Fifth Sunday after Trinity (1891)

Luke 5:1-11 We Christians live in this world and yet are not of this world. We have many things in common with unbelievers, and yet are fundamentally different from them. We do many of the same things as children of this world, and yet it is not the same. This is reflected particularly also in the subject, to which contemplation today's Gospel can lead us. The Christian Worker; 1. what the Christian worker has in common with the unbeliever: a. he is a worker, and as such he also works. Also the Christian should work when he can; although God could also give him his bread without work, yet he should not wait for a miracle of God, where there is no promise to him; this would mean disorderly change and cause curiosity; but he should also work like other men. 1 Also the Christian should need his mind on his work and be careful about it, how he arranged his work in the best and most appropriate way what he does, to do at the proper time and with using appropriate benefits.2 b. he also bears the hardship of his position. Also the Christian has not all the time externally the best success in his work; also "hard times" probably come, as there were times for Peter and his companions when they "had caught nothing". So, even today, Christian workers are also affected by many who complain about non-Christian workers; farmer, craftsman, laborer, servants, merchants, etc., poor harvests, slump in business, pressure and injustice on the part of employers and employees.3 c. also earthly blessings, temporal income of work, the Christian to a great extent has in common with unbelievers, as the fish in the Sea of Galilee were not there for Peter and other religious people alone. God also gives daily bread to evil men mostly in the way that they are nourished by the labor of their hands, and under God's sunshine and rain the seed also grows on the unrighteous one's land.4 But there is in many ways a great difference between a Christian and a non-Christian worker; 2. what distinguishes the Christian worker from the non-Christian: a. A Christian is careful that he might live in his earthly vocation according to God's good pleasure; the non-Christian does not ask accordingly.5 A Christian thus carries on no business, whose works must displease God, that he could carry on only with sins; he also is careful before using sinful ways and means in the performance of a permissible work in itself;
1 2

Luke 5:1-2. Luke 5:2-5. 3 Luke 5:2-5. 4 Luke 5:1-4. 5 Luke 5:5.

b. the Christians also seeks to serve his neighbor in his calling; the non-Christian seeks only his own self. So Peter uses his time that he could have used for washing nets and his vessel in the service of Jesus and His hearers, and his profession is one in which he served his neighbor in life and limb. So a Christian does not do a profession whereby his neighbor does not benefit, or which will hurt him at all, whether in the body, whether in the soul; and in his vocation he seeks not himself, but the neighbor's welfare; c. the non-Christian is very absorbed in his earthly works and ways; but the Christian also has a spiritual vocation over and above his earthly vocation, which also has his works, and the spiritual vocation with his works is to him higher than the temporal, earthly vocation;6 d. the non-Christian does have what goods are imparted to him from God's mild Hand; but he does not acknowledge it. But the Christian does recognize all physical and spiritual gifts gratefully received as bestowed from unmerited favor of God, that he is unworthy of God's gifts, is therefore also content, as God allots to him, is also willing, if it is God's will, to leave everything, be it as Peter did, even here in life; be it when he once takes the little boat to land.7 A.G.

6 7

Luke 5:1-3; 10-11. Luke 5:6-11.