The Isaiah passage today is one that you will often hear at ordinations, because immediately after the angel touched his lips and declared his sins blotted out, Isaiah responds with such enthusiasm to taking God’s message to the people. His life was altered, and he willingly stepped away from his own life to pursue God’s calling, saying, “Here I am, Lord. Send me!”
Fr. Anthony DeMello, a Jesuit priest from India, often spoke of this need to let go, to detach from worldly attachments in the pursuit of the holy. He recounts a story about two men. One is a holy man, called a Sanyasi, who has renounced all worldly possessions, a man who knows that God is his father and the source of all they need. The other is a person like you and me. The second man happened across this sanyasi, and is overjoyed by the meeting. He tells the holy man that he is excited, because he had had a dream about this meeting, and that in the dream the holy man had given him a stone that would make him the richest man in the world. So the holy man digs through his satchel, and pulls out the largest diamond the man had ever seen. “Is this the stone,” the holy man asks? “Yes!” exclaims the man. And so the sanyasi hands him the diamond and says, “You may have it.” The man is overwhelmed and overjoyed. He is happy. He takes it, and goes down to the river, where he clutches this precious diamond to his chest as he sits under a tree, and contemplates his life. Toward evening, he goes back and finds the holy man, and hands him back the diamond. “Why do you wish to return it?” the holy man asks. “Well, sir, I decided that rather than this stone, I would rather have whatever is in you that allows you so easily to give away a diamond that would have made you the richest man in the world.”
This is very similar to what is happening in our gospel passage today. We see Jesus coming upon the disciples by the lake of Gennesaret, and because so many people were pushing to see him, he got into Peter’s boat, and asked him to set out from shore a way. After Jesus had finished teaching the people he told the fishermen to put out for deep water and let out their nets. Peter resists, saying that they are tired from fishing all night and not catching anything, but he does it because Jesus has asked him to. They pull out such a massive amount of fish that their boat is about to sink, and Peter says, much like Isaiah does to the angel, “I am not worthy. Go away from me!” But Jesus tells them that from now on, they will be catching people. And when they had brought the boats to shore, the gospel says, they left everything, and followed him. They were fishermen, and they left their livelihood, and followed this holy man on his journey.
Did Jesus hypnotize them? Or did they just figure out that they would rather have what Jesus had to offer them, than have the largest catch of fish they’d ever seen?
Clearly, Peter figured it out, because later on in his life, when a lame man asks for money, Peter says, “I don’t have any silver or gold, but what I do have, I give to you.” And in Jesus’ name, he heals the man, who then gets up and walks.
Peter and the others left everything behind at the Lake of Gennesaret, and followed this holy man, Jesus. And what they received after this was so much more than they could ever have imagined or hoped for.
This leads us to an obvious question. What would we let go of for this sort of understanding? This sort of blessing? This revelation of the glory of God? Or, more to the point, what are we so attached to that we would rather not give it up to experience this sort of closeness with God?
Anything in our lives can be an attachment. We can be attached to the idea of wealth and money. We can be attached to the idea of power, of influence, or of security. We can be attached to people, and believe that we can never live without them. We can be attached to the idea of being the smartest person, the prettiest, or even the funniest. Or maybe it’s our political affiliations – or maybe our political aspirations. Maybe it’s our careers, or our goals for travel. We all have attachments like this, and we are the only ones who can determine what it is.
Whatever our attachments, when we hold on to these things, rather than letting them go for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus, rather than following God, then we have made this thing an idol that we hold more dearly than God alone. And when we clutch this precious thing, we cannot, like Isaiah did, say with enthusiasm, “Here I am, Lord. Send me!” Nor can we, like the disciples did, walk away from our livelihood, by dropping everything. We cannot, because we still clutch close to our hearts that which we find so precious that we value it more than we value our relationship with God.
In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, we come face to face with a miserable little creature, named Gollum, who is known for continually saying, “My Precious,” as he clutches the One Ring. When we learn about his past, we discover that he used to be a stoor hobbit named Smeagol, and that he was a selfish little man. On his birthday, his cousin Deagol found the ring, and because it was his birthday, Smeagol demanded that Deagol give it to him as a gift. When Deagol refused, Smeagol killed him to possess it. And while the ring kept him alive for over 500 years, it turned him into a shallow husk of a man, a disgusting creature that burrowed in the roots of trees, and stole babies from cribs for food.
The curious nature of this twisted little creature was that Gollum wanted so badly to be free of the power of this horrible ring, and yet he simultaneously lusted after the power and benefits it gave him. He was tormented by his own desire to be both free of the thing he was attached to, and bound and intertwined with this attachment because he could not conceive being without it.
Ultimately, even after the mercy that Frodo and Sam show to Gollum, as they are at the top of the mountain and Frodo is about to throw the ring into the fires below, Gollum runs after him, yelling, “My Precious!” attacks him, and bites off his finger with the ring on it. Then Gollum jumps about all excited, because he has retrieved that which he held so dear. As Frodo attempts to retrieve the ring to destroy it, Gollum falls into the lava below, and as he is falling, he is smiling, clutching his precious ring to his chest. Both he and his precious ring are destroyed, killed in the fires of Mount Doom. In the end, the thing that Gollum was so attached to proved more important to him than anything else, even his own life.
Now, while we might understand the need to get rid of these attachments in our lives, we know that it is not easy. Whenever we feel we have let go of one thing, God allows us to see another.
In the third and fourth centuries, there were Christian monks who lived in the deserts of Egypt. Their stories were written down as teaching aids for those of us who wish to emulate these holy men.
One such story is of Abba Bessarion and his disciple Doulas. One day, the two were traveling, and they came by the sea, and Doulas was thirsty, and he told the old man that he was. So Abba Bessarion said a prayer, and then turned to Doulas and said, “Drink some of the sea water.” So Doulas drank of the sea water, and it was sweet and crystal clear, and the freshest water he had ever had. As Abba Bessarion turned to leave, Doulas attempted to fill up his water bottles with this fresh water, but Abba Bessarion asked him, “What are you doing?” And Doulas replied, “Forgive me, but it is for fear of being thirsty later on.” To which, indicating their surroundings, Abba Bessarion responded, “God is here. And God is everywhere.” In other words, if God can provide here, then God will provide when you are thirsty again.
This serenity, this trust in God’s provision, this freedom from attachments that Abba Bessarion exemplified is the ideal. It is what we strive for. This concept that God is in control, and that all will be provided, is an ideal that we can hope for. This freedom from attachments to things we find precious.
The more we can cast aside, the more we can detach ourselves from these precious things that we clutch so desperately, the more easily we can see Jesus; the more clear the nature of God will become to us, and the easier it will be for us to understand the will of God, and God’s will to become our will. It is in the casting away of things we are attached to – things we hold precious – that we are able to see more clearly, unencumbered by the trappings of this life. And when we see clearly, we are able to give up more and more things, and walk in the light of God’s blessing, and in the freedom and serenity of God’s presence.
And this then, is how we become fishers of people. Because if we are able to move ever closer to this ideal, people will see the blessing of God, and they may say, “How are you able to so easily give up this precious thing? Help me understand that, so that I too might have this freedom.” In other words, we will have fished for people, because our very lives will have become the hook.
And then these people might also leave everything, and follow Jesus.
[This sermon was delivered at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Wickenburg, AZ on February 9, 2025.]
