Fishermen Who Left Their Nets

After the people of Nazareth tried to throw him off a cliff, Jesus walked down out of the hills to Capernaum, a fishing town on the Lake of Galilee. So many people there wanted to hear him that one morning the crowd pushed him right to the edge of the water.

Two fishing boats sat on the beach. Their owners were washing their nets, tired and grumpy. One of them was Simon, the fisherman Jesus had met by the Jordan and nicknamed Rock. Jesus had already been to Simon's house and made his wife's mother well from a fever.

Jesus climbed into Simon's boat. "Push me out a little way from the shore," he said.

Jesus sat down in the boat and taught the crowd across the water. (A boat makes a fine place to preach. Nobody can squash you, and the water carries your voice to the back row.)

When he finished, Jesus turned to Simon. "Now go out where the water is deep, and let down your nets for a catch."

Simon rubbed his eyes. Fishermen on that lake worked at night, when the fish cannot see the nets. In bright daylight the fish see them coming and swim off. Simon had grown up on this water. Jesus had grown up in the hills.

"Master," Simon said, "we worked hard all night long and caught nothing. But because you say so, I will let down the nets."

Out they rowed. Down went the nets, splash, into the deep.

Then the ropes jerked so hard the boat tipped. The nets bulged and boiled with fish, and the strings began to snap.

Simon waved and yelled to his partners in the other boat. "Over here! Hurry! The nets are breaking!"

They came rowing, and together they hauled in fish until both boats were full: fish in the bottom, fish on the seats, fish slapping against everybody's ankles. The boats began to sink. (A fisherman dreams of a catch like that. He does not usually dream that it will sink him.)

Simon looked at the fish. Then he looked at Jesus. And Simon fell down on his knees in the middle of all that flapping silver.

"Go away from me, Lord!" he cried. "I am a sinful man!"

His partners James and John stood there with their mouths open. The fish in the deep water had done what Jesus said. Simon knew every wrong thing he had ever done, and he could not bear to be this close to someone so holy.

Jesus did not go away. "Don't be afraid," he told Simon. "From now on you will catch people."

So they brought the boats to land. On the best fishing day of their lives, they left everything and followed him.

But a boat full of fish lasts about two days. Then it is sold, cooked, and eaten. Jesus had promised Simon a catch that would keep.

For about three years Simon followed him and got things wrong. The night before Jesus died, Simon swore he had never known him. But Jesus did what he had done in the boat. He did not go away. On the day he rose from the dead, he showed himself to Simon.

Not long after, Simon stood up in Jerusalem and told a huge crowd about him. About three thousand people believed that day, more than any net could hold, and Jesus had called every one of them.

The man who had knelt in the fish and cried, "Go away from me!" spent the rest of his life casting the net for Jesus.