Thank you so much for that applause, which was humbling and surprising and deeply in some way encouraging. Thank you so much. Some have referred this to uh to today as my farewell tour, which is fine, but it does remind me of some of these rock bands today going around with a bunch of old guys in long hair from the 70s trying to recreate something. And actually, in 13, when I was 13 years old, it was 1970, and I too was trying to grow my hair out because that was the pathway towards coolness at the time. So here's a little glimpse of that journey from 5 to 13 to about 17. That's enough of that. It went on a little bit farther to include facial hair and longer hair before I met my wife. But in the middle of that journey at 13, I was at war with my dad about the length of my hair. And one summer, probably about this time in the summer, I received an ultimatum, get it cut before Friday when we head out. Or on Saturday morning, I'll take you to the little barber shop in the town nearby cottage. Well, I didn't get it cut. And I thought he didn't notice as we were driving out of the driveway. But Saturday morning he said we're heading in to Martin, Michigan. A little town I'd never been to before, to a barber shop that scared me a little bit. And we got inside, the barber motioned me in the chair, and my dad gave him instructions. At that point, I noticed there were no mirrors in the room, which meant I couldn't see what was going on. And the barber proceeded to tell me his dream of retirement. He said, You know what I'm gonna do when I retire? And I said, No. Whoever is sitting in the chair, it doesn't matter who, I'm gonna take the clippers and shave off all their hair. Run out the door, jump in the car where my wife will have the engine running and we'll take off. I kid you not, this is a true story. I was traumatized for a moment. And of all the lessons I learned on that day, and there were many, one of them relates to this morning. Just so you know, I am not gonna use these few moments with you trapped in a chair in a room with no mirrors to scare you with my dreams for retirement. Rather, I love to listen in to the story from the gospel of God's dream of the kingdom for our world. So to do that, let's pray together and listen to God's word. Oh God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you. O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. Hear this story from the Gospel of Luke, verses 1 through 11. Once, while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Genezareth, and the people were pressing in on him to hear the word of God. He saw two boats there at the shore of the lake. The fishermen had gone out of them and they were washing their nuts. So he got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to push off a little from the shore. Then he sat down and began to teach the people from the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, Push out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch. Simon said to him, Master, we've worked all night long and caught nothing. Yet? If you say so, we'll let down the nets. And when they had done this, they caught so many fish that the nets began to break. So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help. And when they came and helped, there were so many fish that filled the boats and they began to sink. But when Simon saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees and said, Get away from me, Lord, I'm a sinful man. For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish, as were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners with him. But Jesus said to Simon, Do not be afraid, Simon. From now on, you will be catching people. And when they had brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed Jesus. The word of the Lord. Thanks, Mr. God. There are three things in this passage that have served as portals to me into this story. One is the dynamic ebb and flow of movement, energy in the story. The second is Peter's stunning confession. And the third is the crazy transformation of the vocation of these fishermen. First, the ebb and flow of energy. Luke begins this story telling us that Jesus is standing by the shore at the shore of the Lake of Kenazaret. He's standing there. It's the people that are pressing in on him to hear the word of God. They're pressing because Jesus has been healing people and teaching. Everyone's been coming to him to have something changed and made better. And they want to hear from him because his teaching's been powerful. They're pressing so much that Jesus gets into a boat, pushes off a little, and begins to teach from the boat itself. And when he finishes teaching, did you notice? Push off deeper to fish. It's Jesus who then moves towards Peter. Simon. Simon lets down the nets, then all of a sudden it's the fish that are moving towards people. More fish than they could imagine. First pressing the nets of Peter's boat, and then filling both boats so much that they're about to sink. All of this movement of abundance pressing in on Jesus, on Simon, on everyone. Recently, my daughter-in-law was telling us about this live feed to an eagle's nest in Traver City. I don't know if anyone else has been part of this, but on YouTube there's this live feed to an eagle's nest that was 100 feet above the water in Traverse City. And everyone was glued to this thing as the eagles had a baby eaglet. And then all of a sudden, a great wind cracked the branch