During this church season, as we reflect on the light of God coming into the world anew through Christ, we encounter the call story of Peter, one of the first and most notable of the disciples.
Jesus meets Peter on the water and tells him to cast his nets into the deep waters—with a promise that Jesus will transform Peter’s life and create in him a fisher of people.

It’s a powerful story with a well-known refrain of God again coming into the world by dwelling with the ordinary, in the unexpected, the imperfect and calling us to participate in the greatest work in the world.
And yet, I’ve always struggled with the metaphor of fishing in this passage.

The comparison between fishing for fish and what I understand Jesus to have called his first disciples - and by extension us - to do has never fully resonated.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate fishing. While I wouldn’t call myself a fisherperson, I have fond memories of my grandfather taking me fishing as a child.
My problem doesn’t lie with the practice of fishing itself - but with the way this metaphor, I feel, has been internalized by the church. It has informed the way that many of us think about ministry.
Fishing is transactional, it’s one-sided. It requires little risk from the fisher - The person who is fishing is in a position of control, of safety, above and over the water, they cast the line or drop the net, and ultimately, if things go well, they catch a fish.

And as for the fish? Being caught is the end of its journey, leading to its death.

And so I have wondered - is this really what Jesus is asking us to do?

Now I understand that metaphor of fishing was relevant to Peter’s context and experience.

But trying to hook people - to ensnare them in theological nets using guilt and shame and fear - and other psychologically manipulative tactics.
Baptisms have been forced at the point of a sword, and confessions of faith were extracted not as genuine acts of devotion but as requirements for survival.
And we, the church, have measured - and continue to measure - ourselves by how many fish we have in our nets.
This approach is not the message or the way of Jesus and his Gospel.
We read last week that Jesus came to proclaim good news to the poor. He came to grant freedom to the captives and relief to those who were oppressed.
As disciples of Christ, this is the work that we are called into.
Freedom work. Healing work. Bringing Restoration and Forgiveness into our world.
This is not work that can be done from a distance or from the sidelines. It requires closeness, that we get dirty, in some cases - that we ourselves are exposed. Jesus, after all, didn’t heal the
leper by shouting a blessing from across the room - he touched the person.
We are invited by God to be in relationship with others—authentic, mutual relationships - where we bring every part of us to the table.
This is the dream of the family of God.
The deepest longing of every human heart is to truly belong - to be truly seen, to be valued and accepted just as we are—not judged or discarded the moment that we fall short or miss the mark, or hold a different perspective.
This is the very nature of God. God sees us in our entirety, values us with infinite love, and extends forgiveness to us time and time again. And more than that, God invites us to be transformed—follow me, Jesus says to Peter - and I will teach you, form you into a person who reflects this same love, grace, and acceptance to others. God desires to shape us into a community of people who value and embrace one another with the same infinite compassion that God shows to us.
Instead of thinking of ourselves as fisher people, I wonder if thinking of ourselves as scuba divers might be a better analogy.
Divers enter the water; they plunge to the depths, they use head lamps that pierce the darkness, they find their way into tight spaces and around obstacles, they discover new treasures that can’t be seen from the surface. They don’t stand above the water, casting nets or hooks from a place of control or safety. Instead, divers become part of the water—to explore its mysteries, encounter its challenges, and uncover the beauty of the deep.
God doesn’t hover over us, with bait, waiting to hook us - God enters into our lives, Jesus entered into humanity once and for all eternity.
And that’s, in my mind, what this story is about. Us entering the deep water with people, with each other. You hold my hand in the scary places of my life, and I hold yours - and we both watch the light of Christ transform the scary, heavy places into places of lightness and peace.
After all, God does miracles in the deep waters. Creation began with the deep waters.
Tehom, in Hebrew, "the deep," the primordial state of creation in which God began creating. In the ancient Near Eastern worldview, the deep water, the sea, was associated with chaos, disorder, and the absence of life.
But through Christ the Word of God in Genesis, God shapes the chaos into order. God gives the water boundaries. And God continues to shape the chaos of our lives through the word and the light of Christ.
In the waters of our baptism, the water with the word makes us into new creations, reborn through the life, death and resurrection of Christ. God’s forgiveness and grace cover us in the water and we are restored and reconciled.
We become living and breathing embodiments of the Kingdom of God. God comes alive in us.
It is in the depths of the chaos that God brings life. And it’s into that same chaos that you and I are asked to go, remembering who God is and carrying the light of God to others.
When our son was four years old, his Halbagie, that’s Korean for grandfather, gave him a nightlight of sorts for Christmas - it’s a small handheld plastic toy that has a light on the inside and holes on the outside - and when you turn it on, the light shines through the holes and projects stars and planets onto the ceiling and the walls.
The thing about this toy, though, is that you really only get the full effect when the lights are turned out and the sun has gone down.
During the day, if we turn the toy on, we don’t notice any difference - we can’t see the stars. But at night, when we turn out the lights, it’s magical - that’s when the toy comes to life - the stars and the planets come into view and light up the dark.
It’s in the dark, in the hard places of life, the places where our souls can’t find rest, these are the places that God’s love seeks out both through supernatural means and through you and me.
And we don’t have to look too far to find those hard places in our world. Wars destroy communities and families, resources spent attacking our most vulnerable, millions of people living in the cages of our prison system, isolated and alone.
But we also don’t have to look too far into our own lives to see the dark corners. The times when we feel alone. The ache of losing a loved one. The weight of a troubling diagnosis. The heartbreak of family conflict. The helplessness we feel when someone we love
is struggling. The frustration and guilt of habits we can’t seem to break.
The same light that brought order to chaos at creation shines into world through you and through me. We are reminders to others that no matter how dark it gets, we are never alone.
It’s into the waters of life, where the divers of God are called.
Jesus comes to Peter in his vocation, where Peter is already hard at work.
Jesus calls each of us today with that same individual attention - follow me, YOU, you belong, I will make you whole, and I will use you to spread my light of my love and acceptance to the entire world.
Jesus uses Peter’s job as a place for the transformation. Not everyone is called to be a full-time minister, but we are all called into the game.
To come off the sidelines, off the shore, and get into the water with people.
Because whatever work we do as a profession, it’s incomplete without the work that we were all created to do - to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.
While I don’t read this story as a call to be a fishers for people - I do believe that as much as this is Peter’s call story, this is also ours. It’s a reminder that no matter how insignificant that we think our call is, Jesus makes us into vessels for God’s presence and that is not something to be wasted. The light of Christ is needed in
the dark places in our lives and it is something to be shared with the world - and we are the ones to do it.
Thanks be to God.