`1 Corinthians 6.13-24

Luke 5.1-11

The LORD directs Simon Peter: ‘Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.’ Simon answers, ‘Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless, at Your word I will let down the net. And they caught a great number of fish, and their net was breaking. And their partners in the other boat came and they filled both boats, and they began to sink’ so that Peter and all who were with him, including James and John, were ‘in dread terror,’ it says.

I translate it as ‘dread terror’ because the word is thambos, a verb that is allied to the noun, taphos, which is a grave, from a Sanskrit root that means to render immovable. The verb, then, is overshadowed by the bone-chilling specter of death; it gives expression to the cold dread one feels in the uncanny presence of a ghost that freezes the tongue as though one’s body, too, was suddenly a corpse. The verb tells us that the breaking net of the apostles and the sinking Boat is the entrance that opens directly into the LORD’s Tomb, and that the terror Simon Peter and those with him felt was the same terror of the Holy Myrrhbearers in the presence of the angel at the LORD’s Tomb.

That tells us that this morning’s Gospel of the great catch of fish drawn up by the apostles’ net from the depths of the sea opens onto the fragrant Joy of the Cross that fills the Tomb of the LORD Jesus Christ’s Holy Pascha, the Tomb of the LORD that is the baptismal font of the Church.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ the LORD says to Peter and the other disciples. ‘From now on, you will catch men.’ The fish Peter, James and John caught that day are thereby given as all those who are caught in the net of the Church.

They are caught in the apostles’ net and drawn up into the Boat from the depths of the sea. The depths of the sea are the dark depths of Sheol the Psalmist speaks of. ‘Save me, O God,’ he cries, ‘for the waters have come in to my soul.’ Death has come into my soul. ‘I am stuck fast in deep mire, and there is no standing. I am come in to the depths of the sea, and a storm has overwhelmed me.’ (Ps 68/69.123)

The Church in her funeral hymns calls this life the sea of life, surging with the storms of temptations. The surface of the sea roils with mighty waves from the winds blowing above; the depths of the sea are in turmoil with strong and swift currents. If these are images of death, then we must say that death is a cold and terrible immaterial movement. Again, the Psalmist says: ‘The cords of death, the pangs of Sheol lay hold of me. I found trouble and sorrow’ (Ps 116.3). I see neither peace nor stillness here. I see a terrible movement, a frightful unrest.

The troubles and sorrows of this life, are they not the family and social circumstances we live in, that we ‘swim’ in, that have come into being produced over the generations from the countless choices made, things we and our ancestors have done to ourselves and to others, things that have been done to us, paths pursued in a desperate effort to escape the troubles and sorrows of our life in this world? These troubles and sorrows are the cords of death, they are the pangs of Sheol that lay hold of us and hold us fast, stuck in the miry floor of the sea. It is from these depths of death, of Sheol that we are drawn up by the apostles’ net into the Boat of the Church.

This explains why Simon Peter and those with him had caught nothing even though they had toiled all night. The fish the LORD wants their nets to catch do not live in the surface waters of the sea. They ‘live’ in the depths of the sea, in the watery depths of Sheol, of death. The waters of death, the mighty currents in the depths, have come into their soul so that they cannot stand. They are stuck fast in the mud at the bottom of the sea, they are mired in the troubles and sorrows of sins and transgressions both their own and those around them. They cannot stand because the currents of the troubles and sorrows caused by their sins and all those around them are too strong. The apostles’ net, on its own, could not overcome those strong currents to reach those depths.

So, how is it that when the apostles’ net was joined to the LORD’s WORD, and when they let their nets down into the sea in obedience to the LORD’s command, how is it that they did suddenly descend to those depths to catch a great number of fish so that their nets were breaking and the Boat began to sink?

