Coping with Coming Up Empty

Luke 5:1-11

So what do you do when you’ve come up empty? What do you do when you’ve done everything you know to do, and you have nothing to show for it? They had worked all night. They put their boats out onto the Sea of Galilee and rowed to the fishing grounds and cast the nets and hauled them in empty. So they rowed on to another fishing ground and cast the nets and hauled them in empty again. So they rowed again and they cast again and they hauled again, and they rowed and they cast and they hauled, and they came up empty. What do you do when you have nothing to show for your work? Whether that work is at work or at school or in your marriage or in your children or in another relationship that’s important to you or in your physical health or your mental health or your spiritual health, what do you do when you have come up empty? This morning’s gospel lesson is a lesson in coping with coming up empty. Sooner or later it happens to all of us, and lately it seems to have happened to a lot of us. So what do you do?

If this morning’s gospel lesson is a lesson in coping with coming up empty, then the first thing you do, according to verse 2, is maintain your nets. You maintain your nets. They had worked all night and had nothing to show for it, and surely no one would have blamed them if they had hauled the boats up on the shore, threw the nets down in a pile and went home to sleep. They could have been in the comfort of their homes, licking their wounds and rubbing their sore muscles and sleeping off a night of fruitless work. But what they did instead is what you have to do whether you succeed or fail, whether you’re full or you’re empty. You have to maintain your nets, and that’s where Jesus found them: washing their nets, taking care of the little things, even though the big thing had gone to smash.

I saw this lesson one evening years ago when my middle son was a middle schooler. He played in a basketball game in which twice in the same game his coach drew up a play for him to take the winning shot. Not once, but twice. Both times he missed it, and his team lost. It was a long, quiet ride home. When we got to the house, as I opened the car door to get out, he said, “Dad, turn on the lights. I’ll be in after a while.” He went into the garage and got a basketball. I turned on the floodlights on the driveway, and for more than 30 minutes in the cold and the wet and the dark, he shot and he shot and he shot. That’s when I knew he was going to make it, if not in basketball, then in life. When you come up empty, you have to maintain your nets. It has to be done. You don’t throw them in a pile and walk away. You work on them even when it’s dark and wet and cold. You have to continue to take care of the little things. In one of the funniest lines in a book full of funny lines, Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You’re 80, by Chris Crowley and Henry Lodge, Crowley and Lodge talk about how especially when you start running on empty you have to take care of the little things, like personal care. Speaking to men, they say, get up and shave every morning. Chris Crowley writes that when you don’t shave in the morning, you’re thinking Bruce Willis, but they’re seeing Yasser Arafat. It ain’t pretty. Maintain your nets. Keep doing the little things that make a difference when you’re full and when you’re empty.

In verse 3 we learn from this morning’s lesson in coping with coming up empty that the second thing you need to do is make yourself available. Make yourself available when you come up empty. You see, Simon Peter’s boat is available to Jesus to push out into the water to teach the crowds from it precisely because they had caught nothing over night. If they had worked all night and brought in a catch, Peter and his men would have been cleaning the catch and transporting it to market, and that means Peter and his boat would not have been available for the purpose that Jesus asked of him. When you are empty, look up far enough and long enough to see what it is you can make yourself available for simply because you have nothing that you worked so hard to get. Make yourself available for Bible study, for spiritual formation, for missions, for taking up that project or that dream that you’ve just never had the time or energy to do because you were so busy with your catch.

I heard it as recently as two months ago. A man who was separated from his employment not by his choice said these words: “I should have left a long time ago. There is something I’ve been wanting to do that I couldn’t bring myself to try because I always had that job. Now it’s time to try it.” When you come up empty, make yourself available to yourself, to your spouse, your children, your grandchildren, your church, your community, to God. Maintain your nets. Make yourself available.

And listen, listen even to the most unlikely sources. Can’t you imagine those gruff, old fishermen, when the rabbi told them where to put their nets down? Can you imagine that under their breath some of them told him where to put their nets? Can’t you hear them? One of them says, “He’s a rabbi, for heaven’s sake! What does a rabbi know about fishin’?” The guy beside him says, “Yeah, his daddy was a carpenter. He learned carpentry. I bet he’s never fished a night in his life! And he’s tellin’ us how to fish?” Peter could have said, “Lord, there’s no side of this boat we haven’t fished all night, and we’ve got nothing to show for it. I’m not going back out there for more work for nothing.” But that’s not what Peter said. Peter said, “Lord, we worked all night and haven’t caught a thing; but if you say so, we’ll try it one more time. We’ll try it your way.” Listen, even to the most unlikely sources. It could come from a child or a grandchild. It could come from an aunt or an uncle. It could come from a blogger. It could come from a former co-worker—maybe one you didn’t even like. You never know where you’re going to hear the word that God wants you to hear when you need to hear it. So listen. Even to the most unlikely sources.

