Time with Jesus: Luke 5:1-11
A Series on the Life of Christ According to Luke
In Luke 4, Jesus healed Simon Peter’s mother-in-law from a high fever so when Jesus approaches one of the fishing boats along the Sea of Galilee (which the well-traveled Dr Luke refers to as a “Lake”) he approaches Peter’s. This isn’t a random encounter with a stranger, this is a request from someone whom Peter has seen command a fever to leave and it obeyed. His explanation to Jesus about fishing isn’t him being whiney—“we’ve fished all night”—it’s him sharing his expertise about the situation.
When we follow Jesus we must be prepared to have him work in ways our wisdom and expertise can never explain and accomplish things that our abilities can never accomplish. As a therapist, I can never predict when God will work something out for a client that psychology can’t explain or fix. This doesn’t mean there isn’t any value in our expertise or training! Peter was probably a pretty good fisherman with years of training and an intimate knowledge of Galilean icthology. But his willingness to hear Jesus contradict his professional, hard-won expertise is what makes him the perfect choice for a disciple.
Jesus overthrows all our understandings—he is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks after all. What are the ways of Jesus that seem foolish to us? What are the areas of our lives where we have built up expertise from living in a fallen world? What hard-won cynicism or expertise would Jesus have us give up for faith? To walk with Jesus and to become more like Jesus means to do the unthinkable to the savvy of this generation—it means to become like lambs led to the slaughter for the sake of the World.
He is making all things new. Amen.