Author: Peter Burfeind

So when they had brought their boats to land, they forsook all and followed Him.

Sometime in the last several decades – I can’t pinpoint exactly when – Christians began referring themselves as “followers of Jesus.” Like all these linguistic movements, they sort of creep up on you. You notice it for a first time, probably having heard it several times previously but it not registering. Then it sticks out, either for good or for ill – you either like the way it sounds or it grates on you. If you like it, you may begin using the word or phrase yourself. If you don’t, you’ll probably keep your thoughts to yourself because, after all, it’s usually not wrong per se, just different. And you tell yourself your reaction is because you’re predisposed to be conservative on these things and perhaps you should not be so close minded.

But then this happens. Eventually the new word or phrase passes a tipping point, and all the cool people say it, and if you don’t say it, you’re not a cool person. But here’s the thing about cool people and coolness. It’s full of paradoxes. To be labeled “cool” is to be labeled – to have a label – and being labeled is the antithesis of being cool. For what is being cool but to be ahead of the curve, your own person, doing your own things, being beyond labels. And who are the “cool” but those who follow some popular trend. So, by the time the original cool people have moved on to the next cool thing, the people following them, claiming to be cool, are in fact sort of dorky.

So, eventually the word or phrase will be found on some snarky website under a listicle article like, “Ten Overused Words from Christianity, Inc.” And then the only way people can even speak the “new” phrase is ironically, or precede use of it saying something like, “I know this phrase is overused, but…” And then it eventually goes into disuse, thankfully.

And then the conservatives wonder why they didn’t speak up in the first place and help all the would-be cool people avoid all the fuss.

“Followers of Jesus” is one of those phrases. It’s a phrase arising out of non-denominationalism, which itself is a Gnostic tendency, that is, a tendency to abstract the “essence” of Christianity from its formal qualities like doctrine and worship forms. “It’s not about what doctrines are knocking around in your head; it’s not about how you worship; it’s about a relationship with Jesus.” Well, golly, but what does that mean?

I have expressed before exactly what this means. It means you have an imaginary friend named Jesus, who is nothing more than a projection of, at worst, your personal desires, at best, your personal interpretation of Scripture, which may or may not be the proper interpretation of Scripture and probably more often than not is your personal desires mustering Scripture to support what it wants (either positively or negatively – yes, there’s some subtle psychology going on here).

Being a “follower of Jesus” arises from this dynamic. You’re not Lutheran or Presbyterian. That suggests you bend the knee to some dogma christened by some church of mere men. You’re not “non-denominational.” That’s too technical and “label-y.” So also is “evangelical,” which borders on being accurate, which is exactly what “Baptist” is. (Every time I here someone say, “I’m just a follower of Jesus,” I think to myself, “Oh. Huh. So you’re Baptist.” To which I then think, “Do you follow Jesus when He says, “This is My Body…This do”?)

Furthermore, another dynamic is at work, and this goes back to how coolness works, and how coolness works is actually a species of how Gnosticism works. The word “hip” comes from black jazz culture, the word “hep,” and it means “in the know.” Those who are hip, or hipsters, or hippies, are the cool ones. They are “in the know” about the frontiers of where History is “progressing.” But the nature of gnostic progressivism is, it’s always out of reach. Yesterdays utopian standards, supposedly met by the “hip” become today’s “stale, bording on fascist, ideas of the past.”

Evangelical movement is always of this nature. Every new articulation of evangelical movement believes itself the “authentic” manifestation of Christianity, unbeholden to the ways of the past. Here, the past is always evil, wrong, Pharisaical, hypocritical, institutional, and so on. The past is always something to rebel against, because each new age – usually corresponding to when youth discover some new idea from the latest, greatest prophet, who now has the medium of the internet to proclaim his wonders – is deemed the authentic, true version of Christianity. Fundamentalism gave way to evangelicalism gave way to the Church Growth movement gave way to the mega-church movement gave way to the Emergent Church movement gave way to who knows whatever is going on in trendy evangelical circles today.

And along the way, somehow, “I’m a follower of Jesus” became the proper way to designate yourself as a Christian.

What exactly is a follower of Jesus? It’s someone who is baptized and believes. It’s a member of the Church. It’s someone who has repented of sin and looks to Christ for salvation. It’s someone who hears and submits to Christ’s word first in the Gospel but also in the whole Bible. In evangelical circles it almost always means something in the way of sanctification, however sanctification is defined in any given moment. That can be puritanical sexual ethics on one side, or steadfast care for the underprivileged on the other. Whatever it is, it’s about what one does. Following Jesus means to do something.

Here’s the thing. Jesus says very little about both sexual ethics and care for the underprivileged. He says a whole heck of a lot, however, about His kingdom, Himself, and the salvation He’s bringing. A follower of Jesus, quite frankly, will be steeped in Jesus’ teaching. He will be a theologian of Christology. Yes, he will have the correct views on sexual and poverty issues, which we all know. But you don’t need a Jesus to have these views. You do, however, need a Jesus to have Christology – obviously!

When Jesus bade Peter to follow Him, it was a call to go to seminary and spend three years learning at His feet. When Jesus bade the crowds to follow Him, it was to take up the cross, that is, be baptized into the faith, and take up the burden of faith. The early Christian Church wasn’t persecuted for being loving, or because they had strict sexual ethics. They were persecuted because they confessed Jesus Christ as Lord of lords and King of kings, the only way of salvation.

