Homily for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time February 9, 2025

A Million Bucks…or Insufficient Funds.

There’s a comic strip called Mother Goose & Grimm (by Mike Peters; The Republican, 2/5/25, p. B2). In a recent one, you have two animals comparing their experiences. One announces, “I woke up feeling like a million bucks! How about you?” The other one responds, “I woke up feeling like insufficient funds.”

In today’s gospel passage we find a kind of emotional roller coaster on the part of Peter and the other disciples. They, of course, are the experts; they’ve been fishing all their lives. They’ve been hard at it and caught nothing. Maybe the waters were being over-fished. Maybe it was an off-night. Whatever it is, they probably experienced disappointment, if not outright panic. After all, this was their livelihood. How were they going to feed their families? And how were they ever going to make enough profit to pay their taxes? So, I can imagine Peter thinking, “I’m coming off this night’s work feeling like insufficient funds!”

But then, Jesus steps in and makes a suggestion. Peter has his doubts, but he agrees to give it a try. And then, they have this enormous load of fish, so that their nets are tearing and a second boat is needed. Now they’ll be able to feed their family. Now they’ll be able to show some profit. Now they’ll be able to pay their back taxes. And does Peter feel like a million bucks?

Well, maybe some…but now he begins to feel that he has insufficient funds of another sort. In his astonishment, he says, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”

This reminds me of a classic book entitled The Idea of the Holy by a scholar named Rudolf Otto (published in 1917). Otto argued that, in the presence of the holy or of a mystery, there is something that fascinates, but also something that causes fear. This catch of fish is like that for Peter: he stands before Jesus and acknowledges both the mystery and the fear. He is convinced that Jesus is holy, and—almost instantaneously—he bears his soul (“I am a sinful man”). He knows in his heart that, if he were to be judged at that moment, he feels that he has insufficient funds.

But Jesus feels confident that he can work with that. Yes, Jesus says: you have insufficient funds, but I don’t. I can keep filling you, if only you empty yourself and allow me to fill you.

In conclusion, I ask you to meditate on these verses from Psalm 127:

         Unless the Lord build the house,

                   they labor in vain who build it….

         It is vain for you to rise early,

                   or put off your rest,

         You that eat hard-earned bread,

                  for he gives to his beloved in sleep.