Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 5:1-11

When I was in medical school, and especially later in my internship and residency, I didn’t realize it then but I was being broken down and put back together again.  I suspect that’s true of anyone who enters a profession or a trade.  You start out with the intention of learning a subject, but  you find yourself imitating those who are teaching you.  

In today’s gospel we see something profound happening to Peter.  This isn’t the first time Peter encounters Jesus.  Just before this passage Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law, and furthermore, spent much of that day healing people who came to him because they had heard about his reputation.  Surely Peter knew something was special about this wandering preacher.  But the real change happens when Jesus engineers that massive catch of fish.  OPeter and his partners were fishermen with a capital F.  They owned boats, they hired help, they knew their trade backward and forward.  Peter at Jesus’ request puts his boat out from shore so that Jesus will have a pulpit to teach the crowd.  But when the teaching is over, Jesus does a remarkable thing.  He tells Peter to put out into the deep and cast those nets once again.  

Peter and his partners had been at it all night. That’s the best time to catch fish with nets.  My dad was an ardent fisherman and he would go out at four in the morning to catch fish.  That’s when fish feed.  The conditions are just right;  insects hover near the surface of the water.  When the sun rises and begins to really warm things up the insects go into hiding and the fish retreat into their hiding places.  Peter knew all this, and had just come back from a fruitless effort.  And now Jesus is telling him to put out into deep water in the middle of the day.  No one could hope to catch a fish under these circumstances.  But Peter decides to humor Jesus.  And when the massive catch of fish takes place, that’s when Peter falls to his knees and says “Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.”  

Peter, who knows all about fishing, has his entire world turned upside down.  Something impossible has happened.  Peter realizes he is in the presence of someone more than a mere human being.  He has reached the point where he is ready to be broken down and put back together, and this begins when Jesus invites him to become his disciple and a fisher of men.

We’ll meet Peter again many times in the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles.  We’ll see him progressing and falling back.  He’ll recognize that Jesus is the Messiah of God, an insight that comes from God himself; and then he’ll start telling Jesus what he should be doing.  He will witness Jesus transfigured on the mountain. And hear the voice of the Father.  And the next thing you know Peter is denying that he ever knew Jesus.  We will even see Peter, who has witnessed the resurrection, not know what to do next -- so he falls back on the familiar and tells the other apostles that he is going fishing.  Even after spending three years with  Jesus and witnessing his rising from the dead, Peter reverts to what he knows well -- fishing.  

But then we see Peter’s transformation.  He’s there at the first Pentecost, and receives the Holy Spirit, along with the other apostles, Jesus’ mother and a few others.  He and John go out and preach in the temple-- Just as Jesus did.  He finds that he can work miracles, and heals a man who is lame and later, raises a person from death.  And while it isn’t in scripture, we learn from some of the e earliest Christian historians that Peter suffers martyrdom, crucified like Christ, but crucified upside down because Peter doesn’t think he’s worthy of being crucified just like Jesus.  

Jesus offers Peter the opportunity to become another Christ.  It doesn’t happen suddenly nor completely, but gradually Peter does what Christ does, and in fact becomes the first in a long line of people who take Christ’s place leading the church.

Whenever I think about Peter and his transformation, his becoming another Christ, I can’t help but remember the rich young man who was also offered the opportunity to be broken down and rebuilt as another Christ, but went away sad because he had many possessions.  

Jesus offers each of us the opportunity to allow ourselves to be broken down and rebuilt in his image.  For some of us it’s happening bit by bit; for some it happens more suddenly.  And for some despite Jesus’ offer, it isn’t accepted and they go away sad because they have many attachments.  

Today let us ask, where are we in our transformation?  Jesus wants to make each of us his brother or sister.  He wants to pass on to us a share in his own divine nature.  But over and over again we have to go through those moments when we realize that we have to empty ourselves out if Jesus is to build us up again.  We have to recognize that we are nothing without Jesus.