreshadowing which reminds us that Jesus] not only calls us to be something, he [also] provides us with the power to be what we are called to be.” [When Christ Lives in Us, 11-12; bracketed text is my interpolation] As I’ve often observed, we are, all of us, works in progress, by the grace of God.
There is an old Chinese folktale about a woman named Chang Chang. She worked for many years as a laundress for a merchant in the Sichuan province. Every day she had to walk downhill from the merchant’s house to draw the water needed for the laundry. Early on she made with her own hands two pots to use to carry water. One pot she painted blue, the other red; on both she painted flowers. She hung them on either end of a pole which she could carry across her shoulders. She was very pleased with her pots.
After many years of carrying water, Chang Chang noticed that the blue pot hand a thin crack in one side. She was not sure if it would hold water, but she filled it as she always did and headed back up the hill. When she reached the house, the blue pot was only half full, but, between it and the red pot, she still had enough water for the laundry. So she resolved to continue using it.
Chang Chang was not the only one who noticed the crack. The blue pot also realized it was flawed. Each day the blue pot hoped against hope it would hold all the water Chang Chang put in it, but each day, when they reached the top of the hill, the pot despaired to find itself only half full. Seeing the red pot full to the brim only made it feel worse. The blue pot worried and began to fill useless. "Oh, I’m broken and no good. I'm no good, no good!" the blue pot wailed. "Oh, stop your whining," the red pot answered. "No one wants to hear from a pot." And so, for a very long time the blue pot held his tongue.
Then came the day when he realized his crack had grown longer. Surely he would be useless now, unable to hold even the minimum of water needed for the laundry. The blue pot could stand it no longer so he spoke up. As Chang Chang climbed up the hill, the pot called out, “Chang Chang, throw me away. I'm no good for anyone or anything."
Startled, she looked around for the source of the voice. “Who called me?” she asked.
Swinging back and forth to get her attention the pot replied, “It is I, your pot. The pot you made with your own two hands. After all these years, I see now my time is finished. I am broken. The crack in my side has made me useless. When you carry me up the hill, I spill all my water. I'm no good!"
Both shocked and delighted that her pots could talk, Chang Chang was silent for a moment. The pot lamented once more, “I am sorry that I have failed you. Cast me aside and go on your way.”
With those words, Chang Chang found her voice again. "Oh pot, you don't understand," she said. "You haven't been paying attention. Look around."
She pointed to the path up the hill, and for the first time the pot stopped looking inward and instead looked out. On the right side of the hill the pot noticed beautiful flowers growing in abundance -- poppies and peonies and chrysanthemum and narcissus and citron. A ribbon of color edged the path. But on the other side of the path, the ground was bare and colorless.
"I've always known about your flaw," Chang Chang said. "And so I planted seeds on your side of the path, and every day you water them and add more beauty to the world."
And the blue pot realized, with a growing sense of joy and wonder, that Chang Chang—whose name can be translated as “flourish forever”—had had used it, with its flaw, not only to carry water for laundry, but also to bring life and beauty into the world. [The Cracked Pot (A Chinese Folktale), Jan 23, 2011, by Amy Friedman and Meredith Johnson; http://www.uexpress.com/tell-me-a-story/2011/1/23/the-cracked-pot-a-chinese-folktale; Chang Chang, a name unique to this telling of the folktale, could be translated as “flourish forever”]
And so it is with us. We are, all of us, flawed and broken, like the blue pot. We are all sinners like Peter. We all have our failures. We, like Isaiah, are individuals of unclean lips and minds living among a people of unclean lips and minds. We, like Paul, have no claim to the title of disciple or child of God, but God claims us anyway. Jesus calls us with all our flaws, sins, doubts and fears to be disciples. Jesus calls us and empowers us to bring beauty and life to the world. We are called and sent out to cast wide the net of God’s saving love through the words we say and the deeds we do, so that others may experience that love and be caught up into God’s family, so that they may see the Divine beauty and be drawn to God. So, let us trust in Christ’s love instead of our doubts. Let us focus on God’s grace instead of our failures and brokenness. Let us get up off our knees and follow Jesus. Amen.