WHEN I WAS a teenager, I wanted to get a job. Or to put it more accurately, I wanted pocket money, and having a job was the only way to get some. The problem was that I wasn’t really qualified to do anything. So I got the only job I could find: going door-to-door, cold-calling local businesses, trying to sell them advertising space in a free local publication. I hated trying to convince people to buy something they didn’t want, and I’m sure I sounded like I was apologizing for even bothering them.

Not surprisingly, I didn’t make a dime. And it didn’t take long to decide that being a door-to-door salesman wasn’t for me.

Later, on my first day of college, I became a Christian through a campus parachurch ministry. And whaddya know: within a matter of weeks, they had me out practicing cold-call evangelism. It still felt like I was bothering people—but some responded positively and prayed to accept Jesus as their Savior. It had nothing to do with my skills as an evangelist; it was all God, graciously working through an awkward kid.

With such stories in mind you’ll understand why, when I first started reading the gospels, I was amazed at how easy it seemed for Jesus to recruit disciples. In the gospel of Matthew, for example, Jesus is walking by the Sea of Galilee, sees Peter and Andrew at work fishing, and calls out to them, “Come, follow me, and I will send you out to fish for people” (Matt 4:19). He then sees James and John and calls them too (vss. 21-22). All four men follow Jesus, just like that, without any indication that they know him personally or even know who he is.

And what kind of invitation is that, really? It’s hard to imagine people who fish for a living suddenly saying, “Yep, that’s exactly what I want to do, fish for people instead!”

Matthew’s version of the story is nearly identical to Mark’s. From there, Mark narrates episodes that are already familiar to us from Luke. First, Jesus casts an impure spirit out of a man in the synagogue of Capernaum. Then he heals Peter’s mother-in-law. At sunset, more townspeople come for healing, and in the morning, Jesus finds a solitary place to pray (Mark 1:21-39).

But wait. Whereas in Matthew and Mark, these episodes happen after Jesus calls his first disciples, in Luke, they seem to happen before. It’s in chapter 5 that Luke tells the story of Jesus directing Peter to a miraculous catch of fish, a story that ends with these familiar words:

Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.” So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him. (Luke 5:10b-11)

This story, unique to Luke, helps make sense of the invitation to fish for people instead of…well, fish. I imagine Jesus saying it with a smile on his face, perhaps with a laugh: You think that catch of fish was something? Watch what happens when you start fish something even more important…

In Luke, therefore, the invitation isn’t a cold call as it is in Matthew and Mark. Jesus has already been in Peter’s home, and has healed his mother-in-law. Indeed, the way Luke tells the story assumes that we already know who Peter is. Listen to the first three verses:

One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, the people were crowding around him and listening to the word of God. He saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat. (Luke 5:1-3)

Jesus gets into the boat “belonging to Simon.” He doesn’t say who Simon is, because we already know, and Luke is busy setting up the next story. What he calls “the Lake of Gennesaret” is the Sea of Galilee; Gennesaret was the name of an area of land near Capernaum. It’s not the Sabbath, so fishermen are out working, and Jesus isn’t teaching in the synagogue. Rather, he’s standing on the shore of the lake and the crowd is pressing in to hear him speak.

It would have been difficult for him to see everyone, and conversely, hard for the people to hear. So Jesus gets into Peter’s boat, and asks him to put a little distance between them and the crowd. When Peter had done this, Jesus took the traditional teaching posture, as he did in the synagogue: he sat down, and then finished the sermon.

You might think this was a bad idea; wouldn’t the increased distance make it even harder for the crowd to hear him?

Surprisingly, no. Sound engineers have actually studied the place where the incident may have occurred. Supposedly, calm water plus the topography of the surrounding terrain would have made for excellent acoustics.

Don’t ask me how. It’s as mysterious to me as the so-called “Bench of Whispers” in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. The massive, semicircular granite bench boasts an odd and famous property. If a person on one end of the bench leans back and whispers with their head next to the stone, someone sitting at the other end can hear what they say perfectly clearly—over forty feet away!

Thus, it seems that Jesus already knew that the boat would make the perfect platform for him to finish his teaching. But as we’ll see, the real lesson comes with what happens next.

So how do we reconcile Luke’s account with Matthew and Mark’s? Did Jesus call his first disciples before or after the exorcism and healings in Capernaum?

This is purely speculative, but this is how I would read it. Mark’s account was written first, and in it he telescopes two stories into one: the cold call of his first disciples, and his later invitation for them to become fishers of people. Matthew follows Mark’s lead. But Luke leaves out the initial cold call and tells the full story that makes sense of Jesus’ invitation to fish for people. If that’s right, then Peter was already something of a disciple before Jesus healed his mother-in-law, and made a full and sacrificial commitment after Jesus did a miracle that touched him at the core of his identity as a fisherman.

Let’s take a look at the miracle itself next.