Is this what people mean today when they say “I’m a follower of Jesus”? Perhaps, but if that’s the case, you’d expect a bit more focus on doctrine, His Church, His sacraments, the baptismal life under the cross, and things that actually require Jesus than you would on do-gooderism defined in ambiguous ways. A Christian is not a follower of “biblical principles” or “biblical ethics.” He is someone baptized in the name of the Lord and who hangs on Jesus’ every word.

I often challenge people to actually read the Gospels and ruminate on what Jesus actually says. It ought to surprise them, because what Jesus teaches and Who Jesus is – and what it means to follow Him – is something completely “other” than some trending designation current to this age.
How then should Christians designate themselves? How about “Christian”? This is how the martyrs answered when asked. “I am a Christian.” Of course this needs to be spelled out often. But the good thing about “Christian” as opposed to “I’m a follower of Jesus” is, the former is a label, implying something has been done to you, whereas the latter begins with the almighty “I.”

The almighty “I” can always be challenged – “Really? Do you always follow Jesus?” “Well, not always, but I try.” Whereas “Christian” is a label that sticks – “I was baptized Christian and am forgiven. Self-understanding resting on “I” sustains so long as “I” sustains, which is wobbly. Self-understanding resting on what one is given – the name of Christ in baptism – is most certainly sure.

When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees…

Peter fell down before Jesus because, like Isaiah in Isaiah 6, he recognized the presence of divinity in the person of Jesus Christ. Where the revealing angel of Revelation forbade St. John to bow down before Him, Jesus does not forbid it. He merely says, “Do not be afraid.” Perfect love casts out fear, and the perfect love of a Lord who covers our sins casts out the fear of judgment. So it was with Peter; so it is with us.

Peter’s worship is not so much given in the face of immense glory – as perhaps some of St. John’s was in revelation, or perhaps Isaiah’s was, and definitely as the disciples were at the transfiguration. Nor is his worship like those of the characters in the Gospel who beg the Lord’s mercy – that worship is certainly worthy. Peter’s worship arises from the intellectual conclusion that God is in his midst. For who can control nature the way Jesus directed fish into his net?

Jesus is the author of creation, through Whom God made all things. Sinful man – as Peter recognizes – should not be in the presence of the author of life. Sin is about death, decay, dissolution, and return to dust. It’s anti-life. The natural human inclination is to feel natural with – to use some post-modernism jargon – “structures of mortality.” Death is natural, we think. It’s part of the circle of life. It’s writ in the architecture of our being.  So, when confronted with the beauty and power that is pure life, our instinct is to feel ourselves unworthy. To fear.

Which makes it strange Peter would ask Jesus, the author of life, to depart from him. To depart from Jesus is death. So why embrace non-life in pursuit of avoiding death? It’s paradoxical.

Well of course it’s paradoxical. Sin makes everything paradoxical. Hence the fear. Jesus mercifully remedies the anxiety-induced thinking of Peter with His “fear not” as He must do with us with similar words, like “your sins are forgiven” and “peace be with you” and “the Lord make His face shine upon you.”

Peter testifies to the paradox a bit in his bodily reaction. He falls. If he were truly fearful of a wrathful God in the face of a sinful man, he probably would have jumped out of the boat and swam to shore. Peter’s been known to do that too, but that time in almost the reverse situation, swimming to Jesus and not away. My how things change!

But Peter falls down saying, “Depart from me.” Did he want Jesus to swim to shore? Of course not. Obviously something in him knew Jesus was merciful and wasn’t using that episode to say, “Hey! Surprise! Guess who I am, and guess who’s in big trouble now and trapped on this little boat.” Peter knew this wasn’t how this story ended.

The interesting question is, why did Peter fall at Jesus’ knees and not at His feet? This is the only instance in the Bible where it says someone fell at Jesus’ knees. The sort of worship going on here is clearly the type where one feels the need to fall down at the lowest place possible before Jesus, like a dog rolling over in submission, assuming an abject posture of, “I’m in your hands O Lord and completely at Your mercy, which I plead You to now have.”

How were Jesus’ knees the lowest part to which Peter could fall down?

The boat probably wasn’t too small. It was only Jesus and Peter, and at most one other, if there were four people divided between two boats. And those boats were a good size, if we take the example of the archeological find of a first century fishing boat, dubbed “the Jesus boat.” Perhaps we could conjecture the boat was loaded with fish, so Peter couldn’t get any lower than the fish which had filled the boat up to the point of Jesus’ knees. If that’s the case, one has to be impressed with the narrative consistency given by St. Luke, more proof that these are accurate accounts. You can almost hear Peter narrating to Luke, “It was then I fell down at Jesus’ knees. You have to understand His feet were covered with fish!”

Another possibility is that the lowest part of Jesus at the time was His knees. Under what circumstances would this be the case? If He Himself were kneeling in the boat. Why would He be kneeling in the boat? Perhaps because He was helping with the catch of fish. Who doesn’t like that image? Jesus isn’t just sitting in the back seat of the boat like Miss Daisy while Peter does all the work. No, He’s in on the action, dragging in nets laden with fish, anchoring Himself on the boat floor with His knees.

