NOTES for Luk 5:1-11
Terror, it seems, is a fairly typical reaction among those who witness the miracles Jesus performs. Yet the meaning of this reaction differs from case to case. In principle, terror—or, more precisely, sacred awe—is the most natural human response to God's nearness. It has been much the same in every age, and the first of the figures mentioned in the Bible to experience this terror was Abraham.
But the spiritual content of the sacred awe that seizes a person in God's presence depends to a great extent on the person and their relationship with God. Of course, if God reveals himself to someone only as power, that person trembles precisely with terror: the terror of a finite being before an infinite power that therefore surpasses them absolutely. Abraham's terror was probably of this kind, for God was then only taking his first steps towards humanity; there could as yet be no question of the Kingdom's nearness. It was different in Gospel times, when, in the Saviour's words, the Kingdom had ‘drawn near’—near because he himself had brought it into the world.
It would seem that those living at the time of Jesus' earthly ministry could not have felt Abraham's terror before the unknown: by then, experience of God's nearness and God's love already spanned many centuries. Yet this experience, it seems, has always remained the lot of a minority, the remnant of which the prophets spoke. And these miracles terrify many of those who see in the Saviour's miracles only manifestations of a monstrous, superhuman power.
But there is another reaction: Peter's. What terrifies him is not the miracle but his own sin, his own failure to measure up to the One in whose presence he finds himself. Such terror is natural to every spiritually sober-minded person who harbours no illusions about their own spiritual life. What predominates here is neither fear of the unknown nor terror before an overwhelming power, but awareness of one's own responsibility before the fullness of God's presence implied by the Kingdom as it opens before us. Without this responsibility there can be no spiritual life. And certainly no life in the Kingdom.