and the nest went. I think this is a picture of that. The nest started to tip. And the eaglet isn't able yet at this point to live on its own. And it's it's sitting in the nest. And then one of the adult eagles comes in with a fish in its beak to feed the young eagle, and then another one comes and sits on the nest, and the whole thing crashes down into the lake. And everyone, in person there in Traverse City, on the ground, and around the world at their computers are pressing in to see what's happening. Just so you know, the eagle's fine, it's in a rehabilitation. But I wanted to capture that's the kind of energy around this story. Everyone's trying to see what's going to happen next with Jesus because something's at loose here that's powerful and wonderful and at the core of life. And that movement goes back and forth, doesn't it? First towards Jesus, and then Jesus towards Simon, and then Simon, and then the fish start pressing in on Simon and Simon to Jesus and Jesus back to Simon, and then there's so many fish they can't even hold them in the boats and they get it to shore, and then Jesus, no worry. You're gonna fish for people. And they press on Jesus, leaving everything. This ebb and flow of energy, it's the choreography of God's grace in the world, coming with its abundance and catching us off guard. It comes and stuns us because it's the life that Jesus came to give us. Abundance beyond our expectations. It's the reality at work in the gospel today as God by his Spirit continues to bring about healing and reconciliation and peace, brings purpose and meaning to people's lives. All that goes into human flourishing, the kingdom of God is at hand. And though it looks like everyone is really leaning into Jesus, it's really Jesus as well, leaning in to everyone. On the edge of his seat with interest for every human being perched precariously in the circumstances of our world, in the face of unpredictable world forces. God is at work reconciling all things to himself. Second is the stunning confession of Simon. This is the first time in the Gospel of Luke that Simon appears in an interaction with Jesus. When he talks, Jesus talks to Simon Peter. In chapter 4, there's mention of Simon because Jesus has come to Capernaum, Simon's hometown, and come to Simon's house and was told about Simon's mother-in-law, and Jesus rebukes her fever and she is healed. So Jesus came to his house and created this wonderful healing there. And because of that, Peter is most likely obligated to help Jesus out at this point when Jesus asks him to push off from shore. Kenneth Bailey in his book Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes said, any Middle Eastern person at that time would have gladly done what Jesus said if Jesus had just healed someone in their house. It was common courtesy. But the request to push off into deep water and drop down your nets was pushing things a little too far. Did you catch the energy a little bit of the edge of what Simon says? Master, we've worked all night. If you say so, we'll let down the nets. The English translation doesn't really do justice to the force of what Peter says. Kenneth Bailey paraphrases what Simon says this way. Listen, teacher, my boys and I are professionals. We know where the fish feed along the shore, and the best time to catch them's at night. That's why we were out on the lake all last night. We're not stupid. We've just worked the fishing area and caught nothing. We're now dead tired. Stayed awake a few more hours to serve you. You rabbis think you know everything. And now you order me to fish during the day in the deep water? Okay, let's go out and we'll see who knows what about fishing. Well, they do, and the unthinkable happens. They catch more fish than they have ever seen before. Simon's reaction is dramatic. Get away from me, Lord. Falls at his feet first, at his knees, but then says, get away from me. I'm a sinful man. And Simon really hasn't sinned in a conventional sense, has he? Like lied or stolen or cheated? There's something different at work. He's been hesitant to do what Jesus said, reluctant, but he obeyed Jesus, didn't he? He did drop the nets, they did catch the fish. I mean, how many of us have followed what we thought God was calling us to do with some reluctance? I'm a little sympathetic to him at this point. But the Greek word that Simon uses here, harmon, means something more like missing the mark. It helps us think about sin in a bigger way. Neil Planiga, in his book Not the Way It's Supposed to Be, a breviary on sin, talks about sin this way. The Bible presents sin by way of major concepts, principally lawlessness and faithfulness, expressed in an array of images. Sin as missing of the target, a wandering from the path, a straying from the fold. Sin is a hard heart and a stiff neck. It's both the overstepping of a line and the failure to reach it. Both transgression and shortcoming. In sin, people attack or evade or neglect their divine calling. Above all, sin disrupts and resists the vinyl, the vital human relation to God. That's really what Simon realizes. I've completely missed the mark. Miss the mark about who you are and what you're about. This sense of misunderstanding or missing the mark of what God is and what God is about. Have you ever felt that yourself? It's the abundance of fish that brings this clarity to Simon. Isn't that interesting? It isn't some presumptuous rabbi giving fishing tips. It's the one sent by