Caught-up in Christ

Get caught up
with something
a sunset, a soliloquy, the most sumptuous sandwich you ever saw and slipped
into your belly,
or get caught up in someone.
Enter the moment of stumbling and stuttering, of unbecoming and bowing down
with all your body and all your brain can believe.
Drop everything to follow it
Traverse the seas, change communities, live into its ecstasy.
Become entranced and transfixed by the only thing worth living for, fighting for,
dying for.
This sensing something more
Let loose your nets, this mesh, this catch
and walk through its door.

Today we stumble across yet another story of abundance in this season of Epiphany. Clearly signs of Christ’s divinity are wrapped up in ‘too muchness’: too much beauty, too much awe, overwhelming love and other worldly miracles. And the response is a moment that turns into a lifelong quest of being entranced and transfixed.

Enter Simon – Simon Peter – or just Peter. Too many names, too much abundance already.

In the Gospel of Luke, this is our first encounter with Peter and we haven’t caught him at his best (pun intended). He’s been up all night, slaving away on the seas, longing for the shore with something to share. But after grueling away the evening into the wee hours of the morning he has come up empty handed. And if this were all it was, that would be enough to cast many of us into exhaustion, frustration and a hollowness of hunger. But, like all stories, there is more than meets the eye.

Peter, we are told, is a fisherman. And this title alone tells us a world about his world. Let us remember that over 95% of people living in the Roman Empire would have been living paycheck to paycheck, on the brink of starvation, with no ability to change their circumstances. Even though fisher people were a necessity in such a time of rampant hunger, they were also among the lowliest on Rome’s hierarchy of occupations. Not only would Peter’s income be meagre at best, he would have been forced to pay not only for the privilege to fish on the emperor’s lake but also for the privilege to sell his fish. And in the case that he didn’t catch any fish, well, the only thing filling his net would be a debt to the empire.

So when his worst case scenario comes true, we need to sit in the existential dread of this situation. How was he going to feed his family? How was he going to feed himself? And how was he meant to repay his debt to the emperor?

And then Jesus enters the scene. The same Jesus that was just rejected by his own people at Nazareth where he was nearly pushed off a cliff. He has since found himself in the foreign place of Galilee healing and cleansing people so much so that word gets out. Crowds begin to look for him, following this Messiah, his miracles and something not quite describable that entrances and transfixes them. And when they do find him and plead for him to stay, he says that he must go on to proclaim the kingdom of God in other cities of Judea. But before he does, he gives the crowds what they’re looking for: time.

At this point there are so many people around him that he gets into the boat belonging to Simon and asks him to take him from the shore where he begins to teach the crowds. We don’t know what is taught but after Jesus is done, he turns to Peter and asks them to go further out, into the deep water and to let down his nets for a catch. Peter responds by saying, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet, if you say so, I will let down the nets.” Despite his exhaustion and despair over his debt, there is something he sees in Jesus he cannot quite deny. He saw the crowds, he listened to the whole of Jesus’ teaching beside him in the bow of his own boat, and there is something in him that sees him as a master worth trusting and, so, lets down his nets.

We know what happens next: an abundance. Not only are his nets so full of fish that they are beginning to break, when his partners sail over to help, both boats are filled so much to the brim that they both begin to sink. And it’s in the accumulation of these moments of being mesmerized by something that feels like, hears like and smells like the Messiah, that Peter’s exhausted, despair-filled and fragile human body crumbles to the floor, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” A phrase less about Peter being an inadequate human and more about what the experience is of being caught up in the divine.

The invitation for Peter is to do likewise: to commit his life to catching people instead of fish. A powerful statement less about converting people, and more about becoming nets and mesh of Christ so that the world might get caught up in this abundance too. A statement that was also a slight to the empire, cuffing him to a life of poverty, keeping him from experiencing life in all its richness. And then Peter and his partners come back to shore with a massive twist: the fish they were working so hard to catch the night before and the fish they now caught now pales in comparison with the abundance that is radiating and exuding from this Master, this Messiah. And so they leave everything: their boats, their nets, their fish and their livelihood. It doesn’t even seem like a conscious choice – something deep within them and beyond them is beckoning them. And without prompting, without Jesus inviting them along, without even thinking it through, they follow him.

When I was reading this story this week I was taken by how hypnotizing it was. A hypnosis not of trickery, slight of hand or manipulation, but something that is longing to be caught inside each and every one of us. It is something like beauty, like love, like abundance – this longing for the spectacular, for salvation, to be spoken to and seen completely.

It reminds me of when I first moved to Melbourne and felt the power of being mesmerized myself. I spent 2 whole days at the NGV, taking luscious and extravagant time letting the paintings, sculptures and my own visceral response completely take over me. Perhaps it was the newness of beginning my life in Melbourne, the curiosity of the creative energy of this city, or perhaps it was the quality and the texture of the art… Whatever it was, I felt transformed, caught up in something bigger than myself. A mesmerization that didn’t stay in that building but poured out from the gallery into the streets of a city I was beginning to call home.

And I imagine it’s a similar kind of hypnoses we see in our story today. Even though the crowds are pressing in on Jesus, if they could be any closer to him, if they could just hear one more word from his mouth, they would. And this same kind of hypnoses begins to take over Peter as he lets down his nets, watches 2 boats begin to sink at such a catch so that the only thing he can do in the face of such magnificence is to fall on his knees, leave everything and follow him. And everything changes for Peter: the hold the Roman Empire had on him is now broken, he no longer needs the fish, and he no longer needs to be a fisherman. He is called into the life of something grander, more transformative and more salvific than he could ever imagine.

What is transfixing you? Even though it can seem like this season of Epiphany is unnecessary, prompting the question of what difference it makes to be looking for signs of Christ’s divinity – this story reveals the power of being caught up in it. I don’t understand the mechanisms behind it and what part of our bodies yearn for it, but these hypnotizing elements of Christ’s signs have the power to transform and the power to save.

Because in a world where everything is vying for our attention, from social media notifications, advertisements, and news stories day in and day out, it can be easy to forget what we are letting ourselves be transfixed by… To slip into worshipping the gods of capitalism, consumerism, or ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ instead. But, more often than not, we become transfixed on what sparks our fear and outrage.

I know for myself, it has been really hard not to be consumed completely with the slow-motion train wreck that is America and how elements of Australia are getting caught up in it too. This doesn’t mean we avoid looking at, talking about, or acting against the injustices of our world – but the invitation to looking for Christ’s divinity during this season of Epiphany is that we view everything, the whole world in all its beauty and ugliness, all its justice and horror, war and peace through the lens of divine abundance in Christ. This is our starting point if we take the Christ event and this season of Epiphany seriously.

So what do you long to be transfixed by? When was the last time your body fell to the floor, bowing down in the presence of love so overwhelming? And what are you being called to let go of so you can follow this flame into an abundance you can barely begin to fathom or imagine? Because here’s the good news: when we let our gaze become entranced and transfixed on Christ and all of Christ’s divinity, it has the power to transform everything.