If God is love, and if Jesus Christ is God, then He is the Love of God incarnate, and His WORD is His love that goes forth into all the world like the rays of the sun. The apostles’ net let down into the depths of the sea and into the watery darkness of death is one of the many forms the WORD of the LORD takes. And if the Church is the Body of Christ who is the Love of God incarnate, then the Church is the mystery of the Love of God incarnate, and the Boat in this morning’s Gospel, from which the nets are cast by Simon in the Boat, is an image of the Church.

The wood of the Cross is given by the Church as the LORD’s human nature. And the LORD God was nailed to the Cross, voluntarily, by His own will. The Church sees that as an image of the Son of God cleaving (the word means to affix by nailing) to us as the Husband cleaves to His bride to become bone of her bones, flesh of his flesh. Therefore, if God has become man, ‘nailed Himself’ to our human nature, then wherever human nature is found, there the LORD Jesus Christ, the Son of God incarnate is found. There the love of God is found not in theory but in concrete, flesh and blood reality, for our human nature, if it has been united to God through the Savior’s Incarnation, has been united to the uncreated energy of divine eros. And the Church, as the Body of Christ, is the union of the uncreated love of God with our human nature.

The Psalmist saw this mystery in a vision, and he sang out: ‘If I ascend to heaven, thou art there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there! Even the darkness is not dark to thee, the night is bright as the day; for darkness is as light with thee. Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts. See if there be any wicked way in me, and I will confess it, and Thou wilt forgive and lead me [up from the depths] in the way everlasting! [Psa 139.8 – 24, Psa 32.5]

Suddenly, the disciples’ net let down into the deep comes into view as our own human that has been united to God on His Cross. The Cross goes out into all the world, it goes wherever human nature is found, even into the depths of Sheol, all the way down to the bed of the sea where the currents of death throw us into the mire at the bottom of the sea so that we cannot stand, making us like a corpse. The net of the apostles, an image of the Cross and of the LORD united to His human nature, to our human nature, goes out into all the world; it is let down into the depths, the depths of Sheol in the Church’s apostolic doctrines. So, when we draw near in the fear of God, with faith and love, we are swimming into the net of the Savior’s Cross. We are swimming into the uncreated energy of divine eros that has been let down into the depths where we are ‘living’ in ‘trouble and sorrow.’

And the net breaks! What does that mean? If we can say that the breaking nets represents the death of Christ on the Cross by which He has destroyed death, then it means that the cords of Sheol that lay hold of me are being broken because Sheol itself, the root of our trouble and sorrow, has been caught in the net of the Savior’s Cross and destroyed by His death on the Cross. It means that the hardness of our heart, the stone that sealed us in the tomb of death, is being rolled away so that the fragrant Light of Christ’s Resurrection floods our soul!

And, when we receive into our mouth the consecrated Bread and Wine of the Church, we are receiving the most precious Body and most pure Blood of Christ; we are laying hold of His Cross like the fish lays hold of the bait. We are laying hold of God’s own deified human nature in which He has destroyed death by His death and given life to us in the tombs, to us stuck fast in the watery depths of the sea.

And if we cling fast to the Body of God that we have received in the Church’s Holy Eucharist, as though we are fish caught by the hook we have swallowed, then we will find ourselves drawn up into the Boat, the Church, the Body of Christ that is the love of God incarnate.

And if the Boat begins to sink, it’s because the love of God embodied in the LORD Jesus Christ is descending all the way down to where I am, even to the depths of my trouble and sorrow where I am weighed down by the might of those mighty currents in the depths, unable to stand, so that He can raise me up and make me to stand on the Pillar and Ground of Truth (1 Tim 3.15), which is His Body, the Church, the embodiment of His love for mankind.

Therefore, as St Paul sings out: ‘We are hard-pressed on every side, yet we are not crushed; we are struck down, but not destroyed, for we carry about in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our trouble and sorrow is but for a moment. [It is the LORD’s Cross] and it is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. [2Co 4.7-17]

Glory to Jesus Christ! Most Holy Theotokos, save us! Amen!