The setting was beautiful. The last night stars fading and dawn on the horizon. Purples fading to pinky reds. The cries of birds and the smell of the lake. Fish netters pulling their boats onto the hard.

People stood near the quay and watched them come in, listening to their chatter. The night’s fishing had gone badly. The nets were empty. It was a disaster. The fish brokers of Gennesaret were leaving, carts empty. The fish sauce processors of Magdala would have no work. The boats’ crews left unpaid. And hungry families with little to eat.

God knows it was a poor business. They banded together in cooperatives to share the costs. But the overhead was killing them. This was no free market enterprise.*

It was all highly regulated, since after all, the emperor owned all the fish in all the waters. Every boat was required to launch from a quay built by Rome. The fish netters paid taxes to local collectors who took a sizeable cut and sent the rest to Rome, which also taxed their boats.

They paid Rome for permits to fish. The price of the fish was fixed by…Rome, whose officials accumulated great wealth. While everyone else shared what little was left over.

So, empty nets, empty purses, empty bellies was their fortune that day. But what they did have in abundance was the fellowship of the fishing, the hope of the hunt, and the mystery of the lake. It kept them coming back night after night, and generation after generation.

A man detached himself from the onlookers and stepped into one of the boats. You’re Simon, right? Can you row me out a bit? The man gestured to a group of people close by. The water will carry my voice better if I talk from just offshore.

The fish netter nodded. This was not their first encounter. His wife’s mother was recently sick and this Rabbi Jesus had come to pray. And she was healed. They were finished fishing anyway. It might mean a few coins for them. Better than nothing at all. And no Roman taxes on it either.

Okay said Simon. Let’s go. So they did. Simon listened as the man taught. The size of the crowd that gathered suggested that this Rabbi had something interesting to say.

When the teaching was done Jesus turned to Simon. Go out into the deep water and drop your nets again. It wasn’t a request, it was a directive. Simon resisted. What does a rabbi know about fishing? We already wasted the night. Now you want us to try again? But okay boss, if you say so. Simon owed him at least this courtesy, in regard for his mother-in-law’s healing.

Simon’s crew took the boat out with Jesus still on board. They cast their nets. What happened next was unprecedented. The nets bulged with fish. Their partners who had been watching incredulously quickly joined them to help. Both boats were dangerously loaded to the gunwales.

It was too much. The healing. The fish. This crazy rabbi. Simon cried out. Get away from me! I’m just an ordinary broken guy. And Jesus said, fear not. Let’s go catch some people together.

Simon was exactly right. (And fear not indeed, since Simon was first going to have to go home and explain this to his wife.) He was an ordinary guy, nothing special. Not a holy man, just your average guy keeping God’s commandments irregularly and sometimes badly. A sinner – oh yeah.

So was Paul the apostle, for that matter. Arrogant religious litigator. Persecutor of people whose religion and views on God he didn’t like. A sinner. Which he announced to the people in Corinth who were a notorious lot themselves. Totally unfit, was Paul. But God-called nonetheless.

Tradition says Isaiah was a priest. A spiritually trained guy. Only, he was no prize either. When God came to him in a vision, the first thing he said was, Uh oh. Or more literally, Oy! I’m dead! These lips have said unworthy things. I’m surrounded by people whose words are garbage.

But God wasn’t having it that day. Just sent a heavenly being over with a live coal to cleanse Isaiah’s mouth. And from then on Isaiah couldn’t say a word that didn’t ring with God’s own terrible and wonderful truth. Even when it meant offending all the officially righteous people.

We know these as “call” stories. And mostly we take from them the sage advice that many are called but few are chosen. Or, when God’s got your number, there’s no sense trying to hang up.

But these are also something else. Turning points. Isaiah the priest becomes a prophet. Simon the overtaxed fish netter becomes a street preacher, healer, and teller of good news. Paul the religious corporate lawyer becomes a community organizer with the people he once hated.

This is not simply a moment to laud these three people. It’s not about them at all. It’s about us. Where is our turning point?

When do we leave behind the waters we know how to fish, and go deeper? When do we turn our mouths to the speaking of things that work for God’s purposes but maybe are unpopular and costly? When do we start the part of our lives that takes us from the daily work we know into passionate advocacy to make the world a safer, wiser, more wonderful place?

Are we afraid that doing so will cost us everything? Take heart. You’re in good company. Remember Isaiah, Simon, James, John, Paul, and of course the unnamed women of faith who both supported and joined them for God’s sake.

You may lose a lot. But what you will have in abundance is the fellowship of the faithful in heart, the hope of healing broken things, and the mysteries of God to explore. Amen.

*The Galilean Fishing Economy and the Jesus Tradition

C. Hanson Originally published in Biblical Theology Bulletin27 (1997) 99-111