If that’s the case, what a Gospel about Jesus’ human and divine natures. The divine nature we see clearly. But the human nature shines forth. We have a Lord with knees. Knees! Our broken, aching, arthritis-addled knees will be redeemed, because God has eternal knees! Not only that, but Jesus may be taking part in this mundane task of dragging fish in. Not only does it substantiate the action parable – like a version of the “Footprints” poem for ministers, that very often Jesus is the one not only bringing the men to the net for ministers to drag in, but sometimes Himself drags them into the baptismal font – but it simply shows a human side of Jesus. He chips in. It’s not unlike how He cooked breakfast for the disciples the next time a similar miracle happened after His resurrection.

Whatever the case, it’s an interesting detail. Peter falls at Jesus’ knees. Those little details are there for a reason, number one being that it’s what happened, but number two being why it happened that way. A Lord who has every hair numbered and knows when birds fall to the ground is a Lord about details. He’s not a Gnostic Lord, hovering disdainfully above all these “worldly” elements. He’s a Lord who took on those details, who can’t have His feet worshiped because they’re covered with fish, or because He’s kneeling on a boat helping drag in a haul of fish.

Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing.

One has to suspect that Jesus caused Peter, James, and John to catch nothing all night. They were professionals. Fish get caught at night, they knew. That’s why they fished then. It was likely a shocker that they caught nothing. All night! The Lord was certainly behind that.

Why? Because He was working on His action parable, on teaching a profound truth that would end up with the disciples leaving their nets and following Him. He was giving them a sign that He was truly God in human flesh, something Peter came to realize in fear and trembling.

But think what the disciples had to go through for this to happen. Think of the toil and sweat and discouragement they went through. Last meditation I suggested the psychological goings on of the apostles is sort of irrelevant to the bigger themes in the story. So focusing on what the disciples went through over the night might seem counterintuitive to what I said previously. But perhaps we can learn here how we don’t need to get caught up in our emotions. While Peter, James, and John are falling into all their “thought traps,” Jesus is hanging back thinking, “I’ve got this.”

What are “thought traps”? Those are those little traps we fall into when something bad happens. They usually involve the words “always” or “never.” So, for instance, you fail to get someplace on time, and you’ll tell yourself, “I’m always late!” That, then, turns into negative self-identity: “I’m a procrastinator.” So, occasional misdeeds turn into habitual action turn into ones identity. It’s how Satan, the Accuser, works his accusatory darts. “I’ll never change!”

Did Peter, James, and John go through some thought trap? Certainly they could have. “Why is the Lord against us! I’m always failing at this fishing thing. I’m not a good fisherman.” Certainly we go through these thoughts when bad things happen to us.

Yet, in the background, totally unbeknownst to Peter, was Jesus, causing their night to be miserable. Not because Jesus likes to make people miserable, but because Jesus was working something way bigger and better that Peter had no clue about. The same must be true for us, because the same Jesus is at work with us.

I think of St. Paul, when he had to go to jail. He too could easily have thought, “Wow, how useless I am here. Why is God doing this to me? How can I reach out to my flock? How can I preach to them if I’m not there? Well, I guess I’ll write some letters.”

And the rest, as they say, is history. We’ve contemplated before that in Christ, the problem of evil goes away, because He has redeemed it all. So we can truly say, “The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.” In Christ, there is no bad; there is no evil. He is working everything for good.

Still, when you’re in the middle of the night, toiling, trying to make a living, going through the dark night of the soul wondering about what is going on, it’s not fun. But again, this is why we don’t focus on our emotions, or our psychological goings on. Jesus works all things for our good.

 

“Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net.”

How do we take Peter’s words to Jesus here? Was it a tone of dejected surrender, like, “We’ve put everything we got into this, Lord, but if you say try it a different way, sure, we’ll do what you say.” Or was it a tone of bold faith, as in, “Lord, we humans cannot do it, but you are from God, and so if you say to try it on the other side, by golly, we’ll do it!”

It kind of doesn’t matter, does it. Of course, ever since the advent of psychology and the “rise of the Self” as an object of endless study and introspection, we are always hunting around in the psyches of the biblical characters trying to see what they were thinking, and how we might fit into that psychological profile. But what if the psychological profiles of most, or all, of the biblical characters doesn’t really matter?

Compare the Bible to the novel, with its focus on the inner psychological workings and development of its characters; or compare it to the Shakespearian tradition with its profound psychology. Does it even translate?

I’d argue it does not. The psychology of the Biblical characters is, how would we say, surfacey. It’s not even on par with the Greek mythological characters. The characters of the Bible sort of wander around doing stupid human stuff…kind of like all of us. “So and so had it in his heart to [fill in blank with something stupid] so God had to lasso him back in.” How is that not so many of us.

What strikes one as he reads the Bible is how un-profound the characters truly are, how little “character” development there is, how un-heroic they are. They’re just people. Even Job comes across as a good man who got the shaft and is now whining a bit about it – sound familiar? It should because it’s half the people you come in contact with every day. Moses heroic? It’s easy to be heroic when God gives you a special staff and promises to be behind your every move.

And on and on. The main character in the Bible, obviously, is the Lord God. Everyone else lives out the Psalm that talks about us like grass. Here today gone tomorrow. We get a taste of that already in the list of descendants of Seth, with the repeated phrase, “and he died.” The Lord God alone endures. That being the case, who cares what psychological roller coasters the characters went through.

Which is all to say, as far as the Lord goes, who cares what got Peter to the point of saying “at your word.”

Peter is like Naaman the Syrian general in the Old Testament. He had leprosy and went to Elisha to possibly get healed. Elisha sent a servant out to him to say, “Go dip in the Jordan seven times.” Naaman is furious. He wanted some big, dramatic display. “Go dip in the Jordan” isn’t the stuff of great acts. But one of his servants says, in essence, “Just do it at his word. How hard is it anyways?” So Naaman does it and gets healed. What was the state of his mind then?

