Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time – February 9th, 2025
When you get on a boat, the captain is in charge. The captain makes all the rules. What he says goes. No one gets on the ship without his permission, and nothing happens on board unless he approves of it. He is the one who sets the course of the ship and is the one responsible for getting everyone back on shore safely. What you do on land is up to you, but on the sea it’s the captain who has full authority.
However, that’s not what we see in today’s gospel. Jesus gets into Peter’s boat without even asking. He tells Peter where to take the ship, and He even tells Peter where to throw out his nets for a catch. By commandeering Peter’s boat, Jesus breaks all the rules of seafaring. That is because He is no ordinary passenger chartering a boat. He is the Lord.
The amazing thing is that Peter allows it. He doesn’t assert his authority as owner and captain of the vessel, but welcomes Jesus aboard and hands over control to Him. He goes where Jesus tells Him to go and does what Jesus tells Him to do. Even though it’s against all his instincts, Peter follows Jesus’ order to go out into the deep and throw out his net. Because of his obedience and total trust, Peter is rewarded with a great catch of fish.
Many of us probably treat our lives the way the captain of a ship treats his boat. We want to be the ones in charge. We want to set the course for our own lives. We’re not about to let anyone tell us what to do or where to go. In the world today, the authority of the individual is supreme. No one can tell us what to do with our bodies. Instead, the world tells us to live by “our own truth” and create our own values.
However, when we let Jesus into our lives – when we welcome Him onto our boat- it can’t be that way. Like Peter, we have to surrender control to Him. We have to let Him set the course and follow His directions. He becomes the captain who can commandeer any and every area of our life according to His will. That is what we mean when we say “Jesus is Lord”. It means that we put our destiny in His hands and that we agree to follow wherever He leads.
Now, we don’t have to do that. We can decide that we’re not going to let Jesus on to our boats. We can decide that we want to be the ones who set the course for our lives according to our own plans. Though Jesus has the power to commandeer the vessel of our lives whenever He wants, He will respect our wishes. He won’t take over control unless we invite Him to.
However, if we deny Jesus control of our boats, one of two things is likely to happen.
The first thing that could happen is that we will keep our boats close to shore. Because we’re afraid of the storms that we might find on the open sea, we’ll want to play it safe by staying in the shallow water. Some of us might not even take our boats off the shore at all.
That is what happens to many people who fail to give Jesus control of their lives. Out of fear, they settle into lives of comfort and safety. They never do anything great. But Jesus is calling us to a life of adventure, not of safety. He sees all the potential within us. He also sees all the possibilities out in the sea. If we give Him control, He can guide us through the dangers of the open seas and direct us to safety.
Just as He told Peter to go out into the deep for a catch, He is challenging us to go outside our comfort zones, to put our lives in His hands, and to do and see things we could never have imagined possible.
Other times people who fail to welcome Jesus into their boats can have the opposite problem. That is, they take too many risks. Because they are so confident in themselves and think they have all the answers, they take their boat out deeper than they should. In their desire for thrills and adventure they head into storms that they should avoid. In the process their boats become damaged and even shipwrecked.
Many people here might be able to relate to this. Thinking they were living life to the fullest, they sought out many different kinds of experiences that they should have avoided. In the process, they were hurt, hurt others, or found themselves trapped in addictions. Though it seemed like fun at the time, they weren’t able to see all the hidden dangers. So, their lives were damaged or even lost because they went out deeper than they should have.
When we give control of our lives over to Jesus, we don’t have to rely only on our own strength and intelligence. Instead, we have Jesus and His Church to guide us. Jesus can see the dangers below the surface that are hidden from us. He knows about the storms that are headed our way and can guide us safely through them. With Jesus in our boat, we can face the high seas with confidence that He would never allow us to get shipwrecked.
Jesus is here now asking for our permission to enter the ship of our lives and take over control of it. He is a much better captain than anyone us could ever be.
He is calling us to venture out beyond the safe harbors we have built for ourselves to go out into the deep waters for a miraculous catch. We can hand over control to Him with trust, because He can see us through whatever storms may come. And, in the end, we will see and do things we could never have imagined.
Give Jesus permission to come aboard and let yourself be carried away into all the adventure that awaits.