God who's just proclaimed the Spirit of a God of the Lord is upon me to bring good news to the poor, to bring release to the captives and recovery of sight from the blind to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. That's what God is about in Christ. And it's the abundance of the fish that brings clarity about who is in the boat. Now that transformed vocation. Out of that clarity, Peter hears Jesus say, don't be afraid. From now on, you'll be catching people. I grew up singing a song in Sunday school, I will make you fishers of men, fishers of men, fishers of men, I will make you fishers of men if you follow me. But as I thought about that song, I thought, you know, it could really be a little misleading to what really happens here. For Jesus doesn't say, I will make you fishers of men if you follow me. He declares this to Peter. First he says, Don't be afraid. But then he said, from now on, you'll be fishing for people. It isn't, you know, Simon, if you would just get on board, you'll fish for people. It's more with me on board, Peter. You'll fish like you've never fished before. The declaration about what's going to happen in Peter's life, it was what brings about the response to leave everything and follow him. It's the good work of God in Christ that generates this response that isn't conditional to hear it, it's heard first. What else is interesting is the word for fishing here is not the same word used for fishing in the beginning to describe Peter and his friends and his partner or Simon. Rather, it's a word in the Greek used only here and one other time in the New Testament, and has more the sense of catching alive. In fact, it's used in secular contexts of battle when an army goes to a city and instead of destroying it and killing everyone, they take capture, they capture the people alive and take them back. They're live captives now. The word life, Zoe, is at the heart of that word. And the change in Simon's vocation is really more about a frame shift with abundance. From the sense of abundance he has as a fisherman, a catch so large, it would it would be like the greatest thing in your business as a fisherman ever. To the abundance of the life in the kingdom. From now on, you're not gonna be fishing for fish. But you're around the life of the kingdom. Around Jesus, there's true life and abundance, and you're gonna be a part of that. Healing, teaching, gatherings of other sinners that come to fellowship with Jesus as he walked with him as a disciple before Jesus died. But then after Jesus died and rose at Pentecost in his own preaching, he would see it happen with thousands repenting and being baptized and becoming Christians. He would see it again as that sheep came out of the sky with all kinds of food on it, declaring that all foods are clean and all people now enjoy God's favor, and every anyone who calls on the name of the Lord would be saved. Around Jesus, there's life and abundance. Jesus, the center of that life. For to be around him is to be around life. That's why he left everything to follow Jesus. On Friday night, my wife and I attended a reunion gathering from our high school class of 1975. Our class president at that meeting encouraged us all to just talk with each other and ask the question, what's God been doing in your life? What I thought about was that I I'm not sure I know where to start. The more I think about that question, the more I see. And there's been so much. In so many quiet and out-of-the-way ways and places in my own life, some big places, in dark and hard places in my own life, and in the lives of people I've had the privilege to share experiences with in ministry. In joyful moments and delightful times, in big ways and in small, I thought about things that were not have anything to do with a worldly sense of abundance, but of the abundance of the kingdom. A realization of how rich God has been towards me, towards others, towards many of you who I've known for 23 or so years. To follow Jesus is to be around life, which is the vocation of the church, of all of us. It's what the world is waiting for as it seems to be perched like that eagle's nest on a cracked branch precariously above a lake. With all of us wondering what's gonna happen, and filled with a longing for a different kind of abundant life. The one found around Jesus, who by his spirit is still letting it loose. I love the way David White puts it in this poem: everything is waiting for you. Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone, as if life were a progressive and cunning crime with no witness to that tiny hidden transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely even you at times have felt the grand array, the swelling presence, and the chorus crowding out your solo voice. You must note the way the soap dish enables you or the window latch grants you freedom. Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity. The stairs are your mentor of things to come. The doors have always been there to frighten you and invite you, and the tiny speaker in the phone is your dream ladder to divinity. Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation. The kettle is singing, and even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots have left their arrogant aloofness and seen the good in you at last. All the birds and creatures of the world are unutterably themselves. Everything is waiting for you. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.