Jesus

by James Martin

  (See also Luke 4:31–37)

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  They went to Capernaum; and when the Sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, throwing him into convulsions and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

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  CHAPTER 9

  Gennesaret

  “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

  IN THE FIFTH CHAPTER of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus preaches to a crowd by Lake Gennesaret—also known as the Sea of Galilee and the Sea of Tiberias. As I’ve already confessed, before visiting the Holy Land I thought that these were three separate bodies of water, and I imagined Jesus cheerfully strolling from one to the other.

  There were a great many other things I didn’t know about the region. For one thing, how close everything was. Many of the places where Jesus performed his miracles were just a mile or two from Capernaum. In one morning you could walk from the scenes of the Call of the First Disciples to the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes to the Healing of the Woman with the Hemorrhage. It was no wonder that Jesus was besieged by crowds. Not only was he performing miracles, but he was doing so in a confined geographic space.

  The Gospel of Luke tells us that the crowd is “pressing in on him.” This is not surprising, since Jesus has just healed the man in the synagogue at Capernaum and, afterward, healed Simon’s mother-in-law. Perhaps being pushed back closer to the shoreline by the people, Jesus stumbles upon fishermen who are cleaning their nets. Given that they would clean their nets after fishing, the reader knows that they have just completed a night of hard work. Jesus steps into Simon’s boat and asks him to push out from land so that he can teach. In the boat, Jesus sits down, the traditional posture for a teacher of the time. This small detail in Luke’s Gospel indicates Jesus’s confidence.

  When he is finished preaching, Jesus asks Simon to go into the deep water and let down his nets. Not surprisingly, Simon is dubious. “Master” (epistata), he says, using a term showing respect for Jesus’s authority, “we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” Simon’s full humanity is on display; he oscillates between a natural doubt (“Are you kidding?”) and faith (“If you say so”).

  Simon is willing to try again, a good trait for a disciple—or anyone for that matter. For those who wonder why Jesus would have chosen the hardheaded and impetuous Simon (whom he will later name Peter) to run his church, here is an early indication: “You want me to try again? In this same boat we were just fishing from? If you say so, Jesus.”

  He may also have been encouraged by having listened to Jesus’s preaching. What Jesus preached from the boat goes unrecorded, but perhaps it so impressed Peter that the fisherman was filled with confidence in the carpenter. Still, you can imagine him doubting even as he unfurled his sail.

  Scholars term this a “call narrative” and, as you can tell, it is similar to the Call of the First Disciples as told in Mark and Matthew.1 Certain key elements are the same; for example, the story takes place on the Sea of Galilee, while Peter and his friends are plying their trade. But Luke tells the story differently, and may also be combining two tales—the story of the call, which Mark and Matthew recounted, and the “work of power” that is about to happen.

  Peter and the so-far-unnamed others let down their nets, which are suddenly filled to the bursting point—so much that the boat almost sinks and they have to call on their partners to help. It’s easy to imagine the commotion: the boat suddenly leans to one side and begins to take on water, the fish flop noisily in the nets as the men strain to hoist them aboard, the other fishermen hurriedly row over to help their friends, and the men shout exultantly after a long night of catching nothing. Incidentally, the rationalistic interpretation that Jesus saw a shoal of fish that the fishermen had missed seems unconvincing here. It’s a stretch to imagine the carpenter spotting something that the experienced fishermen had overlooked.

  Once on retreat I prayed with this passage and imagined the sudden lurch of the boat as the school of fish banged into the net, and Jesus’s smiling response to this great miracle: “What’s in the net, Simon?” And I could imagine Simon’s response: a combination of fear, wonder, and hope. That dramatic lurch changed his life. In fact, Jesus may have needed something dramatic to convince the headstrong Peter to join him.

  Peter’s response is deeply moving. He falls to his knees and says, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” Luke notes that this gesture came from “amazement” (thambos, or religious awe before the holy). Peter now calls Jesus not simply Master (epistata), but Lord (kyrios).

  Peter wasn’t the only one astounded by what he saw. Luke now tells us that others were present. All who were with him “were amazed,” including James and John, sons of Zebedee, who are called “partners” with Peter. The word used for partners is koinōnoi, which can also be translated as “sharers.” Luke Timothy Johnson notes that the image of the soon-to-be-apostles already working together, and pooling their resources, sets the stage for the community of disciples they will soon become.2

  Standing before Peter, Jesus says, “Do not be afraid, Simon. From now on you will be catching people.” That’s “people” again—anthrōpous.

  Luke ends the story abruptly: “When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.” This is not just a physical following, as if they simply walked in single file behind Jesus. The Greek ēkolouthēsan connotes a spiritual following, the total commitment of the disciple to the teacher.

  We’ve already considered how the fishermen might have been able to leave everything to follow Jesus. But what lies behind Peter’s seemingly strange behavior aboard the boat? Isn’t it odd to move so quickly from telling a person to leave to wanting to follow him? More basically, why would Peter ask Jesus to “go away”? Why would we?

