“TRINITY 5 2024”
Saint Luke 5: 1-11
5th Sunday after Trinity: June 30 Anno Domini 2024
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
And then Sunday 30 June came to pass. The people of Augsburg, and others, pressed upon Christ to hear the word of God. He stood by the lake of Gennesaret found in an 8-sided font, and two ships standing by this lake—Law and Gospel (too generic?); His two Natures of Divinity and Humanity; His blessed delivery of Mercy in Holy + Baptism and Holy + Eucharist. The fisherman, we call them pastors, or pastor, washing their/his nets for the use of what nets are for—catching fish. Who are the fish? The people.
As important a reality as it is, the word fish, or fishes, or fishers, only occurs some 100 times in Holy Scripture. It could be that The Lord used it for His Galilean disciples, who were men of the lake, more so than the usual idiom of Shepherd, or Husbandman (farmer).
Fish, like sheep, are not bright animals. Fish living in the deep (river, lake, ocean) do not know they are living in water. It is just the natural element and state of things. They are oblivious to different dimensions of reality—the above world. Fish do not seek to be caught or taken from where they are “comfortable” to any place else. Now, naturally, no fish, if it could think about choosing or deciding, would ever elect to be caught and fileted and roasted on a fire to be eaten. That is not what The Lord does. He converts His great draught of fish from a septic/Satanic whirlpool of death and damnation and transfers them to a clean refreshing pool of life and immortality.
All the work is done by the fisher. The Lord had prophesied this by Jeremias: “behold, I will send for many fishers…and THEY shall fish them” [Jer. 16.16]. Jesus explains the “why” by Ezekiel: “…everything that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers (or the Sea of Galilee, or northeast Kansas)…shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish…for they shall be healed; and everything shall live…” [Ez. 47.9].
Jesus the Good Shepherd is also Jesus The Good Fisherman. He caught Peter, Andrew, James, and John at the same lake with His net of Divine Mercy when He, and The Holy Spirit called (caught) them.
And lest this homily turn into a mishmash of all the fish references in Hebrew and Greek writ (dominion over the fish in Genesis; Jonah’s story of redemption; the fish gate in Jerusalem and the fish pools in Hesbon) we cut to the chase—the catch!
You are the fish. All mankind are the fishes, “for God so loved the WORLD!” You have been caught up live by the net(s) of His Word. Not by Him in a visual and local way, but by His appointed fishers—pastors and bishops who are called and ordained by Him to administer His net/WORD, through preaching/teaching, washing +, and feeding. But even fish in a live-well can continue to thrash about and sometime even leap back into the sewer (leave the faith; apostatize) His Holy Spirited guided fisher will continue to preach the net of His word in Law so that in confession and absolution you will be brought back into your Baptismal faith—the great Nave, or Ship of Salvation!
Take great gladness and comfort that though you daily rebel and transgress much, for which you need to be ashamed and contrite for, your Great Fisher makes good all your bad. When you try to wiggle out of His net which is NOT burdensome, his yoke is not heavy, He never did. His Father’s will was His will. He joyous will was to be the ultimate bait and fish of The Trinity.
What? Worm? Were we not talking about nets which gather what they gather? Yes. But for The Christ, there would be no great sweeping of the depths for a multitude, but rather a specific task of defeating the great monster fish—Satan—by the giving of His own Body and Blood on the Tree—the same wood in His Bethlehem creche, in Noah’s ark, and in Golgotha’s tree. Even as Jesus had Fisher, St. Peter, cast a ‘hook’ into that lake to draw forth a fish with a coin in its mouth (to pay the tax), your Lord let Himself be hooked by the sharp [Mt. 17.27] cutting iron of spikes and spear point. His Holy and Innocent mouth bled while praying for you “Father, forgive them.” He was the angle worm, nay—The angel worm that let the ancient dragon swallow Him whole in death and the tomb. But this worm (c.f. Psalm 22.6 and # 154, ‘Alas, and did my Savior Bleed’) Jesus became. If He became Sin for you, you have no qualms that he became bait for you, bait to capture the beast. To the world the devil won—consumed the Nazarene. To the faithful catch, Your Lord ripped open that foul maul and burst the gates, the fiendish teeth, of death. “The gates of hell did not prevail,” nor will they ever. All of you by The Fisher reaching down the net of His Word, in His pierced hand, will burst you out of the tomb on the last day. Heaven will be pure, clean, fresh, immaculate, and, yes, wet—wet with not your tears, but wet in Christ’s soft rain of love.
You my fellow fish are not there yet. In this world of tribulation and decay, the net(s) will sometimes break—persistent is the self-will of the pagan, and sadly your own “old Adam” desires. But the second great draught of fishes which occurs at the end of St. John’s Gospel shows you, your ultimate salvation. That time the net does not break. That time it takes all the fishers to haul it up on the shore where The Christ has a meal waiting. John (ch. 21) tells us there were, specifically, 153 fish in the net. The actual number, sure. The significance? The “ONE” God, the “ONE” Jesus fulfills, completes, and cancels out the condemnation of the “FIVE”—the Law (in The Pentateuch). And now the “THREE,” that is the The Holy Trinity into which you all + are baptized, comes directly to you in the “FOUR,” the four-fold Gospel net goes out to secure all of you and bring you to the same Meal that Christ has prepared.
I as a called and ordained fisher of The Word forgive you all your sins. I cast out the net, right now, again, and you are drawn to the altar and the rail to drink pure water, which is His Blood, and to eat, broiled fish/roasted Lamb, which is really The Body of God.
In The Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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