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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Sight & Sound Theatre’s stage production of Jesus, which production my mother and I saw last June in Branson, Missouri, depicted today’s Gospel Reading’s miraculous catch of fish, with the best special effects I have ever seen on a stage. Peter’s boat not only “sailed” across the lake, but the boat also, as if on top of a wave, rose up above an enormous L-E-D screen that came up out of the stage, which screen enabled those of us in the audience to see computer-generated imagery of fish swimming into the nets. For us the special effects were astonishing, although surely not as astonishing as the miracle itself was for Simon Peter and all those who were with him—likely including his brother Andrew, and maybe some hired servants (Mark 1:16-20)—and also James and John, who were partners with Simon. Their astonishment was the astonishment that normally follows an epiphany of the Lord, His revealing Himself, in this case by way of the miracle, in the flesh of the man Jesus. We do not know whether or not the crowd that earlier was pressing in on Jesus to hear the Word of God was even still on shore, much less whether or not that crowd saw or heard the miracle as it took place in the lake’s deep water, but the Divinely‑inspired St. Luke uniquely tells us that, when Simon Peter saw the two boats filled with fish and beginning to sink, he fell down at Jesus’s knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”
The two boats are filled with fish and beginning to sink, and Simon Peter fell down at Jesus’s knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” We might think that, at that moment, there were more-pressing matters, such as the sinking boats! But, despite our regularly coming into the presence of the Lord, “we ourselves, in our own hearts and consciences, have perhaps never come to anything like Peter’s realization of our utter sinfulness” (Lenski, ad loc Luke 5:8, p.283). If the matter were not one of eternal life and death, the scene might almost be comical. The boat filled with fish is sinking out in deep water, and Peter, on his knees before Jesus, tells Him to depart: to where is Jesus going to depart, and how is He going to depart, walk across the water? (The Divinely-inspired St. Luke does not report that miracle at all.) Probably because the matter truly is one of eternal life and death, right then and there in the boat, in front of possibly his brother and in front of certainly his co-workers, Peter confesses his sinfulness to Jesus, and Jesus absolves Peter, before any of them might drown in the depths of the lake.
In today’s Gospel Reading, a somewhat-public individual confession—I am a sinful man, O Lord—was followed by a somewhat-public individual absolution—Do not be afraid. Before today’s Divine Service, we somewhat-publicly confessed our sin—what we have done and what we have left undone—and that confession was followed by a somewhat-public declaration of God’s forgiveness for Jesus’s sake. Individual absolution is always available privately, when specific sins, which we know and feel in our heart and which particularly trouble us, can more-easily and more‑appropriately be confessed, if one so desires. And, we should at least desire the absolution that follows. For, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther wrote in the Large Catechism, when he urges us to go to private confession for the sake of absolution, he is simply urging us to be a Christian, with a true hunger and thirst to be free from our sins and happy in our conscience (A Brief Exhortation to Confession paragraph 32).
Sinners cannot stand in the presence of a holy God (for example, Psalm 130:3), but, Jesus did not depart from Peter, as Peter had requested, for, as Jesus says a few verses after today’s Gospel Reading, He came to call sinners to repentance (Luke 5:31). More than only coming to call sinners to repentance, Jesus also came to do something about our sin! Out of God’s great love and mercy, Jesus took our sins on Himself. True God in human flesh, He carried our sins to the cross and there died for us, in our place, the death that we deserved and otherwise would have suffered. So, when we repent of our sinful nature and all of our sins, then God forgives us. When we, like the tax collector in Jesus’s later parable (Luke 18:9-14), worship God by confessing our sins and pleading for His mercy, then we go home justified, made righteous by God for Jesus’s sake. Then, we also have nothing to fear: not our being in the presence of a holy God, not our sudden death—either from a boat filled with fish beginning to sink or from any other cause—and not any other thing. So great is the power of forgiveness, as in “Confession and Absolution in the Boat of the Church”.
After two consecutive Gospel Readings that emphasized Jesus’s preaching Good News (Luke 4:16-30, 31-44), somewhat surprising is that today’s Gospel Reading, which picks up where the last two week’s Gospel Readings left off, does not at all describe what Jesus taught the crowd, but instead today’s Gospel Reading arguably focuses on Jesus’s enlisting others to help Him, as it were, with the preaching and teaching. And, today’s appointed Old Testament Reading about the call of the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 6:1-13) and today’s appointed Epistle Reading about building up the Church (1 Corinthians 14:12b-20) seem to reinforce that focus on Jesus’s calling Peter to catch not fish but people. To be sure, Peter and the other apostles and their successors read and preached God’s Word, baptized, absolved, and consecrated and distributed the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar that are the Body and Blood of Christ, so that repentant people like us thereby can receive forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. So we are, as Jesus describes elsewhere, fish of every kind, gathered into the net that is the Kingdom of Heaven, the Church (Matthew 13:47-50).
Whether pastor or people, we all have our responsibilities to fulfill and our privileges to carry out in the work of God’s Kingdom in this place, that is, in this congregation. And, we do so, as Simon did, at God’s Word. They had been fishing all night and caught nothing, and the heat of the day was not when the better fishing was, certainly not in the deep water. But, at Jesus’s Word, Simon let down the nets, and, when they had done so, they enclosed a large number of fish. As we faithfully preach God’s Word and administer His Sacraments at God’s Word, we certainly long to see both the crowd pressing in to hear the Word of God and the large number of fish enclosed. Though we may not see such results, we nevertheless continue at God’s Word, knowing that ultimately our labor in the Lord is not in vain (Psalm 127:1-2; 1 Corinthians 15:58).
When I began this sermon, I mentioned the dramatic special effects that the Sight & Sound Theatre produced in order to tell of the miraculous catch of fish in today’s Gospel Reading. Of course, such productions do not make the account of the miraculous catch of fish any more effective, for, as we have heard the last two weeks, God’s Word is authoritative and powerful on its own. The original miracle itself showed Jesus to be true God in human flesh and served a purpose in Jesus’s calling Peter and the others as apostles. And, the account of the miracle still is an effective means of both God’s calling us to repentance and His forgiving us, as through “Confession and Absolution in the Boat of the Church” (confer 1 Peter 3:20). May God, out of His love, mercy, and grace, so preserve our souls, through the afflictions of our lives, until He brings us to the fullness of eternal life with Him in heaven.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +