IN THIS Gospel, Simon responds to Jesus as he does, not due to a realisation at that moment (15.8), but due to things that happened earlier. He heard Jesus teaching on the Capernaum synagogue and afterwards invited him home, little doubt hoping to listen to more. There, he has witnessed the healing power of the person whom he now calls “Lord”.
Editors disagree on whether this primary use of the name “Peter”, here at verse 8, is original or was added later. Luke doesn’t discuss with the bestowing of the name until 6.14, which is one reason that I believe that it’s a later addition, not what Luke originally wrote. This matters, due to query whether we are able to link Simon’s recognition of Jesus’s identity (“Lord”) with Jesus’ recognition of Simon’s (“rock”).
Before this, though, we must think back to what happens after Jesus’s proclamation of Isaiah, recounted in last week’s Gospel (Luke 4.14-21). The lectionary omits a linking passage, during which Jesus — after being expelled from Nazareth for making offensive claims (4.28-30) — moves on to Capernaum, where he first heals a person possessed by the spirit of an impure demon (4.33) after which cures Peter’s mother-in-law.
Luke wants us to see 5.1-11 against the backdrop of the hostility that Jesus experiences in his home town, and alongside the target reality of his power to heal people. He brings someone with an impure spirit back to his right mind. He cures Simon’s mother-in-law of fever. No distinction is made between mental and physical illness. These events trigger a flood of pleas for help, driving Jesus to withdraw searching for solitude. But the group follows, and its demands elicit his declaration that he has a mission to other towns, and never to this locality only.
With all this in mind, we are able to higher understand Simon’s actions on this Gospel. Only moments ago (reading constantly), Luke told us that Jesus left Capernaum synagogue and went to Simon’s house, where he cured his mother-in-law. Without this context, Simon’s actions on this reading make no sense, and we’re left to wonder why he’s co-operative and obedient. The answer must lie in his already having witnessed (unlike the group) the ability of this man Jesus, who has commandeered his fishing-boat.
Words are low-cost. Plenty of people who find themselves persuasive public speakers haven’t a scintilla of morality about how they weaponise their rhetorical skill. Perhaps a scarcity of guilt about using words to control people is a positive advantage. Power over nature is one other matter altogether. So the group is true to be more impressed by a miraculous catch of fish than by Jesus’s teaching.
The chasm between saying and doing is a large one. Had Jesus left us nothing aside from a metaphorical body of ethical teaching — smart and provoking because it is — it could never have an effect akin to that of his real, physical, body nailed to the cross. “By their fruits you’ll know them” (Matthew 7.16, 20); not “by their words“. Words are too often camouflage, hiding our true selves from the world.
When we meet someone in whom words and actions form an integrous whole, their eloquence and goodness, once united, grow to be greater than the sum of their parts. Jesus himself is a paradigm of integrity. In this Gospel, he begins with words, stepping into the boat and teaching. But he understands that words alone should not enough. I struggle with Jesus’s saying in Matthew that “an evil and adulterous generation asks for an indication”; for what else are these miraculous healings for, if to not encourage people to place their faith in God’s power over their lives?
Part of the reply, little doubt, is that Jesus performs healing miracles because he sees before him a one that needs help. In other words, he doesn’t reply to their need because they’re a way to some supposedly greater good (similar to spreading the message, or converting others).
Perhaps, then, the miracles are a shorthand for what a mere three years of earthly ministry cannot accomplish. For the preachers and teachers who make the best impact on congregations should not those parachuted in for some big day, however the ones who live as a part of their community. Only then is it possible for that community to make a judgement about whether or not they practise what they preach.
