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In a socially brilliant move—one of the few we see him actually pull off—Simon Peter hedges his bets. “Master,” he says, with perhaps a hint of sarcasm, “we’ve been fishing hard all night and haven’t caught even a minnow.” Get it, teacher? Leave fishing to the fishermen! “But if you say so, I’ll let out the nets.” See that, crowd? I’m accommodating, I have respect for the religious authorities, I even have a wee bit of faith.

Simon Peter is playing the martyr, a social archetype that masks self-regard in self-disregard. Puritan John Cotton recognized the many shapes superbia takes as we strive to brand both our successes and our failures with a personal nobility, as we assert ourselves as heroes whether we are winning or losing: “It is the same act of unbeleefe, that makes a man murmure in crosses, which puffes him up in prosperity.”
Simon Peter expected a cross of sorts in this moment, but Jesus makes him indisputably prosperous: “a huge haul of fish, straining the nets past capacity” (Luke 5:4–6). All his socialization is then thrown out the window, and Simon Peter is left to make a confession; in so doing he shows that as much as we might want to be delivered from Me-Ville, a part of us will cling to it: “Master, leave. I’m a sinner and can’t handle this holiness. Leave me to myself.”

Jesus won’t leave; the miraculous catch of fish is a gift from Jesus to Peter, but it’s also a demonstrative act: I’m for you, Peter, I’m with you. And with me with you, everything changes.

Quoted from Deliver Us from Me-Ville, by David A. Zimmerman. Published by David C. Cook.