A Divine Redirection

Peter’s exhausted. His nets are worn. His boat and an employee are being used for more religion that he probably stopped caring about. He’s there. He’s listening. But it doesn’t seem like he’s taking it in. The Basileia-Kingdom of God is at hand, but Jesus needs to get Peter’s attention if He wants Peter to follow.

Go out and fish again, but throw your nets out of the other side of the boat. We read this but don’t really think about what it’s really saying. This man is a carpenter and a rabbi. He’s no fisherman. At this point Peter’s probably thinking, who does this guy think he is? You don’t go fishing in deep water in the middle of the day. And it’s not like we didn’t think to throw the nets out the other side of the boat last night. We threw them out the front. The back. Each side. We were even tempted to dive in ourselves just to see if the fish were there.

But something in him accepted what Jesus said, and he went out to that deep water. He threw the nets out of the other side of the boat. And they came up groaning. There were so many fish in that net, James and John needed to go out to help him bring it in. Their nets were breaking. The ships were sinking from how many fish were loaded in. And Peter fell to his knees before Jesus, and told him to go away and leave him alone.