Wisdom is a relative thing when it comes to our relationship with God. Just when we think we have God figured out, we realize that God is out of our grasp. Wisdom, when it comes to our relationship with God, is to realize that we will never understand. In fact, St. Augustine said, “If you think you understand, it’s not God.” So that is how we should understand St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: “God catches the wise in their own ruses, and again: The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.” Those who think they are clever when it comes to God will never really know him at all.
Maybe that’s a glimpse of Peter’s whole relationship with Jesus. It begins here in the story we just heard from the Gospel. Jesus tells him to put out the nets. Peter knows they have been hard at it all night long and was probably thinking “yeah, right.” But he had just heard Jesus speaking, and maybe it was something in what he said that led Peter to take a chance and put out those nets … the same nets that had been filled with nothing but seaweed all night long. And then Jesus does something amazing. Something Jesus just loves to do. He takes a tiny little display of faith – in this case, Peter’s begrudging agreement to put out the nets – and rewards it a billion fold! The nets were filled to the breaking point. Peter did something that, as an accomplished fisherman, he would not have thought wise. And Jesus turned it around to become the best catch Peter ever had. At the end of the story, the fishermen leave everything, everything, and follow Jesus.
Jesus longs to do that with every one of us. Where is it that Jesus has been calling you to cast out your nets? What step of faith has the Spirit been tugging at your heart to take? It might be crazy. There’s no way you could possibly do it. But expect your tiny leap of faith to pay of a billion fold! Know that God longs to work an incredible miracle in your life so that you’ll leave everything, everything behind and follow him. All you have to do is be wise enough to do the thing you may think is the most foolish.