Again, who cares. And in the Gospel we note that there are people with great faith, little faith, weak faith, skeptical faith, doubting faith, sleeping faith, and even no faith. Jesus is the same Jesus for them all, giving without measure. The only ones who don’t receive His gifts are those with rejecting faith, who commit the sin against the Holy Spirit.

Our Lord’s Word is what does it, not the psychological nature of how we receive it. Jesus had just gotten done using His divine power to prevent fish from going into Peter’s nets. He had caused all the fish to teem together at the other side of the boat. His divine authority, His creative Word, had done it. Now He needed Peter to be part of that equation, to be the passively receptive material – like the fish – which would be compelled by His word. It mattered not whether Peter did it boldly, cheerfully, or confidently. It just mattered that he did it.

What is the application of this? There’s tremendous application relating to the Old Testament reading, which we’ll get to soon. Elijah had to learn a lesson about simply doing what God says and not attempting to insert himself too much in the equation. We can learn that lesson as well, as far as our vocations go, and as far as the Church goes. Too much emphasis on the psychological workings of the hearer leads to psychological manipulation through highly crafted motivational talks and emotive music. A good day is a day when minds have been manipulated. Jesus shows something else. A good day is a day when the Church does what He told it to do, which is preach repentance and forgiveness, teach the Gospel, and have communion.

Today’s meditation is one of those that when you think about, you can’t un-think it. We’re obsessed with navel-gazing and psyches. It permeates everything, particularly our spirituality. Think of all the Lenten dramas focused on what Pilate’s wife went through, or how Mary was thinking.

But there is one caveat to all this, and that is the book of Psalms. Psalms, one could argue, are loaded with the psychological goings on of David. But David here, remember, is but the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit, Who is communicating through David what Jesus was going through on the cross. The Psalms are not human thoughts, but divinely human thoughts. I guess we could call it a divine psychology if we must.

If that’s the case, then it doesn’t endorse the sort of navel-gazing we seek, but it simply sets up St. Paul’s teaching that we conform our lives to Christ’s mind, that we have His mind.

And when they had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their net was breaking.

This week’s Gospel is, as suggested previously, an action parable. Jesus was teaching Peter that he would be a fisher of men. He was also teaching Peter that whatever “catching of men” he would be doing, it wouldn’t be him doing it. Yes, he would be an instrument, but the Lord God would be doing the catching through him.

Another interesting detail to focus on is where we fit in the action parable. If Peter is a “fisher of men,” then what are we? Obviously, we’re the fish.

Don’t you love all the endearing animals Jesus associates us with? Sheep, donkeys or oxen who have fallen in pits, and now fish. Why couldn’t Jesus associate us with cool animals, like tigers, or monkeys, maybe even dogs?

Sheep are dumb, wandering animals. Donkeys and oxen are clumsy, lumbering animals that do things like, well, fall in pits. And fish are a whole different story, but still, not the most positive statement on humanity. Jesus could have compared us to sharks or octopuses. But fish? Big swarms of mouth-agape animals with glossy eyes, following whoever is in front of them?

Our fallen condition necessitates such comparisons, of course. But the fish is an interesting analogy none-the-less, not so much for what characteristics the fish has, but for what happens to it in the parable, its relationship to its environment, and what this teaches about us.

Think of a fish in the water. It’s dark, and it’s obviously wet, requiring a completely different way of breathing. Does the fish know it’s in a wet environment with little light? Do we know we’re in a world of darkness and have a way of living incompatible with the world that awaits us?

And what of that world into which the fish were “caught,” into which the Lord directed them? I’d imagine the most unbearable thing for a fish, upon being caught, is the tremendous light piercing into their eyes. It must be blinding, especially given they have no eyelids. Ow! And of course, upon leaving the water, they cannot breathe. They need a new way of living, if they are to live. (And I cannot imagine the Lord’s point in comparing us to fish is that we’re caught to be feasted on.)

The point is, being caught by God’s Word and brought into the Church is like being a “fish out of water.” It’s not our normal environment. We tend to flop around, get blinded by the light, and struggle to breathe. We want to go back to where we’re comfortable, in the place without light and breath.

St. Paul cannot come up with the proper adjectives or adverbs to describe what the world to come will be like. Here are two instances where this is the case:

Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.

[I pray] that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think…

And of course, John needs to use all sorts of similes to describe heaven in Revelation, similes that don’t quite seem to do justice to it.

We’ll be like fish out of water on that day. We’ll experience a divine light that makes the light of this world look like darkness. We’ll experience a new breath of eternal life – imagine what breathing will be like! The world we left behind will eventually seem like a bad memory, best forgotten, as the Scriptures describe it, “the former things will be remembered no more.”

Meantime, are we like the fish in the net, but not quite dragged out of the water yet? In the world but no longer of the world? Who knows. And this is where over-allegorizing can lead to problems. But the fact remains we are the fish in the text, and fish undergo a complete switch from one world to another, just as we will. We have this by faith now, and the “other-worldly” effects of our faith should be reflected in our behavior, our worship, and our doctrine.

So it was, as the multitude pressed about Him to hear the word of God, that He stood by the Lake of Gennesaret, and saw two boats standing by the lake; but the fishermen had gone from them and were washing their nets. Then He got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little from the land. And He sat down and taught the multitudes from the boat.

