In Luke,
chapter five, Jesus borrows Peter’s boat, pushes out from shore, and
teaches the crowd.
But after he was through teaching, an interesting thing
happened: it’s as if Jesus performs a miracle in order to pay Pete for the use
of his boat:
4 When He had stopped speaking, He said to Simon, “Launch
out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” 5 But Simon
answered and said to Him, “Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing;
nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net.” 6 And when they
had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their net was breaking. 7 So
they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help
them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink
There are several lessons that could be, and no doubt have
been, taught from this passage, about obedience, about team ministry, about
trials in God’s blessings. But the one that stuck out to me today was this:
Jesus is not afraid of making his kids wealthy.
For some years, I lived in a fishing community in the
Northwest. I was surprised to learn that some of the local commercial fishing
boats would consider the night’s fishing profitable if they caught eight or ten
salmon. They could sell the fish for enough to pay the costs of running the
boat for the night, the wear and tear on their equipment, and still make
themselves a paycheck.
But here, Jesus gives them so many fish that it swamps two
commercial fishing boats. Admittedly they built fishing boats differently in
the first century than in the twenty-first century, but it’s very clear that
this one catch was way more than the
optimistic boat-builders had planned for.
A catch like that could provide enough money to live off of for several months, maybe longer, while the fishermen spent their time hanging around Jesus and learning from him. For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that this one catch was six months’ worth of income for their families: for us, that’s a lot of money, maybe tens of thousands of dollars.
A catch like that could provide enough money to live off of for several months, maybe longer, while the fishermen spent their time hanging around Jesus and learning from him. For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that this one catch was six months’ worth of income for their families: for us, that’s a lot of money, maybe tens of thousands of dollars.
There are a couple of interesting observations about the
process which Jesus used to pay rent on Pete’s boat:
- Peter never offered to rent his boat to
Jesus. He never offered Jesus use of the boat. Jesus intrudes: he just
stepped into the boat of the fisherman who had failed at his work all
night, and asked to be pushed out from the shore. Jesus intrudes on Peter’s
failure and expects Peter to comply with his request. I don’t think it’s
too much to infer that Jesus just might break in on our own lives, even in
the “ungodly” place of self-pity, and use us.
- “Being
used by God” sometimes looks like it did for Peter: sitting on your sore
backside, wishing you were doing something else, while he’s talking to other
people about things you don’t really understand.
- Then
Jesus told (he didn’t ask) Peter to do something foolish:
to waste some more time and energy on something that hasn’t worked, to
invest some more in the place of Pete’s failure. Worse: Pete is a
professional fisherman, and he knows that this is the wrong time to catch
fish (that’s why he’d been out all night: night is better fishing time on
that lake), and this preacher-guy is trying to tell him how to do his job.
- Jesus
didn’t just write Pete a check or a bag of silver coins for the use of the
boat. He badgered Pete into working some more, and then he blessed the
work that Pete did. Jesus used the vehicle of Pete’s own hard work (harder
than he expected it to be: that was a lot
of fish!) to drop twenty thousand bucks (or however much) into Pete’s
checking account. While it’s not the only way Jesus does things, it’s a
common one (Matthew
17:27)
- It was
when Peter put the net down at Jesus’
direction that the freaky harvest came in. It happened again, almost
the same way, after Jesus had raised from the dead, in John
21.
- But
Jesus wasn’t afraid to drop a large chunk of wealth into the hands of an
untrained fisherman. He didn’t give Peter a six-week lesson on How to
Handle Money, or remind him about the importance of tithing if you expect
God to bless you. He just blessed his socks off; and nearly sank his boat.
- Peter
recognized the presence of God in the sudden appearance of slippery,
flopping wealth sinking his boat and his partner’s! His response: “Depart
from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” Jesus uses that moment of
spiritual openness to give Peter a new job: “From now on you will catch
men.”
By way of application, I find myself reflecting on these
action points:
- It’s
probably good to let Jesus intrude on my day-to-day trudging. Maybe even
invite him in.
- I
probably need to re-evaluate what it means to be “used by God,” so that
there’s a whole lot less confusion. Sitting on my butt, if he’s asked me
to sit, can be frightfully profitable ministry, though it doesn’t look so
impressive on the resume or the Facebook page.
- I need
to guard against resentment: fancy expectations (see #2 above), intrusions
on my life (#1 above) and failures.
- If I’m
asking God for money, perhaps I should ask him to bless my job. That seems
to be something he does pretty well.
- And I
remind myself: when I experience that transition from discouragement to
fruitfulness, don’t be surprised if you get a new assignment from Heaven
during that season.