Sermons from Mission Hills UCC
San Diego, California
Rev. Dr. David Bahr
david.bahr@missionhillsucc.org
February 18, 2024
“Peter: Unfiltered, Abrupt, and Unafraid”
Luke 5: 1-11 – Common English Bible
One day Jesus was standing beside Lake Gennesaret when the crowd pressed in around him to hear God’s word. 2 Jesus saw two boats sitting by the lake. The fishermen had gone ashore and were washing their nets. 3 Jesus boarded one of the boats, the one that belonged to Simon, then asked him to row out a little distance from the shore. Jesus sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. 4 When he finished speaking to the crowds, he said to Simon, “Row out farther, into the deep water, and drop your nets for a catch.”
5 Simon replied, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and caught nothing. But because you say so, I’ll drop the nets.”
6 So they dropped the nets and their catch was so huge that their nets were splitting. 7 They signaled for their partners in the other boat to come and help them. They filled both boats so full that they were about to sink. 8 When Simon Peter saw the catch, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Leave me, Lord, for I’m a sinner!” 9 Peter and those with him were overcome with amazement because of the number of fish they caught. 10 James and John, Zebedee’s sons, were Simon’s partners and they were amazed too.
Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid. From now on, you will be fishing for people.” 11 As soon as they brought the boats to the shore, they left everything and followed Jesus.
What do you know about Peter, also known as Simon, aka Simon Peter… three different names in just this one short passage. And also known in the Gospel of John as Cephas (seff-us). But, for the sake of simplicity, I’m just going to call him Peter.
So, back to my original question: what do you know about him? He’s named in lots of stories – 195 times. Compare that to all the other disciples who receive only 130 mentions – combined. All we know about some of the 12 is their name! Peter’s names pop up in story after story, but not as a complete narrative of his own.
There’s something about Peter. But what is it? Well, this Lent, we’re going to find out. We’re going to take a deeper dive into the faith of this one individual, and yet even so, we’ll only get to skim the surface of this impetuous, impulsive, and unfiltered character. A deeply flawed but even more deeply passionate and committed disciple of Christ. In the end, we may discover he is someone with whom we can find a connection – something about him for which we can say, “Oh, if I’m honest, that’s me too.”
When you hear the name Peter, are there any stories that come to mind? For me, number one is Peter’s insistence that he will never, never, ever deny Jesus. “There’s no way I would ever do such a thing.” Immediately followed by three denials. “I don’t know the man. I don’t know the man. I already told you, I don’t know that man.” That’s almost always the first thing I think of Peter because of course, “I would never ever do such a terrible thing!” I would never (2). I would never (3).
The second thing about Peter is how he asked Jesus to walk on water. Jesus said, “Sure, come on in.” Peter got out of the boat, started actually walking on water and then became afraid because he was actually walking on water and so he began to sink. He cried out, “Help!” Which of course he wouldn’t have needed to do if he hadn’t been so impetuous in the first place! But you’ve never done that, right!? Not me. 😊
Third. One day Jesus responded to something Peter said by saying, “Get behind me, Satan.” Ouch! So, do you suppose Peter learned a lesson from this experience? Like, don’t speak before listening? Of course not. He’s Peter! And he’s me, and maybe you.
As you probably already know, Peter was one of the first 12 disciples, but did you know that how he became one of the first is different depending on the gospel. In Mark, with which we are probably most familiar, Jesus simply walked by Peter and his brother Andrew and said, “Come follow me” and immediately they did. Then they came upon James and John and they left every-thing behind too. Matthew copied and pasted this into his gospel straight out of Mark, but curiously, Matthew cut the next part.
In Mark, these new disciples followed him to the synagogue and listened to Jesus preach when all of a sudden, a demon interrupted him. Jesus told it to leave, which it did by screaming as it writhed its way out of a man. These pairs of brothers just stood there and watched and wondered, what have we gotten ourselves into. But in Mark, everyone’s in a very big hurry and so off they go. Again, Matthew skipped this.
But, then there’s Luke, who has a very different pace and a very different take on the calling of the first disciples. In Luke, Jesus has already been preaching for a while. You know, the first time Jesus preached it was to his hometown crowd in Nazareth, but after his very first sermon they ran him out of town and tried to throw him off a cliff. After that, he went down to preach in Capernaum every Sabbath instead. And it was on one of those occasions that the screaming demon writhed its way out of a man. It was after this startling event that Peter invited Jesus to his house or maybe as it sometimes happened, Jesus invited himself to Peter’s house only to discover his mother-in-law in bed with a fever. Jesus healed her and that night people brought folks from all over town to Peter’s doorstep, begging Jesus to help their loved ones. But that was it. After that long night, Jesus went back to preaching at other synagogues around Galilee and Peter went back to work.
