So today I want to draw our attention to one phrase from the Gospel reading, or at least focus in on that, and talk a little bit about repentance.

Repentance is one of those words, of course, that we hear all the time within the church and almost never hear outside the church. And so its definition is often a little bit narrowed in our minds. Repentance in the Greek means change of mind: metanoia, change of mind. And so it’s maybe a little bit broader than simply saying we’re wrong and repenting of that. That’s an important starting point, of course, and we see it here.

Because the phrase that I want us to focus on here… as we’ve just heard about Jesus looking at these two boats and saying, “Hey, can I borrow one?” And he puts out with Peter in one of the boats, and he sits down in the boat, because that’s what you did when you were teaching, and he teaches.

(I think that would be kind of a fun place to teach from, actually. You just sit in the boat and teach the people who are on the shore. One of these days I should try and do that. But we’d all have to go down to the seashore or to the lake or something.)

So he sits down and he teaches them from the boat, and then he turns to Peter and says to Peter, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Peter, the expert fisherman, says to Jesus, “Lord, we’ve been fishing all night and we didn’t catch anything. Just a really bad time to be fishing. We won’t catch anything. But at your command, at your suggestion, I’ll go out and do what you say.” So he goes out into the deep and he lowers the nets into the water, and they have so many fish, they can’t even haul the net back into the boat. So he signals to his partners, James and John, and says, “Hey! Get the other boat! Come out of here and help us with this!” And so they get the other boat, and now both boats are struggling: they’re sinking.

And the phrase I want us to focus on here is what Peter says next, how he responds to this. He says to Jesus, “Depart from me.” In fact, he falls down at Jesus’ knees saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man”.

That last bit, “I am a sinful man”, that’s what we usually associate with repentance. And that’s good, that’s true. We should recognize our own sinfulness. And here Peter is indeed recognizing his own sinfulness. It’s a good starting point. It’s not the only starting point. Sometimes what we need in order to change our minds is simply just a sense that something is missing. Or something’s wrong. Or something just isn’t quite the way it should be. I need to figure out what that is and fix it. But repentance is that. At least that’s the starting point for repentance. Because otherwise, why would we change our minds? If we have no recognition that there’s anything wrong or anything missing, why would we embrace any kind of change? And so, in this case, it’s a good call here. Peter recognizes his own sinfulness, and he falls down at Jesus’ feet.

And then we get to this second part, which I want us to think about in terms of repentance. Because if we look at the first part of what Peter says, his response to this is, “Depart from me! Go away. Leave. I’m a sinful man. You shouldn’t be here. You’re obviously holy. And I am full of sin and there seems to be maybe even the judgment of God upon me. My boat is sinking. This is my livelihood. I can’t afford to give this up. I can’t afford this kind of trouble.”

And that too, I think, is an important element of repentance. Because Peter’s evaluation of the situation, Peter’s evaluation of the solution to the problem that he faces, is actually all wrong. This is one of the things that I love about the Gospels and how they present the followers of Jesus. They never mince words: yeah, and they got that wrong, and that was obviously wrong too, and they were wrong again. They don’t always get everything wrong. Peter does also say to Jesus, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” and Jesus says, “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood is not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” So he can get it right, and then he can also get it very wrong , as he does just shortly after that, when he tells Jesus, “No, no, you can’t go and be crucified,” and Jesus tells him, “Get behind me, Satan!” And really, the thing that I love about that is, that’s us! We’re all over the place.

Sometimes we think we have the handle on it. It might even be an area of our expertise. I’ve studied this lots. I know all there is to know about fishing. And, you know, this is really a dumb idea, but to humour you, Lord, I’m going to go and do it. That isn’t how it says that Peter said it, but maybe that was kind of the thinking behind the scenes, right? And how often is that not us? We have some degree of knowledge and learning and experience, and we think we know what we’re doing, and we think we understand how things should be. And then all of a sudden we realize, Oh, there’s a problem here. This doesn’t actually line up with what is being revealed to me by God.

