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Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, 02/10/2019
Sermon on Luke 5:1-11, by David H. Brooks
So, if you are a member of the Hamilton fan club, one of your favorite characters may be George III, because the play presents him as an intoxicating mix of whimsy and menace. He comes off as part pop star prima donna, part unnerving stalker. As the play unfolds, and the story of Alexander Hamilton becomes intertwined with the larger story of the American Revolution, you almost expect to hear from George’s lips the battle cry of tyranny: “because I said so!” As you might remember, the Founders tell George off with their famous battle rap and so won at Yorktown.
More seriously, the phrase “because I said so” has landed on hard times. Its demise may have begun in the famous revolutions of Europe and America, but the ring of command contained in “because I said so” is now completely out of fashion; for instance, parents today are cautioned that their children experience collaboration and cooperation in other areas of life, so demanding compliance will never work. So our children, so us: we are suspicious of authority, and tend to resist its demands upon ourselves even as we may recognize its usefulness.
The question of authority makes the encounter between Jesus and Simon Peter particularly interesting. The event begins because Jesus is proclaiming the word of God. He is preaching. Luke has been careful to connect Jesus’ proclamation with the Spirit of God that speaks truth, and therefore expects us to understand that Jesus is not talking about the Word. He speaks with authority—he is the authority—and his word is good news; it is freedom, release, healing, sight.
So, to bring his instruction of the crowd to a close, he instructs Simon, with whom he is familiar, to go to deeper water and let down the nets. Simon replies that it’s been a bad night for fishing, but at your word I will do as you ask. In short, “because you say so.”
And the catch is so large that it threatens to swamp both Simon’s and his business partners’ boats.
We are tempted to resist reading the Scripture texts in such fashion, assuming that there is something else going on, something about this catch that is not included in the story. So it is with all of the stories of Jesus at work as he reveals the Kingdom of God and accomplishes his Father’s will. There is something more, something else, something behind, something unspoken that will uncover the “real truth” and free us from Simon’s position. We wish to read, hear, understand the story in such a fashion as to maintain our authority, and thereby resist Jesus’ claim upon us. Over the years we have exercised our authority over the word, and whatever else we might say about our results, we must admit that our nets and our boats are in no danger.
In his well-known book Authority and Its Enemies, the Catholic philosopher Thomas Molnar notes two things about authority: that before authority there must be a norm: a way of believing, speaking or acting that is recognized both by reason and custom; and from a norm arises authority, the judgement that a belief, a word, or an act rests upon and within the shared norm.
What Simon recognized that day on the water was not just that Jesus had authority: he had seen his own mother in law healed, he had seen demons sent packing, he had heard the Word Jesus proclaimed. What was different was that Simon understood, in that moment, that his whole life would be different, that the norms upon which he had based his life were blown to rubble (go away from sinful me!) and yet he had been given something better, more glorious, more enduring. And so he began learning how to catch people—to entice them, to draw them in, to give to them what they did not possess, to share with them the only thing worth having: Jesus himself.
Brothers and sisters, we have been captured, drawn in, made a part of a glorious kingdom where our master comes as servant of all; where the rich one shares what he has with us and takes from us our poverty; who by the power of his word does for us what we cannot do for ourselves and gives life that is abundant. Draw near to him to hear the Word. Learn his ways. Let him be your norm for living, and do not be afraid of his authority, for his “I say so” is truth, grace, healing and freedom. Amen.