Today’s meditation is simple one but a necessary one that’s often forgotten in our “spiritual but not religious” culture. What effect has this cultural tendency had on Christianity? For years we’ve been hearing that we need to see Christianity as less a “head religion” and more a “heart religion.” It sort of goes hand in hand with, “Make Christianity a relationship, not a religion.”

OK, let that be the case, in which case, the relationship is Jesus the teacher and me the student. Maybe that’s not as sexy as what is meant when the word “relationship” is used, but it’s accurate. When people emphasize the idea of “relationship” what they all too often mean is that Jesus becomes this imaginary friend who walks with us and talks with us. He’s a phantom we have a “relationship” with.

But how often is that phantom nothing more than a projection of our own desires? How often does Jesus become what we project into the space created when we find that quiet spot and wait for the “still small voice” of God, an abuse of this week’s Old Testament reading we’ll deal with later?

“Pssst, I want you to marry that guy,” said the still small voice, someone’s imaginary friend they name Jesus. “I want you to go into the ministry,” it says to another, and he’ll have a ready story to tell when people ask him, “When did you receive your call?”

Yes, we cannot ever deny what God may be doing. To paraphrase something someone once said about the Church: “We can say for sure what God says (in the Bible), but outside of blatant heresy, we cannot say for sure what God has not said, or how God is moving people.” Is God moving people through voices in their head to marry this person or go on that mission trip or enter into that ministry? Who knows. I have my doubts, but far be it from me to fight against the Holy Spirit if He’s behind something. In any event, we do have St. John saying, “Test the spirits.” And then he proceeds to lay down the doctrinal standard by which we test the spirits. Those who are Gnostics (John’s immediate reference) are not to be heeded at all; and those who deny the incarnation or the doctrine of the Trinity are false spirits.

Well, sorry to say, but that rules out a great percentage of people who claim to be walking and talking with God.

But lets move beyond all this “relationship” talk in the first place, because it’s not the starting point in Jesus’ ministry. Jesus is a teacher; we are students. What sort of “relationship” is that? Probably not the one many have in mind.

Jesus is a teacher. The crowds were coming to hear Him preach, and He taught them. He didn’t give them therapy. He didn’t whisper sweet nothings into their ears. He didn’t give them a motivational seminar. He didn’t yield His time to the praise band. He. Taught. Them.

He was dogmatician. If anything, the past several weeks should demonstrate that there is some deep, doctrinal theology going on in Jesus’ teachings in Luke, just as there was in John. There are teachings about grace and faith, the resurrection, the divinity of Christ, the nature of God, forgiveness and mercy, table fellowship, and worship. He taught it all, and the response of sinners two weeks ago and the people in this weeks’ Gospel tells us a lot of the nature of His teaching: they pressed against Him to hear Him. Why? Because He taught with authority. Because His Word was God’s Word. Because, though they were not subtle like St. John to put it this way, He is the Word made flesh.

Christianity is a head religion, not a heart relationship. “It’s not an either/or,” some will say. But it’s not that it’s not an either/or. It’s that, according to the constructs set up to make this dichotomous statement, the constructs so many set up, the “heart relationship” is actually just wrong. Because it’s Gnostic. It’s an attempt to downplay words and teachings and dogmas and ordered thought at the expense of intuitions of the heart, feelings, emotions, sensibilities, and a more “artistic” reception of the divine. But if that’s the dichotomy set up, then we have to side with the former. Jesus is a teacher. The Holy Spirit is a teacher. He conveys truth by means of organized thought, spoken words, rationally arranged teaching.

Of course, what is learned in the head is embraced by the heart. And of course, given the faith of infants and the infirm, we have to adjust what we mean by “learned in the head,” but that doesn’t take away from the fact that Christianity is at heart a teaching, something conveyed by catechesis.

Unfortunately, many congregations, sensing that the culture has drifted away from learning doctrine and is more interested in “feeling their faith,” have curtailed catechesis. But where are the persons pressing to hear Jesus? Where are the persons who can’t get enough of learning Jesus’ teachings?

Which brings up another point. When a congregation teaches, are they teaching Jesus’ words? How often is the church’s teaching nothing more than “Bible teaching” or teaching about finances, or teaching about “Biblical principles”? How often does a sermon have no reference even to Jesus or His words from the Gospel?

I have experienced this far too many times, and that is unfortunate. Jesus is a teacher. He’s the Teacher. He’s called rabbi, which means “teacher.” And His disciples are they who press about Him to hear Him teach. They press about Him because He is a Savior, which maybe tells us a reason why people aren’t interested in learning from the Gospels, or learning from Jesus’ words. Perhaps they are not sinners needing a Savior.

But where there are sinners, there are people pressing about to hear Jesus teach.

This week’s Gospel is the last of five Gospels from Luke. And just as the little mini-series from St. John during the Easter Season had certain themes and emphases, so does Luke. I think this is what makes the historic lectionary so fun. It’s like traveling cross country over different geographic regions and experiencing the same country, but through different subcultures. The historic lectionary does that verbally. It’s the same Gospel, but it’s experienced through different sub-themes as articulated through the different evangelists.

Luke from the first Sunday in Trinity has emphasized mercy for the poor, blind, maimed and lame lost ones. He’s focused on the location of this mercy, at the table of the one who has much to give. The Father exhibits this abundant mercy through His Son, the Teacher. Last week we learned the Lord expects the disciple to “be like” the Teacher and the Father in terms of giving from our abundance.

