Reflection for the Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time C or the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
Readings: Isaiah 6: 1-2, 3-8 (RM) or 1-8 (RCL); Psalm 138; I Corinthians 15: 1-11; Luke 5: 1-11.
What a well-structured, cohesive little story unit this is.
It’s as if Luke used to write for television.
Here’s a completely different opening scene from chapter 4, when the crowd tried to throw Jesus off a cliff. Jesus is now popular again, with crowds pressing in to hear his teaching. He goes out in a boat a short distance from shore (sound carries better over water) and speaks. Then the story arc shifts. Jesus turns to his brand-new disciples, skilled and experienced professional fishers, and he tells them to set out for deep water. They report they have caught nothing all night (fish will feed beginning at dusk until early morning.) Still, the professionals do what Jesus said, reluctantly (he’s a carpenter, what does he know?) and they set out from shore.
Big dramatic turn: suddenly they catch so many fish that their nets are tearing from the weight. They’re utterly astonished: another proof that this Jesus is no ordinary itinerant preacher. And then the script twists the story around with the line that catches all the characters off guard:
“Do not be afraid. From now on you will be catching…” (we’ll get to that…)
Pause. Fade. Cut to commercial.
For those who grew up in a church community it’s a familiar, conventional ho-hum story. Yeah, we get it. And from then on Jesus travels with an entourage consisting of these former fishers and a variety of others, both women and men. Further episodes will feature Jesus’ words and actions, always with the entourage somewhere in the background, and sometimes interacting with him in a way that sets up some saying, or some insight, or some rebuke from Jesus.
If you grew up in church you certainly heard “I will make you fishers of men,” repeated year after year. The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, used with a few changes in the Canadian Lectionary for Mass, and in the Protestant Revised Common Lectionary, says “catching people.” The New American Bible used in the U.S. Lectionary for Mass still reads “catching men.” And that’s simply wrong. Luke uses the Greek word anthropos, which means “human being,” not aner, the word for a human male.
But there’s more! (as they say in the “as seen on television” ads.)
Bethlehem-born Scripture scholar Niveen Ibrahim Sarras tells about the restrictive conditions faced by first-century fishers in Palestine. The local administration of the Roman Empire not only controlled access to the Sea of Galilee, but imposed taxes at each stage of the process. Fishers had to get a contract with Herod Antipas’ brokers and could not sell except to Herod’s distributors. The goal was to maximize commercial export for profit, not to provide for local consumption.
Sarras writes further,
“This story is not about the disciples changing their vocation from fishing for fish, to fishing for people. Rather, it’s about inviting them to join Jesus in turning over Rome’s unjust social order and replacing it with God’s kingdom. Fishing for people is a political and spiritual statement against Roman imperial power. By providing fish, Jesus demonstrates that he, not Antipas, is in control of the lake.”
Or as John Dominic Crossan writes in God and Empire, in this region,
“the radicality of Israel’s God confronted the normalcy of Rome’s civilization…”
In our own turbulent times, how can the radicality of our own sanity (or maybe our sometimes tenuous grasp on sanity) confront the “normalcy” of aggressive governments, casual racism, snickering misogyny, systemic injustice, or any form of “normalized” violence?
But there’s Good News. News that resonates and amplifies these first-century workers’ call, and our call, to be part of the process of overturning any form of oppression and exploitation we see. To open the way for God’s living presence to lift up the poor, to heal those injured, to relieve suffering, to distribute the goods of the earth fairly. To make real our hope brought to life in the witnesses and stories of the life of Christ, and embed this powerful hope in our world and in our history.
Cut to commercial. Shut off the TV. Leave the room. And go forth to do justice.
© Susan K. Roll
Susan Roll retired from the Faculty of Theology at Saint Paul University, Ottawa, in 2018, where she served as Director of the Sophia Research Centre. Her research and publications are centred in the fields of liturgy, sacraments, and feminist theology. She holds a Ph.D. from the Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain), Belgium, and has been involved with international academic societies in liturgy and theology, as well as university chaplaincy, Indigenous ministry and church reform projects.
Wow, superb reflection, Susan! It is especially poignant in this time of Trumpism. I really appreciate the justice aspect of this biblical story as I never knew of the relationship between the fishers and the lake controllers. Thank you. It is great to know the accurate translation of the word, “anthropos” as well. Your research and knowledge helps make for new interpretations.
I recognize your description of the present time: ‘the “normalcy” of aggressive governments, casual racism, snickering misogyny, systemic injustice, or any form of “normalized” violence?’
To recognize is to weep that it is so.
And then, to also recognize that “we were made for these times”, to do the work before me, to open ways (however small) “for God’s living presence to lift up the poor, to heal those injured, to relieve suffering, to distribute the goods of the earth fairly.” Step by hopeful step, through the encircling doom, pushing back the dark.