And that can happen any number of different ways. That could be something that you just learn because you made a mistake and you realize, oh, that was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it that way. Next time I’ll learn. That’s part of repentance. That’s part of that changing of the mind that needs to happen. Or it could be something where we actually had an idea and thought, this is a great idea. This is actually really important. Everybody should believe this idea. And then we realize, Oh, actually, no, that was kind of a dumb idea. Because it becomes obvious to us that it’s not true for whatever reason. Or it could be something that we read in the Scriptures and we just don’t quite understand it. And we’re thinking, Okay, I think I get it. Or maybe not… And we have to struggle and change the way that we’re thinking in order to wrap our minds around it and hopefully understand it and have it change us. Or it might be, as in this case, our sense—and it’s a good sense—that God is working in our lives. It’s a good idea to hold on to because he is. But we don’t always interpret correctly how God is working in our lives and what that should mean for us.

I know in the Slavic tradition, there’s very often a sense of, If something goes wrong, it’s obviously the judgment of God on me. And there’s some strength in that initial automatic assumption, as opposed to, say, our North American one, where it’s like, Ah, things are going wrong: it’s obviously the world that’s a problem, not me. We’re less likely to learn that way. But there are also things that can go wrong with that Slavic impulse as well. (I’ve seen it mostly in Slavic cultures, and I’m not saying that all Slavs necessarily have this impulse, or that non-Slavs don’t necessarily have the impulse… Anyhow, enough qualifiers!) When we when we start to look at something negative that’s happening, like the boats are sinking, and then assume that this is the judgment of God on me because of my sinfulness. Okay, well, you can learn from that. Obviously, it was good that Peter recognized his sinfulness here. But you can also get really discouraged and misread what God is doing. Because very often, what God is doing, which we don’t really understand at the time—and it may take us days, months, years to come to the understanding of it—is that he very often blesses us with hard blessings. Things that we don’t quite understand. I can’t seem to get the net into the boat. The boat seems to be sinking. This is the end of my vocation. This is the end of my career. This is the end of whatever. It’s the end of the world as I know it, and I don’t feel fine.

But in this case, as we see, Peter’s interpretation, even of the situation, was wrong. The boats didn’t sink. And his understanding of the solution was particularly wrong. He essentially tells God to go away. And again, isn’t that what we often do? We’re sinful. We’re kind of wallowing in our sin, our misery. We don’t really want to change. And we just want God to go away and leave us alone. That would make things simple. We could go back to the ordinary bit where we’re not struck with awe at the enormous catch of fish. And this is too much for us to handle and we’re worried about how this—whatever it is—this disaster is potentially impacting my life. I just want to go back and just be a nice, quiet, normal fisherman in my own little sinful way. But that wasn’t what Jesus was there before Peter to do.

And then there is one more thing that Peter says, actually. He says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” He’s recognizing Christ’s lordship, even as he’s telling him to go away. And of course, as I said, the boats do not sink. And Jesus reassures Peter, “Do not be afraid. From now on, you’ll catch men.” And the thing is, there’s one more really important aspect to repentance , which is that when they had brought the boats to land (they didn’t sink), they forsook all and followed him.

So we need those first impulses, obviously. We also, being the human beings that we are, we need to wrestle and struggle through this or that or the other false conclusion and false way of acting. But when we see what God is doing, when we see what God is calling us to do, our job then becomes simple. We complete our repentance. We complete that change of mind by leaving everything and following him.

Now, leaving everything doesn’t necessarily have to mean literally leaving everything. Obviously, in the case of Peter and his partners, James and John, they literally left everything. But for us, what that means is that everything that we have, everything that we own, all the relationships that we are in, everything that we think is a part of who we are: we need to hold those things lightly. They should not have any weight compared to our commitment to God, our commitment to following the Lord. And if we live that way, then we have essentially left everything to follow him.

And so repentance then begins with a recognition that something is missing, something is wrong. It can then go on—and very often does—to some level of wrestling with what’s going on here: what are the implications, what does it mean? We have to go through that because that’s also a part of repentance. And then as we come to the conclusion and we realize God loves us, God is calling us to be who he has made us to be, then, when that way becomes clear, we leave everything and we follow him that we might complete our repentance and be to his glory: the glory of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit, now and ever done to ages and ages.

Scripture readings referenced:

* Luke 5:1-11

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