As persons who trained in some field, we have all experienced what it feels to be given advice by someone outside our field. “How dare you teach me about my job?” Drivers complain about bosses who often act as backseat drivers, even or precisely because the latter cannot drive at all, or dare to. Engineers mock the ignorance of decision-makers who think they can override the laws of physics. Teachers take umbrage when moms have the temerity to imply they do not know how to teach, simply because they cannot accept their children’s grades. Yet drivers obey, engineers accommodate, and teachers swallow their pride, sometimes because, belonging to the lower food chain, they feel they have no choice.

Jesus was a carpenter; Simon and his cousins were fishermen. One could almost hear in Simon’s reply a tinge of unvoiced reproach, or wonderment at least – what knowledge or experience do you have to tell us about fishing?

Very early in their relationship, however, Simon and his kin realized that Jesus was “Master” clearly in the religious and moral senses and perhaps of occupational or professional senses as well. It was in these ways that Jesus was constantly surprising them – teaching them something from their craft, yet beyond their craft. True, he was not the fisherman they were, nor did he pretend to be one. But on this occasion he was saying, enter into the spirit of what are you doing, and then look beyond what you are doing. You could be a fisherman and nothing else, or you could be a fisher in yet another sense. Fish for men in the same way you do for fish and you will be surprised at how more than a fisherman you can be. This was not about the job as such, but about the job as metaphor of being, of prism of life. Fishing is about lowering the nets for a catch; but one can only do so after one has pushed out into the deep.

An important dimension of faith is that it sometimes makes demands, not against the facts, as much as against our better judgment. Jesus did not prove to be a better fisherman than Peter; what he proved was that he appreciated this fisherman’s struggle to reconcile his faith in Jesus and his better judgment. Jesus confirmed his faith, and so Peter had to respond equally with faith: this was no ordinary man.