The end of the argument about teachers. Paul has said the planters are nothing and the growth is Theos's; now he closes with a sentence that turns the whole quarrel inside out.
What happens
"Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you considers himself wise in this age, let him become a fool, so as to become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of Theos, for it is written: 'He catches the wise in their own ruses,' and again: 'Yahweh knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.' So let no one boast about human beings, for everything belongs to you — Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or the present or the future: all belong to you, and you to Messiah, and Messiah to Theos."
What to notice
The move in the last two verses is the finest thing in the chapter and easy to read past. The Corinthians have been saying egō men eimi Paulou — "I amof Paul," I belong to Paul. Paul's correction does not tell them to stop having favorites. He reverses the direction of the possession.Panta hymōn estin — everything is yours. Paul is yours. Apollos is yours. Cephas is yours. They had made themselves the property of their teachers; he tells them the teachers were always the property of the church. Then the list runs off the end of the human scale — "the world, life, death, the present, the future" — before the chain closes: hymeis de Christou, Christos de theou. The only ownership running the other way is the last two links. One more thing worth having: 1 Corinthians 3:19 quotes Job 5:13, and it is the only direct quotation of the book of Job anywhere in the New Testament.
An entrance liturgy, almost certainly sung antiphonally at a temple gate: a question shouted from outside, an answer given from within, and at the end the great call for the doors to lift their heads and let the King of glory in. Today's selection is the first half — the approach, not the entry.
The selected verses
Psalm 24:1–2."Yahweh's is the earth and all it holds, the world and those who live in it. For he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers." Psalm 24:3–4ab."Who may go up the mountain of Yahweh? Who may stand in his holy place? The clean of hands and pure of heart, who has not given his soul to what is vain." Psalm 24:5–6."He shall receive a blessing from Yahweh, right relationship from the Theos of his rescue. Such is the generation that seeks him, that seeks the face of the Theos of Jacob."
What to notice
Psalm 24:1 and 1 Corinthians 3:21 are two settlements of the same question, and they do not obviously agree. La-Yahwehha-aretz u-melo'ah — the earth is Yahweh's and its fullness. Paul says panta hymōn, everything is yours. Both make a claim about the whole world, and the reconciliation is the reading's last clause: all things are yours, and you are Messiah's, and Messiah is Theos's. You own it the way a son owns his father's house. Note too Psalm 24:4, lo nasa la-shav nafshi — literally "has not lifted up his soul to emptiness," which is also the standard idiom for swearing a false oath; and the same word shav sits inside Paul's second quotation, Psalm 94:11.
Luke has moved this scene. In Mark and Matthew the calling of the first disciples happens before any miracle at all — four men drop their nets for a stranger. Luke puts it after Capernaum, which means his Simon has already watched this man clear a synagogue of an unclean spirit and lift his own mother-in-law out of a fever. Luke's Peter is not following a stranger. He is following someone who has already been in his house.
What happens
The crowd presses in at the lake of Gennesaret. Jesus gets into Simon's boat, asks him to put out a little from shore, and teaches sitting down from the water. When he finishes: "Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch." Simon answers, "Master, we have worked hard all night and caught nothing; but at your command I will lower the nets." They catch so many fish that the nets begin to tear; both boats are filled to the point of sinking. Simon Peter falls at his knees: "Depart from me, master, for I am a sinful man." Jesus says, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men." They bring the boats to shore, leave everything, and follow him.
What to notice
Watch how Simon addresses him. At the start he says epistata — a word Luke alone uses, meaning overseer, foreman, the man in charge of a job; what you call a competent superior. After the catch he says kyrie, master, and calls himself anēr hamartōlos, a sinful man. The vocabulary changes in the middle of the scene, and the trigger is not a teaching. It is fish. And the closing promise uses a word Luke chose carefully: anthrōpous esē zōgrōn — not the ordinary verb for fishing. Zōgreō compounds zōos, alive, with agreuō, to catch: to take alive. It is the Septuagint's word for sparing captives instead of putting them to the sword (Numbers 31:15, Joshua 2:13). Every fish in that boat is dying as he says it — which is precisely why the word is not fish.
How They Fit Together
Competence overruled, and an assignment instead of an absolution
A boat, a night's failed work, and a catch belonging to neither the fisherman nor his skill
The Gospel is a story about competence being overruled by someone with no standing in the matter. Simon is a professional; he has fished this lake his whole working life; he has just spent the entire night — the right time to fish — and taken nothing. The instruction he receives is to try again in the wrong part of the day, in deep water, from a carpenter's son out of Nazareth. His reply is one of the most honest sentences in the gospels: we worked all night and caught nothing, but at your word I will lower the nets. He does not say he expects it to work.
Which is exactly Paul's "let him become a fool, so as to become wise." Not a recommendation of stupidity — Simon's expertise is not wrong, and the night really was empty. What is asked is that the expertise stop being the final authority in its own field. And the result is not a modest correction; the nets tear and two boats begin to go under. The first thing the deep water produces is more than the equipment can hold.
Then Peter's response, the strangest beat in the story. He does not celebrate. He asks the man to leave: depart from me, for I am a sinful man. Nothing has been said about his sins. What he has just seen is competence and abundance arriving from somewhere other than himself, and the immediate effect is not gratitude but exposure. Psalm 24 knows this reaction — who may go up the mountain of Yahweh? who may stand in his holy place? — and asks it at the gate, before entering, in exactly Peter's posture. And then the answer to all of it is "do not be afraid," followed by a job. Nobody addresses Peter's confession; it is neither denied nor absolved, but overtaken by an assignment — which is its own kind of answer, and the one Paul gives the Corinthians too.
A Question to Sit With
Simon's objection was not skepticism; it was data. He had worked all night, in the right conditions, with the right equipment, and there was nothing. Everything he knew said the water was empty. And he lowered the nets anyway — not because he had been persuaded, but because he had been asked by someone he had reason to take seriously. Where in my life have I let a well-founded conclusion become a closed question, and who has standing to ask me to put out into the deep one more time?