  OVERWHELMED BY THE MIRACLE of the immense catch, Peter is “amazed,” falling to his knees before the Lord. Peter seems painfully aware of his sinfulness, of the distance between himself and Jesus. In the bright sunlight of God’s love, Peter sees his shadow side. So he utters an utterly human response: “Go away from me, for I am a sinful man.”

  We can try to imagine Peter’s possible frame of mind when he asked Jesus to leave him, but it is just as important to understand why we say to God, “Go away from me.”

  Let’s look at some possible reasons.

  First, unworthiness. Many people struggle with feelings of inadequacy or shame. “Why would God want to be in a relationship with me?” they ask. This happens even in the face of overwhelming evidence that God desires to be part of their lives. People growing in awareness of the spiritual life often tell me about powerful experiences in prayer—for example, being moved by a passage from Scripture or sensing the presence of God in nature. But when I suggest that God is speaking to them through these experiences, they recoil. “That’s ridiculous,” they sometimes say. “It’s impossible that God would want to communicate with me. I’m too sinful.”

  Well, of course you’re sinful. We are all sinners, but sinners loved by God. And God still desires to enter into a relationship with each of us.

  A few years ago I was co-directing a parish retreat with a woman named Mary. The weekend’s theme was learning from the lives of the saints. During one presentation Mary told the group the story of Dorothy Day, the American-born founder of the Catholic Worker mov
ement, who had in her young adulthood undergone an abortion. Mary said to the group, mostly women, “Imagine all the good that would never have gotten done if Dorothy Day had said: ‘What could God do with me? I had an abortion.’” Feelings of inadequacy are human, as Peter shows us, but we are invited to see them in the light of God’s love.

  A second reason we push God away is fear. Fear of the Lord is healthy, even praised in Scripture. The Book of Proverbs calls it “the beginning of wisdom.”3 As God’s creatures, we must be in awe and reverence of the Creator of the Universe. Sometimes we overlook this aspect of our faith, but it probably wasn’t difficult for Peter to summon up that emotion when he felt the boat lurch to one side.

  Our appreciation of the role of simple human fear in the apostles’ lives may be limited by an overfamiliarity with the Gospels. We might be so used to these stories that Jesus’s display of power is predictable or even boring. Well, of course, Jesus can cause a huge catch of fish; that’s just what he does. But to Peter and “all who were with him,” the event must have been absolutely terrifying. Peter, who knew the sea well, was a professional fisherman and had just been out fishing all night; he knew there are no fish around.

  Imagine a friend being able to control nature. Imagine your friend suddenly being able to make a storm gather overhead with the snap of his fingers. Seeing him command the elements would be deeply unsettling and understandably frightening. It would seem that all you know about nature has been shaken to its core; and you would now fear your friend, who seems to possess this bizarre power.

  We might be frightened of God’s power even if it doesn’t manifest itself in such dramatic ways. During a retreat a few years after I entered the Jesuits, I was praying about the challenges of chastity. How would I ever deal with feelings of loneliness, how could I endure a life without a significant other? Suddenly, euthus, as if a switch had been turned on, memories of love cascaded into my mind. I remembered being loved by so many people: this Catholic sister I knew well, this priest who had helped me through a rough patch, this friend who had been a part of my Jesuit life. All examples of how I had been loved—always, but especially as a Jesuit. It was an answer to my questions about chastity. But the point is this: I couldn’t believe the speed with which it happened, and at the time I felt not gratitude but fear—that God seemed to be answering my prayer so directly and immediately.

  Fear of the Lord is natural. But it must be coupled with an understanding of God’s love, for Jesus performs miracles not simply to show his power, but to show his love.

  The third reason is fear of change. People starting out in the spiritual life often share a common image of God: the Evil Trickster. Some young adults, for example, have said to me, “Well, I feel God is inviting me to be more loving, forgiving, and open. But I fear what will happen if I say yes.” They worry that they will be taken advantage of by others or that they’ll be labeled as doormats. Or they fear that once they let go of their old ways—whether or not those ways have been effective or healthy—they will be lost. Basically, they fear that by following God’s invitation, things will go wrong.

  Often this image results from envisioning God the way we see other authority figures. If your father or mother was a demanding taskmaster, you may unintentionally ascribe some of those attributes to God. Likewise, if you have experienced authorities as untrustworthy, you may have a hard time trusting God.

  So I often ask people, “What is your understanding of God? Is God the Evil Trickster who wants to lure you down the garden path to trick you and bring you to ruin?” Challenged intellectually, they often realize how misguided that image is: “Of course not!” God desires the best for us. As the Book of Jeremiah says, “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”4

  More generally, we might fear change per se. What will happen if I follow Jesus? What will it mean to abandon my old ways? How will I change? Fear of change may have been one of the reasons Peter says, “Go away from me.” We may also fear not changing fast enough. We grow impatient with the slow process of conversion. Remember that no one sees the trees change color. Change happens if we’re open to God’s grace, but it happens in God’s time. It took time, after all, for Simon to become Peter.