And now, this week, we get to see all this put together through the first miracle of Jesus in the Trinity season, the great haul of fish.

In this Gospel, just as in the Gospel from two weeks ago – the lost ones Gospel – people are coming to hear Jesus. Why? Because that’s where sinners go, to hear Jesus. As we observed two weeks ago, Jesus and sinners go together. Jesus is not where not-sinners are – and of course this is ironical, as there are no such things as not-sinners, but there are certainly those who don’t see themselves as sinners, but as righteous. They have no use for a Jesus.

It was a multitude of people because Jesus deals in abundance. Lots of grace for lots of sinners who have lots of sins. From the abundance of His heart He speaks. He’s been filled with the grace from His merciful Father, and so He speaks. By His words He is justified. And His words are exactly what everyone wants to hear, because they are gracious and full of life. So the people are teeming to Him.

They are not teeming to the Scribes and Pharisees. These are the blind leading the blind, those pretending to a righteousness, but in fact having no clue what righteousness is, and so leading the blind into a ditch. But Jesus is overflowing from His heart with God’s mercy, forgiveness, and grace. So the people reflect that abundance.

The people are also not going to Peter, James, and John. They are just men. Or as Peter said, “Sinful men,” but he repeats himself. To be “men” is to be “sinful.” Peter recognizes the plank in his eye, his inability to teach others, his inability to lead others anywhere but in a ditch.

Sinful men catch nothing in terms of abundance, like an abundant crowd as Jesus has. But he will. He will when Jesus does what we might call an action parable, a parable He evidently had in mind the night prior, as He in His divine foresight caused Peter and his partners to catch no fish at night, as they toiled all night. Because, toil as sinful men might, they will always be the blind leading the blind, working in the darkness, leading people into ditches.

But Jesus teaches them divine abundance, the overflowing gift. He has them throw their nets on the other side, and causes fish to swarm into the nets. Clearly this is a miracle at hand. Clearly God is acting here. And clearly God is acting through Jesus Christ.

So Peter falls down before Jesus and says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” Again, it’s not that there’s anything particularly sinful about Peter per se, like he was a cheat or an adulterer or something. No, he was confessing himself a sinner just as Isaiah did when he was lifted up in the presence of God. It’s also how we confess ourselves sinners in the beginning of the liturgy. Our instinct that we are not worthy to be in the presence of God.

And make no mistake, Peter is inadvertently confessing the incarnation here, the divinity of Jesus Christ. “I am a sinful man,” he says to Jesus. But clearly Jesus is a man as well. Why would Peter tell him to leave the presence of sinful men, if He Himself is a man, unless Peter recognized what was really going on, this man was no mere man, but a man who also was God? Peter knew He was in the presence of God. It’s why He fell at Jesus’ knees.

But Jesus says, “Do not be afraid,” those wonderful words of comfort repeated throughout the Bible by God, His powerful messengers and angels, and Jesus. It’s the reason why we stand during the Gospel, because our posture before the presence of God in flesh need not be falling on our faces, but confident standing in His presence.

And then Jesus concludes the parable. “From now on you will catch men.” Peter will catch them, but we see Who’s really behind the scenes making it happen. Peter will be involved in catching men as much as he was involved in catching the great haul of fish. Which is to say, he will be the instrument of the Lord’s word.

He had already been introduced to the power of the Lord’s word when he said to Jesus, “At your word.” We don’t know how much of his heart was into those words. It doesn’t really matter. The Lord doesn’t need our hearts to work great things. But we do know that Peter still had a lot to learn, as all the disciples did. Peter, after all, was the one who asked, “How often shall I forgive? Seven times?” Did Peter not remember the abundant haul of fish? Was it seven fish or seventy times seven?

Well, Peter would eventually learn of the Lord’s abundant grace, when he found himself as the poor lost one, having denied his Lord three times, and the Lord restored him to his place, and Peter became one of the great apostles of the church, laying the very foundation for it in the book of Acts.

From that moment, around 2 billion living Christians, in addition to untold scores more who have lived throughout history, isn’t a bad haul.

And He spoke a parable to them: “Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into the ditch? A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher. And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the plank that is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck that is in your brother’s eye.”

The Qumran sect, the Essenes, from which the Dead Sea Scrolls came, have interesting contextual background to this text. They rose up as a sect, and then, one of the scrolls says, they were groping around blindly for twenty years, until a “teacher of righteousness” arose to show them the way.

Perhaps Jesus was referencing the many claimants to the messianic role of “teacher of righteousness.” Perhaps He was critiquing them. How many “teachers of righteousness” have risen up, pretending a righteousness that they themselves could not have, only to find themselves in a ditch at the end of their lives, like everyone before them? How many Pharisees and scribes claimed to be teachers of righteousness for others?

It wasn’t so much that they were corrupt people who did one thing but taught everything else another thing. It’s that they were claiming to be teachers of righteousness when they themselves had no clue what righteousness meant. No one did!

Keep in mind a hypocrite is not someone who says one thing and does another. A hypocrite is an actor, or pretender. So, the teacher of righteousness claiming to show the way of righteousness for others is not a hypocrite because he teaches one thing while doing another, or not living up to his own teaching. The teacher of righteousness is a hypocrite because he’s pretending to a righteousness that he himself does not possess or understand.

Therefore both he and his hearers fall into a ditch. Like, the ditch of the grave. Or the ditch of false doctrine.

