Why Did Luke Skip Jesus' Biggest Sermon? The Literary Genius of Luke 5

Imagine you were watching a movie about Abraham Lincoln and you finally arrive at the Gettysburg Address. A packed crowd has gathered. Lincoln climbs the podium, opens his mouth, and the scene immediately cuts to Lincoln walking out after the speech asking his wife to make him some steak.

That is how Luke has written this scene, and he did it for a very tricky reason.

Luke says, “On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret.” Luke piles up descriptions that paint the picture of an energized and abundant crowd. He says they are pressing in on him. And not only are they anticipating Jesus speaking, but Luke describes the kind of speech they are waiting for as “the word of God,” the only time up to this point in Luke where he has used this phrase. They are not waiting for Jesus to speak or to teach, but for God’s own word.

The Skipped Sermon

Luke keeps us in suspense even longer: “And he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, he asked him to put out a little from the land.”

Instead of giving us Jesus’ speech, Luke continues explaining the logistics before the sermon. Jesus has to make room because of how the crowd is pressing in, so he uses one of the boats to go out onto the water. Now we have the grand spectacle: one man out on the water with a huge crowd waiting with bated breath to hear the word of God. And Luke says, “And he sat down and taught the people from the boat.”

We zoom into a close-up of Jesus as he sits down as a teacher. We are finally ready to hear the sermon, and the next verse says, “And when he had finished speaking…”

Wait. Did we miss something or skip a page? Nope. After Luke prepares us for the most epic speech in history, he pulls the rug from under our feet, entirely skipping the sermon he just prepared us for.

Why would Luke trick us like this? To figure that out, we must keep reading to see what Luke replaced the sermon with.

The Central Action

“And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.’”

It gets even stranger. What replaces the sermon is a little story about Jesus getting food after his sermon. This is one of only two times Jesus speaks in this story. Notice a detail that will be important: when Jesus speaks, he talks about nets. He does not say, “Get me some food,” but “Let down your nets.”

“And Simon said, ‘Master, we toiled all night and took nothing, but at your word I will let down my nets.’” Simon speaks for the first of also only two times, and he similarly talks about the nets.

And now we reach the center of the story. Notice: not a sermon at the center, but an action.

And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish and their nets were breaking. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them and they came and filled both boats so that they began to sink.

How do I know this is the center? Luke has very skillfully constructed the story as a chiasm. At the beginning and end, you have everyone on land. Then you have two speeches of Jesus, then two speeches of Simon, and then these actions at the center. This makes sense because the center is the focus, and the focus of the story appears to be the miracle.

Except not quite. Luke is actually doing something even more sophisticated, a fact that slips past some scholars who see the chiasm. This central action breaks down into three parts: the breaking of the nets because of the abundance of fish on one side, the breaking of the boats because of the abundance of fish on the other, and what is central between them? “They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them.”

Why would this be at the center of the story? Isn’t this just some extra detail? No. This is the central idea.

The Literary Trap

Jesus will go on and tell Peter in verse 10 that “from now on, you will be catching men.” The whole story is about catching men. When Jesus and Peter signal for the other men to come, they are catching men. These men are like fish that must be brought out into the baptismal deep. There are multiple descriptions of the men going down: the boats are sinking, and Peter falls to his knees.

Simon also acts like a fish being caught. In both of Simon’s speeches, there is a fight against being caught. First, he tells Jesus that they fished all night, so it does not make sense to fish again. In his second speech, he tells Jesus to depart from him. Like someone being caught, he is fearful.

This is not the only trap in the story. The trickiest trap is not the catching of Peter or the other fishermen, but the catching of you, the reader. We were lured in at the beginning, told we were going to hear Jesus’ speech as the word of God. But it was a trap. The words were a ruse drawing us in to catch us. And what was the net? Jesus’ words.

Look at the literary structure again. Jesus’ words enclose this story at the beginning and the end: a literary net. At the end of the story, we not only hear God’s word, but multiple men are caught by it: Peter, James, John, and finally you.

And that, my friends, is why the Bible is art.

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