And Jesus said unto Simon, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men. -- Luke 5:10 (KJV)
Back on the shore from Monday's reading, the scene has one more turn in it. The impossible catch is straining the nets, both ships are riding low, and Simon Peter's response is not celebration. He falls down at Jesus' knees: Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord. Power that close did not flatter him. It showed him where he stood, and his first instinct was to widen the distance.
Into that — a man on his knees in a rocking boat, asking Jesus to go — comes the answer: Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men. Jesus does not dispute the confession. No verse says Simon was wrong about himself. The confession simply is not permitted to end the conversation; it is answered with a commission.
Hear the tense, though. From henceforth, thou shalt — a promise, not a deployment. When the ships reach land nobody is sent anywhere. They forsook all, and followed him. The last verb of the scene is follow.
The sending gets its name one chapter later. After the night of prayer on the mountain, Jesus calls up His disciples and of them he chose twelve, whom also he named apostles — and the list opens with Simon, whom he also named Peter. Apostle is the word for one who is sent. Between the shore and that mountain, Luke reports not a single act of Simon's. No sermon, no miracle, not one spoken line. A stretch of the Gospel goes by with the man promised a catch doing nothing the record keeps, except staying near Jesus.
That gap is the arc of the whole week. Catch men was promised to a follower; sent one was conferred on a follower; and what filled the space between was following — which Luke did not find necessary to narrate, because staying is not dramatic. If a season of your life has nothing to show but staying near Him, Luke has seen that before. It sits in his Gospel right where the apostles came from.
The scene closes on the shore: two ships hauled up on the land, the largest catch of Simon's life left behind in them, and a line of fishermen walking inland after a voice. The catching would come when He said. The following started before the nets were dry.