  Fourth is fear of intimacy. We often fear real intimacy not only with one another, but also with God. What would it mean to let someone into our inner lives? Peter, a hard-nosed fisherman, may have feared intimacy with this itinerant preacher, someone from outside of his family circle, outside of Capernaum. But, again, the intimacy that Jesus offers is motivated by love. And even then, we can feel fear.

  Now, notice Jesus’s response to Peter’s emotional “Go away from me!” Not only does Jesus not depart from Peter; he calls Peter to join him in his mission: “From now on you will be catching people.” Jesus comes not to drive people away, but to call us to join him, if we are willing to follow, no matter who we are—single, married, or vowed; rich or poor; old or young; liberal or conservative; lay, clergy, or religious; gay or straight.

  This is an important message to those who, for whatever reason, feel as if their churches are saying to them, “Go away!” Some divorced and remarried Catholics tell me they feel this way. Some gays and lesbians do as well. So do some women. But Christ’s message is not only a call to conversion, but one of inclusion, a message that welcomes us into the community and restores us to it. Even if you’re made to feel unworthy and are tempted to say, “Go away!” Christ says, as he did to Peter, “Join me in my great mission.”

  Despite what must have been some fear, Peter still follows Jesus. The Gospels can be seen, at least in part, as the story of Jesus’s friendship with his disciples: one party is always faithful, the other parties not as much. Peter continues to sin in the weeks and months to follow. Nonetheless, Jesus continually calls him to conversion. Jesus knows Peter’s weaknesses and calls him anyway. Jesus calls us anyway too, in spite of our weaknesses.

  In fact, Jesus ultimately may have called Peter to lead the church because Peter was painfully conscious of his own weakness. He would never forget how far he fell, how much he failed—and so he would remember to rely on God’s strength, not his own. How many of us must learn, sometimes multiple times, to acknowledge our weakness and to trust in God.

  As Jesus stood on Lake Gennesaret, he may have guessed that Peter was not only bold, persistent, and courageous; he was also weak enough to be a good leader.

  LET ME RETURN TO those Christians who feel marginalized from their churches and to those who sometimes feel discouraged or scandalized by what their churches do.

  It is important to remember that the church did not die and rise from the dead. Jesus did. Especially in times of difficulty and scandal, we need to be reminded that our faith is not in an institution but in a person: Jesus. Certainly we experience Christ in and through the church and certainly the church is the “Body of Christ” on earth. And I don’t in any way deny or minimize the importance of the church. But the church does not save us. Jesus does. It is Jesus, not the institution, who has called you into relationship with him. Even though we may feel as if the church is saying “Go away from me,” those words never pass from Jesus’s lips when he meets sinful people.

  For those who feel scandalized because of sins committed by members of the church, it is also important to remember that the church has always been imperfect. Dorothy Day once said, “I love the Church for Christ made visible, not for itself, because it was so often a scandal to me.”5

  Once again, this is not to drive anyone away from the church. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to the church. But the church is made up of people who fail, who sin, and who commit grave error, even crimes. The church has been imperfect since its beginning. Christians who read this Gospel passage from Luke know that all three of these men will fail Jesus at crucial moments. James and John will misunderstand him when they proclaim that they want to be “first” in t
he kingdom of heaven. More seriously, Peter will fail Jesus three times during the Passion. The initial enthusiastic response on the shore of Galilee draws us into a human tension between fidelity and failure, which will be repeated over and over as the disciples’ pilgrimage unfolds.

  It is our pilgrimage too. In belonging to a church, we sometimes feel unworthy of membership. We also feel, at times, that the church is unworthy of the one who founded it. We walk both a pilgrimage of power in the light of the Resurrection and a pilgrimage of powerlessness in the face of sin. We have the benefit of knowing all this now. Peter did not. He said yes to Jesus with utter trust, having seen what Jesus could do. But he could not have known to what shores his yes would take him.

  WHAT WAS PETER THINKING as he rowed back to the shore? On one retreat, I realized that after Jesus said, “From now on you will be catching people,” Peter and the disciples still needed to return to shore. There was ample time for him to decide to say no to Jesus’s offer. To have second thoughts. Peter must have wondered when he saw the astonishing, alarming, unbelievable catch of fish, Is this really happening? For he is no longer seeing things as they are in the natural world, but as they are in the reign of God. Now he has to make a choice about how he is going to see.

  F. J. Sheed has a wonderful insight about this miracle. Peter, he notes, had already seen other miracles—the healing of his mother-in-law, for instance. Perhaps he was also present at the Wedding Feast at Cana, traditionally Jesus’s first miracle, as recorded in the Gospel of John. But these phenomena—healing bodies and making wine—were outside Peter’s experience. “But fish were different: he knew all about fish. This miracle hit home to him as the others had not.”6

  As Peter rowed or sailed back to the shore, he may have considered everything that he would have to give up: his livelihood, his family, everything he knew. He must have had doubts. As Peter strained against the waves on Lake Gennesaret, he must have asked himself whether he would be able to leave so much behind. He must have toggled between worry about the future and amazement over the miraculous catch of fish.