All this talk in today’s readings (1 Corinthians 3:18-23; Psalm 24; and Luke 5:1-11) about the wise being foolish, sort of has me, as people in my generation used to say, “bummed”. Probably because I am one of the wise guys that Paul is talking about in Corinthians. I am well educated. I am a retired professor (I saw a t-shirt some time ago that said, “I’m a college professor: to save time, let’s just assume I’m right.”). I am smart (My favorite saying is, “Those of you who think you know everything are really annoying to those of us who do!”). And people like me tend to rely heavily on our intelligence.
But what do we really know? What do I know, really? Seriously, I don’t know anything. I don’t know how we got here. I don’t know what all this means. I can’t see the big picture because I’m human. I’m not God. And that’s the point. We humans are naturally restricted. We don’t know how everything happens. We don’t know how the earth got here. We don’t know what happens when we die. We are human. We live, then we die. We couldn’t do this. We couldn’t make a world or make people from scratch or understand how it happened or where it’s going. We must have faith. And we must accept that we don’t know everything. We call ourselves wise and think we know so much, and we think we have all the answers, but in fact, we know very little, and we do not have all the answers. Even those who do know a lot, in the bigger scheme of things, know very little. We think we have everything, but everything we have, and even our very selves, belong to God. Nothing is really ours, not our possessions, not our environment, not our experiences. It is all from God, and it is all belongs to God.
When Peter is having a bad night fishing, Jesus tells him to put out his nets one last time. Peter is an expert fisherman. What does Jesus know? Peter says that they’ve been fishing all night and have nothing to show for it. But he puts out his nets on Jesus’ word. And the haul is so great he can’t get them all in the boat. And Peter says, in effect, “I am not worthy.” He doesn’t know how this could happen. He knows that there were no fish, then suddenly there were so many fish he can’t contain them. That’s not possible. But it happened. Peter thinks he knows about fishing, but what does he know? He knows enough to put his faith and trust in Jesus and to follow him. Jesus says he will be a fisher of men now, able to share his faith and his experience.
We don’t know anything, but we should know enough, as Peter did, to put our faith and trust in the Lord and follow him. We don’t know it all. We can’t know it all. But we can accept this and trust in God.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!