Jesus is a different teacher of righteousness. His righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. He has no planks in His eyes, because He is righteous and righteousness itself. He is perfect. Therefore He can teach others without any pretending.

And what does He teach others? To not judge, condemn; to have mercy, to give, and to forgive. That’s how every disciple will be like His teacher. And the teacher, who can see clearly, because He’s sinless, will lead His followers away from the ditch of death.

He fulfills what He Himself taught. “Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom.” And again, “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things.”

So how do we follow what He teaches? Is He teaching ironically, in the sense of, “no one can ever get that plank out of their own eye, so best just to work on yourself your whole life”? This would be an odd interpretation, given how the goal of the Christian life isn’t the some self-improvement plan, but salvation.

Rather, if we would be like our teacher, we would also be plank-less. Well, that’s exactly what He makes us through our justification, by the forgiveness of sins. How do we get to that point? By repenting, confessing our sins, and turning to Christ for forgiveness. He cleanses us from our sins, so that we are plank-less. And speck-less! Isn’t that exactly what He teaches here? Forgive, don’t condemn, don’t judge, give from abundance, have mercy?

And teaching that, we are no hypocrites, not pretending to anything or acting anything. We don’t act righteous, or pretend to be righteous. We are given Another’s righteousness, and have every right to teach others that same way. And what way is that? Repent of your sins and turn to Christ!

Some would stop us at the “repent of your sins” part and say, “Don’t judge me! Take the plank out of your own eye first before you judge me!”

To which we can say, “You’re absolutely right. I had a huge plank in my eye. I couldn’t see anything. I was a blind teacher of the blind as I tried to teach others how to act righteously. But I was just a pretender, an actor. But now, Christ has removed that plank by forgiving me all my sins. I can see clearly. And I can see what must happen for you to be without that speck (and it is a speck, because no matter what sins you have, compared to mine they are minimal). Here is what you must do. Repent of your sin and turn to Christ.

“And if you would say I’m judging you because of your speck, I appeal to Christ. He’s the one that calls it a speck. Because Christ here isn’t teaching you there is no standard of judgment. He’s rather teaching us to use the standard of judgment as He Himself has, mercifully, not condemning, not judging, giving, and forgiving.”

Because we can’t not condemn what is not first condemnable. We can’t give what is already claimed. We can’t forgive what is not confessed. We can’t not judge what is not first judge-worthy. We can’t be merciful for one who asks for no mercy, not seeing the need for it.

For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.

Let us recall our Father and what He does. Out of some pretty immeasurable grace He creates a universe. It’s staggering to contemplate how far, how deep, how immense this universe is. Evidently, based on what the Scriptures say, He made the stars for “signs and seasons,” of which two of the main ones were (1) to show Abraham how many kids he’d have and (2) to be timed in such a way that something pretty amazing happened around the time Jesus was born.

Life bursts forth at every turn. Plant life, animal life, creatures of all sorts, all over. This is the Holy Spirit at work.

Then, when man, who for some reason in God’s wisdom had the potential to gain knowledge of a heretofore unknown “evil,” strives after that evil, all that is “good” – the entire creation – collapses back to nothingness and void. So God undoes what man did, by Himself becoming that man, to stop that collapse into perdition and bring the creation back to life. Through man. Huh? Man must be pretty important in the big scheme of things!

Indeed, “What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet.”

The “he’s” and “his’s” should be capitalized, because this is talking about Jesus. For who but Jesus has “all things under His feet.” So, our Father is eternally and infinitely “mindful” of man, because man is Jesus, the second Adam in whom the new creation is created. So yes, Man is pretty important to the Father.

Our Father once again doesn’t seem to do things in moderation. What is man? Man is Me, God says.

And in His renewal of man, He performs the same abundant acts of grace. No skimping here! The Lord doesn’t just offer some help. He offers Himself, His Son, His very life. And not just a one time act, but a continual, eternal act of poured blood and given body. No sin remains uncovered. “Whatever sins you forgive, they are forgiven.” How often? Seven times? No, seventy times seven. Really? Well, what’s this like? It’s like a man who had a debt the equivalent of what a medium sized country might have, all being forgiven, that’s what it’s like.

Wow. That’s abundant grace, matching the abundant grace going on when the Lord created a universe whose depths no one has yet to understand and never will.

What’s the point of all this? It’s this. When the Lord says someone is forgiven, He means it. This is His creation. This is His plan. His Church will be a place of forgiveness, where condemnation ends, where judgment ends, where life is renewed. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Most assuredly, Jesus says to us, he who hears His word and believes in Him who sent Him has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.

The one who doesn’t “get this,” will be judged by the measure he uses. This is a terrifying statement, but one that underscores how serious Jesus is about the forgiveness He wins for us.

Again, this doesn’t mean Christians shouldn’t be discerning, or not judge doctrine, or not admonish or rebuke those who are caught in a sin. But it absolutely means the Church will be a place of forgiveness, and Christians will be people of forgiveness.

But the one who judges another, or keeps him in a state of condemnation, will have that same measure applied to him. The suggestion is that if someone holds another in a state of eternal condemnation, he himself will suffer the same fate.

Wow! How do we unravel that one? If we’re saved by grace and not works, doesn’t this sound like we’re saved by the good work of not judging others?

