(A sermon for Luke 5:1-11 Presented at Christ Christ, Bordentown, NJ, February 8-9, 2025)

Recently someone who I’ve known for a long time, surprisingly revealed to me that they didn’t believe in God anymore and they had a very unfavorable view of Christians. From my past experiences with this person, I knew better than to engage too much. So, I opted to just give a polite retort.

What my friend doesn’t understand is that Christians like everyone else in this world are imperfect, and unfortunately Christianity doesn’t make life, or us_ perfect. Christianity, instead, helps us sort out the complications of our lives, leads us toward happier outcomes, and guides us to understand that God is always with us.

(Gospel & Sermon begin at 11:29)

But sometimes, how Christianity does this for us is not always clear. Our scriptures give us paths and signs _ but sometimes give us multiple roadmaps with complicated directions, that still lead us to the same destination.

Take the four gospels for example. Four different stories of Jesus written for four different audiences that don’t always tell us the same events exactly, or line up perfectly in an historical timeline. 

Today’s Gospel from Luke for instance tells us the story of the apostles Peter, Andrew, James and John giving up everything to follow Jesus. Many view Luke’s account of this event as the same event told by Matthew and Mark, just written differently. But Luke’s version is different enough that maybe Luke’s story is an account of _not the first time that Jesus calls them, it’s the second time that He calls them.

In Matthew and Mark, Jesus classically tells Peter, Andrew, James and John, “follow me and I will make you the fishers of men” and they stop what they’re doing, and start following.

The four apostles follow Jesus around Galilee helping him with his ministry. And that seems reasonable enough. But then it’s easy to think that the four men thought, “this was great helping you out Jesus, but I have to get back to work the next day. I’ve got customers who need their orders filled. I got to do payroll. I got to fix my fishing boat and my nets.”

So perhaps it was a struggle for these four men, they had to choose between their livelihood, or follow Jesus who they believe to be the savior.

So if this is the case, they go back to work and Jesus visits the four men again. And Luke documents that this time, Jesus came with a crowd. To be able to preach to the crowd, Jesus uses one of Peter’s boats to preach from. When Jesus finishes, he tells Peter to drop the nets again. Peter, believing this is fruitless effort, is amazed when the net catches enough fish to fill up many boats.

This time around, Peter recognizes that he has shamefully turned away from God. Jesus in response does not say again, “follow me and I will make you the fishers of men”.

Instead, he says “have no fear, from now on you will be catching men.” Peter’s reaction and the difference in Jesus’s statements suggests that Jesus had already said “follow me” once before, and they did. But not until Jesus followed up with an abundant catch of fish, and the assuring words “have no fear” did they fully follow him.

I think if this is part two of the story, it is more in line with human nature. It wasn’t enough to simply say, “follow me”. It took a sign of reaping abundance and [comforting words to not fear], to make it more palatable for them to follow.

It is an example of our human frailty and the precious frailness of our faith. As Christians, we worship Christ in church, we bow, we sacrifice. But we can choose to let it go. We can choose to be atheistic or agnostic. But God does not let us go, just like he did not let Peter, Andrew, John and James go.

God not letting us go, is clearly a major theme of the scriptures and to prove it, He gives us Jesus. He gives us Jesus to help us make sense of the complications of our lives, [to help us trust that God knows the outcome that we need is not always the one we want], and to guide us to understand that He is always with us.

Jesus says the right words at the right time to make us understand this, knowing that our lives are complicated, and the roadmaps take us in different directions, but still lead us to the same destination … back to Him.

So next time someone tells you that they don’t believe in God, a great way to change their minds is to politely retort, and treat them as Jesus would, with love and patience, remembering that God believes in them, and even though they are not following God, God is never letting them go. Just like he’s never letting you go. 

And even though Christianity is not perfect, God never letting us go, is the perfect thing in the midst of our very imperfect lives.

Amen.