In Luke, Jesus is a wandering itinerant preacher, a little while here, a little while there. In Mark, everything is immediate, but Luke takes his time to let things unfold. Some of us just jump right in, but for those of us who want to think about a decision a little more, Luke’s our gospel. Peter didn’t just jump up and follow Jesus immediately after seeing his mother-in-law jump up from her fever. Peter went back to work because in real life, what other choice do we have? I grew up on a dairy farm. My father might have been in the hospital to witness the miracle of the birth of his first child at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, but he still had to go home and milk the cows by 5:30 and every 12 hours.
Peter too needed to go back to work. He was a fisherman and fishermen fished every day except the Sabbath. Some days were better than others. I wonder if a fisherman’s better days were outnumbered by the days they didn’t even catch a minnow. Well, it was at the end of one of those not-even-a-minnow days that Peter and his partners were cleaning their nets and Jesus walked by the shoreline, followed, always followed, by a crowd hungry to hear him teach.
To be clear, in Luke, Jesus wasn’t a stranger to Peter. Jesus had been at his house back whenever that was. Jesus asked Peter to row out a little ways so he could talk to the crowd pressing in on him. Now, that was one thing to ask. Sure, Peter would have to pause for a little while before going home for supper, but then Jesus asked for something much more: to stop the crew from their end of work routine to go back out and do it again. Peter spoke for himself and everyone else: “We’re tired! We’re worn out from a long day’s work.” And wouldn’t you agree? I wouldn’t be so happy to do my job over again before going home.
I mean, those nets were heavy. They have weights attached in order for them to sink. They’re awkward and slimy, especially as you stand on a slippery wet boat. Throwing those things overboard when you’re already tired, well, this was a pretty big ask of Jesus. However, Jesus had healed his mother-in-law, so if the guy is now asking for a favor, how could he turn him down?
And you know how it turned out. The haul of fish was so big it began to tear those big, heavy, slimy nets. A second crew came out to help but there were so many fish, both boats nearly swamped. Peter saw all this happening and his response was, “Get away from me!” Not “thank you.” Not, “Wow! could you come back every day?” No, he said, “Get away from me. I’m a sinner,” by which he meant “I’m not worthy of this.” We know this because Jesus’ response to Peter wasn’t, “you’re right Peter. You’re a dirty filthy rag… but I’ll forgive you.” Jesus said, “don’t be afraid.” Don’t be afraid of what? Too many fish?
But first, this same story is also told in the Gospel of John, with a few details changed. In Luke, the story of this great haul of fish is how Jesus starts gathering disciples – the beginning. In John, it happened after the resurrection of Jesus – the end.
Jesus was gone so they got out their boats and nets because that’s what they did for a living. They’re trying to process what had happened and maybe they were distracted which is why they didn’t catch any fish that night. Jesus called out from shore to throw their nets on the other side. I love that slight change from Mark’s do it over again. John says do the same thing but try the other side. And when they did, so many fish – 153 exactly, for some exact reason – all those fish jumped into the net and almost pulled down the whole boat.
One little, odd, detail only in John’s version: Out there on the boat fishing with the others, Peter is naked. When someone saw Jesus coming, Peter quickly wrapped his coat around his waist and jumped into the water and raced to Jesus, completely ignoring the other disciples who will need him as they struggle to haul in that enormous catch of fish. Why does John think we should know that about Peter? What does it tell us about him?
When they all got to the beach, Jesus had prepared them a nice pescatarian breakfast and afterward asked Peter, do you love me? He asked him three times to which Peter answered with escalating annoyance, “Yes!” “Yes!” “Jesus Christ, literally, you know I do!!” I’m getting ahead of myself – we’ve got 5 weeks.
So, as we start to get to know Peter, what do we know?
- He was impulsive and often spoke before thinking.
- He was impetuous and often took action before considering the consequences.
- He was unfiltered and held nothing back and wore his feelings on his sleeve – an “I’m all in” kind of guy.
- He was boastful and wanted to do great things and was then frightened of being able to do those great things.
- He was hotheaded and promised to never break a promise and then broke his promise. But when he realized he had broken his promise, he didn’t try to blame someone else for his failure. It broke his heart and he understood what he had done and tried to change his ways until once again he acted impulsively, impetuously, unfiltered, boastful and hotheaded. God love him, bless his heart.
- Oh, and he sometimes fished naked. Another among the ways Peter was unfiltered and apparently free-spirited.
But I’m grateful Peter didn’t have a filter. He’s real. He’s us. Perhaps it would be nice if we all felt as free to express our emotions as we wanted. Because if he had thought about it a little more before he spoke, he might not have immediately responded to seeing all that abundance with “I’m not worthy of this.” But then we wouldn’t have heard Jesus say to him what sometimes we need Jesus to say to us: Don’t be afraid. Don’t your waste time with such nonsense. It is a waste of time to ask, do I deserve this. Use what God has given you and don’t be afraid of it.
This is the story of his call to the first disciples. The same one to us today: Come follow me. There are people waiting who are hungry for your love, people who need your time, and people who deserve your attention. Don’t question whether you deserve it. Just use all God’s abundance for the sake of Jesus’ sheep.