Some of my best memories as a child was going fishing with my dad. I loved to fish and I go with my brother. Dad would take Pete and I, we’d go to Skokie Lagoon. We wouldn’t catch much, usually a bullhead or two, but it was always just great memories of fishing and catching fish. 

About a year ago, one of my former coworkers who lived here at Mercy Home moved with his wife and family up to Michigan and invited me and another coworker to come and to spend a weekend and go fishing with them. He claimed to be a wonderful fisherman. 

And so we went out onto the lake, Lake Michigan, and we went fishing for the day. And we caught absolutely nothing, except for one fish about this big, it was more like a tadpole. The big fisherman I was with. And I can remember laughing at the end of the day, but at the same time feeling some frustration. We were out there to fish and we caught nothing.  

I brought on this trip a can of spam, truthfully. And if you ever worked with spam, I took a knife and I cut it real thin. And then I had one of the kids’ toys where you could cut out things like you would with clay and it was a fish. So I cut out fish and for breakfast the following morning, I fried the spam fish for breakfast so we had fish to eat. Great memories of fishing. But talk about frustrating. 

And you can imagine how the apostles, his disciples, to be called were frustrated and he said, “put out and do it again.” And they do it. And they catch so many fish that their boat is about to sink and they call their friends over and they fill the other boat with fish. And there’s amazement. They’re astounded. 

And Peter begins with a kind of, a confession of faith. He says, “I’m a sinful person. Get away from me, lord.” And Jesus and Jesus’ love and compassion and understanding says, “great things are going to happen for you, Peter, and for all of my apostles and all of my disciples. You will be out fishing men and women. You will be drawing them into the kingdom and into my life, which is full, full of abundance.” 

Once again, the gospel story is really a story of abundance. When the lord is present, there is an abundance for everyone and there is joy in their celebration as there is at the eucharist that we celebrate here today.  

An abundance of joy, an abundance of celebration, for we will be fed with the eucharist, with the very presence of Christ, body and blood, so that we can be strengthened in our discipleship and do the work of God in this world of ours.