St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Wesley Chapel, FL
Preacher: The Rev. Adrienne R. Hymes
Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany/Year C
February 9, 2025 ● Luke 5:1-11
Many of you may remember that during the pandemic, and in the ripple effects of the aftermath, there existed a labor phenomenon in the U.S. in which millions had quit their jobs. As the economy started to recover, restaurants, retail stores and offices slowly re-opened, but the companies had a hard time staffing the jobs to keep up with their needs. Jobs were coming back, but where had all the workers gone?
One Business Insider1 article revealed that beyond the issue of wages, contributing factors causing the labor shortage included the need for job flexibility, childcare demands, workplace health safety concerns, retirees who wish to stay retired and employee burnout. This labor shortage phenomenon, catalyzed by the pandemic, was called the “Great Resignation” or the “Great Reevaluation.”2
Some workers, who left a company for a completely new role, or an entirely different industry, were uniquely identified as “epiphany quitters,” named so because of their “ah-hah” realization that life was too short to commit to passionless work.3 This idea of an epiphany quitter or a person who became the quitter of an old life to follow a new purpose-driven, passion-full life, offers a valuable and layered perspective as we enter into the gospel passage in the fifth chapter of Luke today.
Jesus, whose teaching in the synagogues, casting out of demons and healing of the sick mobilized people, had found himself in a crowd pressing in on him at the shore of the lake of Gennesaret, a local name for the Sea of Galilee. This location also happened to be the workplace for the fishermen who were washing their nets after a disappointing night when not one fish was caught.
Jesus eyed the two empty fishing boats and chose to use Simon’s boat as a floating pulpit, positioned a little away from the shore. Recall that Simon and Jesus were not strangers; Simon had witnessed Jesus heal his mother-in-law, as well as many other healings at his home (4:38-41), prior to this workplace encounter.
When Jesus concluded his teaching, he instructed Simon to put the boat out into deeper water and let the fishing nets down for a catch. After a whole night of efforts, with nothing to show for it, one more attempt probably seemed like a waste of time and energy. Instead of Simon responding with a sense of workplace burnout, he obeyed Jesus (“If you say so”) and let down the nets one more time with his fishing partners, the brothers James and John. That action of obedience resulted in the miraculous catch of fish—so abundant that the nets were breaking and the boats were sinking.
An epiphany is the manifestation of the divine—the revelation of God through Jesus Christ. In that experience, Simon had an epiphany and proclaimed himself unworthy to be in the presence of the Lord and fell to his knees. The mortal fear and awe in the presence of Jesus’ divine holiness was evidence of the epiphanic experience for the fishermen and for all who witnessed the event.
While it is likely that the term “epiphany quitter” was intended to generally reference an “ah ha” moment, our understanding of an epiphany as the manifestation of the divine—the revelation of God through Jesus Christ—leads us to a deeper understanding that, for the 21st century epiphany quitters, there was an existential component operating. By existential, I mean those things concerned with human existence. Those things are inextricably tied to those things of the soul. The so-called worker shortage had a lot to do with the quality of human existence—the realities of birth, death and the life in between. Fueled by the pandemic, those epiphany quitters, realized that there exists life-enriching labor, which fuels the soul’s passion and directs one’s purpose and there is labor that does not. Indeed, the latter wearies and suffocates the soul.
Now, we do not know if the fishermen loved their jobs or even if they were passionate about their jobs. We do know that in the presence of the divine Jesus, and in the midst of the fishing miracle, the fishermen shared an epiphany that their existing skills would be repurposed for the increase, not of more fish, but more fishermen. As a result, they abandoned their source of livelihood and their families to follow Jesus. These first followers of Jesus, Simon, John and James, were the original “epiphany quitters.”
You and I are followers in the Jesus movement, and we are the Jesus movement. Just as the fishermen, and their personal lives, were transformed in the real presence of Jesus, discipleship requires that we, too, must risk submitting to the wisdom, and leading of the Holy Spirit. Submission requires a personal, trusting, relationship with Jesus paired with the courage to embrace the inescapable, often painful, transformation of self. When we allow ourselves to be taken up into the divine net of lifelong transformation as God’s instruments of love, compassion, healing and enlightenment, Jesus takes our existing skills and abilities and repurposes them to increase God’s kingdom here on earth now.
Jesus calls us to go out, equipped with the life-saving gospel message, to join him in the miracle of catching people, so that all who witness lives transformed, may also be caught up in His divine net of abundant life. Within the Jesus movement, of which we are a part, there is neither a shortage of kingdom-building work, nor a labor shortage of human beings who can proclaim the good news of God in Christ.
A colleague and I were discussing this passage when they said, “Oh and what about all of those fish left behind? Who made all of that money by taking them to the market? Was Peter ever tempted to go back and recover his fish and his old life?”4 Which begs the question, “What about us? What exactly is our calling as a church, and the Church, in 2025? What will we each have to leave behind in order to follow Jesus more obediently—anger, hatred, and unforgiving heart? You fill in the blank. Our challenge is to listen for our calling—then to follow that calling no matter when that call happens or where that call leads. What are you willing to leave behind?
Let us commit to laboring in God’s vineyard with hearts that cry, “Here am I; send me” (Isaiah 6:8)!, so that when Jesus returns to judge the world, he will not ask, “Where have all the workers gone?,” but find his faithful body, already at work, saying, “Well done, good and faithful servants.”
May it be so.
1Madison Hoff and Juliana Kaplan, “13 Reasons That Help Explain the US’ Labor Shortage, Open Jobs, and Not Enough Workers.” Business Insider, Dec. 2021, 13 Reasons That Help Explain the US’ Labor Shortage, Open Jobs, and Not Enough Workers (businessinsider.com). Accessed 8 February 2025.
2Ibid.
3Madison Hoff and Juliana Kaplan, “Job Switchers Quit Because Pandemic Showed Life Is Too Short: Survey.” Business Insider, December 2021, Job Switchers Quit Because Pandemic Showed Life Is Too Short: Survey (businessinsider.com). Accessed 8 February 2025.
4The Rev. John Hiers, Reflection on Luke 5:1-11, Text received February 9, 2025 at 7:57 a.m.
