Luke 5:1-11
Within the Davidic tradition of psalmody, one detects that David is as much a general as he is a king. In this passage, Jesus illustrates the power that he will imbue upon the apostles, while also showing them a visible example of how influential they will be in the redemption of history if they cooperate humbly with God.
David’s psalms are often recollections of needs – the first stance of his relationship with God. These are the needs of his people on a specific level and scale, but also for the needs that David recognizes and speaks of with regard to strategic placement of the nation.
When reading David’s psalms regarding his personal enemies, one needs to imagine King David looking out from the high palace across the landscape in order understand the power of his statements.
A king does not have merely personal enemies like you or I. The King is the Son of God – he has two primary threats: Other gods, and other Sons of God – by which he understands royalty. Within the expanse of Davidic terminology, he recognizes the presence of alternate kings and kingdoms as alternate deities with alternate realities. Each of these kings has a palace, a divine relationship, and a divine promise. This will come to be understood as the meaning of a nation’s ‘portion’ and yet there have rarely been any countries within the corpus of scripture who are satisfied merely with what God has given them.
So it is that David recognizes other kings in the land as evil – they represent a false hope, they lay out a palace with a network of shrines, roads, cities and civilization – an infrastructure reliant on their promise that their rule is legitimite, that their law is righteous, and that their God is the strongest God – that their promise of civic, social and cultic stability is unbreakable.
From the perspective of David, there is one true God, with one true king, one true palace, set of shrines and temples, set of laws, set of walls and righteous cultic customs. In effect, the nation is a network – in the wrong hands, it becomes a snare, a net that ‘the enemy’ – foreign kings/gods – uses to trap the people of Judah.
In speaking of evil ones laying their nets and traps, David is speaking of the propensity of his neighrboing kings to attract the loyalty and sovereignty of his own people – rather than rely on the power of God to keep them safe, as David has, these people are swearing their oaths to other kings – falling into their nets.
So it is here when we see Jesus speaking of fishing and nets, he is using the Davidic illustration to teach the disciples about the kingdom of God.
The disciples have been casting all night – this is representative of the marchies of old, who existed before Christ was incarnate and before a true Davidic heir was raised. They cast their nets of influence far but won no sovereignty.
Christ asking the disciples to cast the nets into the sea in broad daylight is a challenge for them to take on kingship again – to believe that the monarchy is true and will work.
The disciples have faith in Christ’s words, and as a result their nets are full – in other words, through Christ’s sovereign example, the kingdom of God is full and bursting. This is where the magic happens.
Peter calls for another boatsman and another boat! This is unheard of – a king asking another king for help. If you question the analogy, consider how often a fisherman, in competition with every other fisherman to earn his keep, would agree to co-operating in laying out his own nets and trusting the share of another’s catch.
Yet here we see the power of Christ’s illustration – both men have more than enough fish in their nets – by casting their nets according to Christ’s instructions, their nets are full. To extend the analogy, both kings acknowledged Christ as Lord and the Father as their God – both laid kingdoms out and they were filled and harmonious.
Peter doesn’t boast at his catch – instead he apologizes for the doubt he had placed in the method. He is an instant convert here of Christ’s role as master, even though he has been given the gift of playing the role of a successful king!
Even simple fishermen would know the psalms and the analogy from David – but Christ assures them that, despite their lowly dispositions, they will be catchers of men.
Christ’s gift of leadership is an elevating one – lifting people beyond mundane sustenance and into their role as custodians of the world – to which the pure response is one of humility.
Christ’s gift is also a redeeming one, providing an aggressive tactic to address the needs laid out by David in the psalms for the sake of those who had been successfully attracted away from God’s divine security and into the ruin of false earthly security. Through the apostles and the rest of Christ’s followers, those who had fallen into the ‘snares of the enemy’ could be recaptured, and in large numbers.
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© 2006 Jacob Gorny