Luke 5:1-11
One of my favorite recent movies to come out is Conclave.
Ralph Fiennes plays Dean Lawrence, one of the Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church. The movie opens with the death of the current pope, and Lawrence is responsible for convening and leading the conclave and the process of identifying the next pope.
A major theme throughout the movie is what kind of leader should the group be looking for? In one scene, Dean Lawrence reveals to his friend and fellow Cardinal Bellini (played by Stanley Tucci) that he had not parted well with the late pope. Lawrence had asked permission to resign his role – he was having doubts. Bellini replied by sharing that the pope himself had had doubts near the end. Not doubts about God, Bellini shares, but doubts about the workings of the church.
We watch Lawrence have conversations with other Cardinals about their ideas of the direction of the church, where it has gone wrong in the past, and what needs to be corrected. It seems as though Lawrence kept that conversation with Bellini in mind because a few scenes later we come to the first official day of the conclave and Lawrence will preach to the group of Cardinals. We see him sitting at a desk, rereading words he has written, wrestling with them in a way I recognize.
Preaching to a room full of cardinals, all in their ceremonial finery: the men who hold the power in the most widely influential church on the globe. What does Lawrence have to say to them on the eve of this momentous decision?
“Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a pope who doubts. And let him grant us a pope who sins and asks for forgiveness and who carries on.”
It’s both absurd and true at the same time. Right after Lawrence says this, the camera changes to a shot of his perspective, with all of these Cardinals staring back at him with no reaction. It’s a moment that made me laugh out loud. What is expected of these men, and what they’ve come to expect of themselves is certainty. If the cardinals of the Catholic church aren’t certain, who is?! And this is exactly where Lawrence’s preaching hits. Certainty persuades, certainty sells, certainty is expected, but certainty is a false pursuit when it comes to faith. Certainty is rigid and far too close to perfection. Certainty is inhuman. What Lawrence sees is that these men seem to have far too much certainty in themselves and in their own way of doing things. Their certainty leaves no room to look for what God is doing when, ironically, that is the very thing they are supposed to be doing.
In our passage from Luke we meet Simon Peter, James, and John after a night of unsuccessful fishing. As professionals, they would not have been strangers to disappointing catches, but there were still high stakes involved. Remember that in this time most people lived at or near subsistence level, and empty nets probably meant empty stomachs.
Jesus asked the fisherman to put down their nets into the deep water. They could have refused. They could have said things like, “We know these waters. We know there’s nothing out there because we’ve been trying all night.” When faced with an invitation to the deep, to the unknown we sometimes reply similarly: “I’ve never seen that happen. I can’t picture that. This is the way it’s always been done. It’s too much of a risk. Just stay positive and things will probably be fine.”
But Simon and the other fisherman decide to put their certainty aside and let down their nets into the depths and to their great surprise they catch almost more than they can handle.
The text in the Greek says that “amazement seized them” after the miraculous catch. Simon Peter and the others were caught up in this grand reversal of mercy and bounty. They had been certain, but here they were with nets ready to burst.
Simon recognizes that something holy is happening and his first response is to say that he’s not holy enough, worthy enough for this. He did, after all, doubt. But in that doubt Jesus knows there is room for the Spirit. Simon’s doubt, Simon’s flaws, Simon’s humanity was not disqualifying in the eyes of Jesus, his doubts, flaws and humanity were necessary.
This essential truth is counter-intuitive to us because so often the world rewards certainty, or shows of certainty, and devalues doubt and questions. This rigidity keeps the status quo,
maintains power and influence for the privileged. But the gospel of Jesus calls us toward the
depths with our doubts in tow. Our doubts make room for us to be caught up in God’s abundant life.
When Jesus calls Simon, James and John to “catch people,” he means in the same sense that
they were caught by amazement and abundance. The actual term includes a meaning of
aliveness: it’s not a capture or a confinement but the opposite. The kind of life that Jesus offered them and offers us is one that calls us in our whole humanity, fully alive and with our doubts.
This kind of life is catching. It is irresistible, captivating, unlike any alternative. It catches us up. Thanks be to God, amen.
Weybridge Congregational Church 