Our own Myles Golden of Golden Career Strategies tells us that when people are going through a transition in employment, especially a transition that they did not choose for themselves, the literature suggests that persons who are strongly grounded spiritually make that transition more successfully and in better shape than people who are not grounded spiritually. “What does Scripture know about my job search?” “What does my Sunday School class have to do with my trying to find work?” “What does the rabbi know about fishing?” Listen anyway. Listen even to the most unlikely sources because you never know where the word is going to come from that God wants you to hear when God wants you to hear it. Maintain your nets. Make yourself available. Listen, even to the most unlikely sources.

Peter then, in the next step, does what we must all do, and that is engage in self-reflection and confession. “Lord, I am a sinful man!” he cries in the presence of Jesus. Self-reflection and confession. Now, I want to make very clear that Peter does not engage in self-flagellation or self-immolation. When you’re down, the last person you need beating up on you is you. But every one of us, when we come up empty, benefits from self-reflection and confession. Look at it this way. Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don’t, says that among the CEOs of the break-through corporations that his management team studied there was a common feature in the way they approached failure and success. Collins put it this way: to a person, these leaders “looked out the window” to explain success, and they “looked in the mirror” to explain failure. They looked out the window to point to others to explain success, and they looked in the mirror at themselves to explain failure. It’s not that they beat themselves up; it’s that they held themselves accountable. If you prefer to think about it in Stephen Covey terms, he of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, you could think about it like this. Covey says, focus on your “circle of influence.” Focus on the circle where you can make a difference in what happens. And the closest circle of influence you have is yourself. Engage in self-reflection and confession.

Self-reflection and confession allows you to hold yourself accountable for your failure, to learn from it, and then to put it down and move on. You can’t drag what’s behind you into the future and still get there. You’ve got to put it down. Confess what you need to confess and acknowledge what you need to change. You have nothing to lose but the burden of the past. Notice that when Peter confesses his sinfulness to Jesus, he says, “Leave, Lord! I am not worthy of your attention.” But look at what happens when Peter confesses his unworthiness. It’s then that Jesus calls him in a new direction. Jesus calls Peter in a new direction, and that’s the final step in this passage in coping with coming up empty.

It’s embrace a new direction. Embrace a new direction. It may well be that the direction that comes out of emptiness is not what you planned on at all. Sometimes the prayers that we pray are answered in a way that we never expected, maybe even a way we wished they had not been answered. What these guys wanted was fish in their boats on the Sea of Galilee, and what they got was sent by foot to people on land. “Time out, Lord! That’s not what I asked for!” But when you’ve come up empty, you have to embrace the new direction that comes your way. Sometimes that means putting the past behind you because of the new thing that is coming your way. Many of you already know that my favorite way to put that is from Pumbaa, in Disney’s Lion King: “You’ve got to put your behind in the past.” Putting your behind in the past is the only way to face the future. Sometimes that means leaving the very boats and nets that were your life for so long. It’s embracing the new direction.

But as you do, there’s something lurking in this story that in all fairness I need to make sure you see. It’s a little bit troubling, especially in our economic times in our economic culture. They could’ve been rich, you know. Those fishermen could’ve been rich if they could’ve bottled Jesus’ advice so that every time they went out to fish they hauled in so much that their boats nearly sank by the time they got back to the shore. If I were a preacher of the “Prosperity Gospel,” that’s what I’d be telling you right now: “Just listen to Jesus, and your nets will be so full that your boats will nearly sink! You’ll all be rich!” Well, that’s preaching prosperity, but it’s not preaching the gospel. Because when they got exactly the thing they had been working for all night but had come up empty, Jesus said, “Guess what, guys? This isn’t it. That’s not what you’re here for. That’s not what I’m calling you to. Now that you got what you wanted, from now on, you’re working with people not fish. From now on, you’re on land, not water. You’re walking, not rowing. From now on, you’re walking with me, and you do not know where your next meal will come from. But you’re walking with me.” That’s not what the preachers of prosperity want to preach, and that’s not what the crowds are flocking to hear these days. But the gospel of Jesus Christ is not about getting rich. It’s not about being prosperous. It’s about being faithful to the call of Jesus. When you come up empty, embrace a new direction, and that just might mean putting your behind in the past, including your material wants and desires and expectations.

Now, one last thing about this lesson in coping with coming up empty that you need to see. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is a lesson in “self-help.” This is not a self-help lesson. This is a lesson in lifting your eyes to the hills from which your help comes, for your help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth (Psalm 121), not from your self-help. This is a lesson in shaping your life by the wisdom of Scripture. This is a lesson in forming your life by the teachings of Jesus. This is a lesson in trusting your life to God who made heaven and earth and from whom your help comes, the God who is with you and around you and in you when you are full and when you are empty, when you are aware of it and feel it and recognize it and when you don’t recognize God’s presence at all, the God who is no less with you when you feel like a motherless child than when you feel like a king or a queen at court. That God who is ever present and constantly with you is your help when you come up empty. Follow the wisdom of Scripture. Shape your life by the teachings of Jesus. Trust your life to God. In other words, maintain your nets; make yourself available; listen even to the most unlikely sources; engage in self-reflection and confession; and embrace a new direction.

Our prayer and our confidence this day and every day, empty or full, is in God who comes to us in Jesus Christ, the “strong, righteous man of Galilee” of whom we sing in our hymn of invitation.


This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.