Chapter 5

Jesus is making a transition in this chapter. Up until now he has been largely working as a one-man-band.

This is inefficient (although there are fewer people to screw things up). And also, there’s a hidden issue – Jesus knows his ultimate fate is to face a cruel death on the cross, so he has this urgency about him. He knows that his time here is short, so if he wants his work to continue after he had left the disciples, he will have to get them ready to do the ministry on their own.

What is interesting is the relationship Jesus seems to have with the disciples-to-be. I think many of us have an image in our minds of Him just walking up to random strangers, saying “Follow me”. But it doesn’t look like that here. Jesus knew Simon Peter AT LEAST well enough that it wasn’t weird for him to ride in the boat.

The other thing is that he seems to know just how to get through to this man!

I don’t know if you’ve picked this up, but it seems to me that Simon Peter is just a little thick. I like the guy, because I relate to him (I think I have said that before!) – all brash, shoot-first-ask-questions later and all. But he had his weaknesses, and one of those was that he was slow on the uptake. There’s another feature I share with him.

So what was one way that Jesus could get inside his head? Well, it looks like at this point, all he cared about was fish.

Obviously there was something more inside. We know, because Jesus was able to bring it out. But right now he was totally focused, and Jesus had to make sure that he could see who he was dealing with.

I think Peter was trying to decide whether going with Jesus would come at too great a cost. And Jesus was sending a message straight back. Jesus tells them to shoot the nets to the other side of the boat, and they end up with a massive haul.

“You want to fish?” He is saying. “Well, all the fish you could ever catch, all the money you could make from them – they come from me. You’re scared about coming with me, right enough – but you need to know who you’re dealing with here.”

This chapter also includes another important character. It’s Levi, in other places known as Matthew. Levi was in the same town as Peter, and it seems logical that he was Peter’s tax agent. Elsewhere we see that Levi was near the beach, so maybe he would stand there near the fishermen and extract their taxes from them as they sold their fish! If so, there’d be little love lost between the two.

How is it that Jesus manages to forge these two (not even counting the Zealot, Simon!) into a world-beating team?

I guess we’re going to find out!