No. Remember, there is one work that cannot be forgiven. That’s the work of not accepting God’s grace. That’s the sin against the Holy Spirit. To not accept God’s grace is exactly what Jesus is talking about, that is, to reckon a person not under God’s grace and remaining in a state of judgment. That’s a sin against God’s grace. Every sin can be forgiven. But the sins against God’s grace, those cannot be forgiven.

Of course, this is why Christians should be adamant about pure Christian doctrine. There are doctrines that minimize or monetize God’s grace.

Is Calvinism – to take an example that I think this week’s Gospel addresses – a sin against God’s grace?

Think about it. Jesus says, “Judge not.” He does this because He has died for the sins of the world. Therefore, there is not a single person alive to whom we could go to and say, “You are judged.”

But according to strict Calvinism, which says Jesus only died for the elect, we could not go to every single human and say, “You are not judged.” That would be a lie in some cases. God’s grace would end prior to that person. Jesus would be “Man” but with provisos, not including all people in His Person.

When someone is judged, as we’ve pointed out before, it’s not because God has judged Him, so to speak, but because their own words have judged them. They’ve judged themselves into eternal death. Jesus focuses on words. “For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

Jesus says these words working a theme very similar to the one He’s working this week: “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.”

What are the words that come out of Christians? They’d better be clarity about Jesus’ absolute forgiveness for all sins for all people. They’d better not leave a single human being in doubt about whether he falls under God’s grace. Does Calvinism do this? Not if it makes me ask, “Am I among the elect? Maybe I’m not.”

What a terrifying thought to contemplate being judged by the standard we use to judge others, if indeed we are stingy with God’s grace. But what a comfort to know the backing we have from our Lord, to hold the world not in a state of judgment, knowing that as we reckon the world in that way, we ourselves fall under that same grace.

Will the world be judged? Jesus says as much. But not because our Father is a harsh, wrathful judge. Rather because people will stand self-condemned, by their own words. As far as our Father is concerned, His world is a place of abundant grace. That’s the new creation He has brought into being by His Son. That is the world each of us lives in, and that is the world we should see every other person alive living in as well.

“Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.”

There’s something culminating about this week’s Gospel. I hinted at this a few devotions back where the title was, “How Trinity 4 answers Trinity 3.” But we’ve been given a series of Gospels from Luke, and there are some themes tying the Gospels together.

The first week we had Lazarus and the rich man. The rich man had no mercy, no desire to give from his abundance and invite the poor man to his table. Well, the measure he used was measured back to him, and he ended up in the torments of Hades.

The second week built off that theme, where Jesus shows a good “rich man,” the man who hosts the banquet, a great banquet full of abundant giving. He invites the Lazaruses of the world to share the feast at his table.

The third week built off that image, getting a bit more into the character of those who go out seeking the lost in the hedges and highways. We see another good “rich man” receiving the Lazarus known as his lost son, a poor, wretched man who ended up at his gate, so to speak. He invited him to the table and restored him.

That’s what the rich man should have done. So in a sense, we get a little mini-cycle, a thematic loop, so to speak. We begin ordinary time after Trinity seeing two characters, a rich man and Lazarus. The rich man sets up the theme on how not to be, or what God does not look like. It may even be Jesus’ critique on how the Jews had poorly represented God for the world because of their traditions. Meanwhile, Lazarus is a stand-in for all of us, the one who needs to be helped, the vagabond, the poor, maimed, lame, and blind; the lost coin, the lost sheep, the lost son – all of us! And all of them, it might be noticed, are as passively acted upon as the caught fish are in next week’s Gospel. We are the objects of something huge going on, in which we’re sort of “carried along.”

This week takes off the mask, so to speak, that a parable inherently puts on, the hidden meaning lurking behind the story. This week gives us the bare theology. The Father is merciful. That explains what the rich man was not, and why the other rich men did what they did. The Father doesn’t judge or condemn. This is why the sheep wasn’t abandoned, or the son left to his foolishness.

And the Father gives out of His abundance. This explains the abundant meals and joyfulness going on in the first three Gospels: the meal denied Lazarus, the great banquet to which the poor were invited, and the feast of the fatted calf for the prodigal son.

Interesting that when Jesus talks about the giving nature of the Father, He focuses on the bosom. The bosom point seems to be where all the grace goes on. Jesus Himself, after all, came from the bosom of the Father. Eve came from the bosom of Adam. Children come from the bosom of their mothers. The Church came from the bosom of Christ, as water and blood poured out of His side, laying the foundation for baptism and communion.

The bosom is a place of grace, something St. John learned, and as a stand-in for all of us, knew himself only as “one who Jesus loved,” or perhaps we could say, “one embraced in the overflowing goodness in the bosom of Christ.”

Christ, being from the bosom of the Father, is a direct manifestation of God’s goodness and eternal, Trinitarian nature. His nature is to give. That is His character. He gives from His abundance, His eternal abundance, and we need not fear that we don’t have access to that same abundance.

And as Jesus suggests, the extent to which we fear the exhaustion of that abundance, out of lack of faith, is the extent to which we will not share in the fullness of that giving. Because it’s usually those who have this mind who lack in charity and mercy for others. Like the first rich man, he had it all, yet he had nothing to give. Imagine! Having it all, but being so full of worry and fear, that you believe yourself having nothing to give. Well, it was measured back to him.

Christians should not be of that mind. We have a Father who gives abundantly, overflowing to His Son, overflowing to us, and from us, overflowing to our neighbors, to the Lazaruses, poor, maimed, lame, blind, vagabond, lost sheep, lost coin, and lost sons.