The Night of Empty Nets

When we walk through the story of Simon Peter, one of the disciples of Jesus the Messiah, we are first introduced to him at a key moment in his life. Peter was a fisherman, an expert in his profession. He wasn’t just a worker either, scriptures record that he owned a boat, and was business partners with James and John (and possibly his brother Andrew). Here was a group of four businessmen, each of them raised in a culture focused on bringing forth the Basileia-Kingdom of God, each of them waiting for the Messiah, each of them rejected by the religious leaders of their day as not good enough to minister. Each of them resigned to a lifetime of fishing all night to pay wages, taxes, and maybe enough left over to feed their families. These were men who knew their industry. They’d been taught how to fish from the moment they became teenagers. They knew their equipment, their boats, their nets. They knew the water and how to navigate at night to find the fish which would feed them in the new day. That day, as told in Luke 5, when Jesus came up to Peter on the shore, they were washing their nets. Even with no catch there was work to do, maintaining their equipment, preparing to fish tomorrow night. Then there was this rabbi. This was the man his brother Andrew (who’d taken time off work to go listen to that crackpot prophet in the wilderness) told him about, Jesus. At first glance this was a rabbi part of the same religious leaders who decided which 13-year old men would go on to become apprentices to the rabbis, and who weren’t good enough to be ministers in the Basileia-Kingdom of God. This rabbi, Jesus, came up to them, and wanted to use their boat to preach. Have you encountered that? You work all day, seems like there’s nothing left after everyone’s been paid, then your pastor, who may not recognise your talent, your skill, your God-given design, comes along and tells you you need to tithe a bit more, to give to the church to pay his wages or their next big building which sits empty six days a week, while you work extra hours for nothing, with a deep desire in your heart to make a difference for God.

Peter probably felt that way too, with the religious leaders of his time all enjoying the benefits of the Jewish religion, but the everyday Jew was stuck paying for an extravagant temple on top of crippling taxes, and burdened down by the weight of the law. In that moment, Peter turned to Jesus, recognising the deep desire to give to God whatever was asked, and simply said yes.