Born to Fish:  Matthew 4:12 - 23
January 27, 2008 - Third Sunday in Epiphany
Elena Delgado, preaching

 

            What are you fishing for?  I mean, what are you searching for?  We are all, someone has said, “hungry for hope.”  What is that thing, that experience, that way that will satisfy your hungry heart?  For some, it may be fishing for meaningful work or simply an income.  Are you fishing for a relationship or keeping a marriage together?  Is it approval, acknowledgement, attention?  Are you trawling for financial success, security, power?  If you are a young adult, are you looking for a place to cast your net of ideas?  If you are retired or well past retirement age, are you wanting to spread your wealth of experience and wisdom?  Every one of us is fishing for something.  Seems as though we are born to fish.
            True for brothers Peter and Andrew, and Zebedee’s sons, James and John.   Better said, these men were born into the fishing industry.   Catching fish was their everyday life.  No weekend fishermen, this was their means of providing a living for themselves and their families; their hard-won catch implied well-being for everyone around them, as well.  These men were mending, tossing, hauling nets: they were fishing for their very lives. 
             I wonder how long Jesus had watched the rhythmic throw of nets, the strength it required, the patience and endurance of this work, when he realized there was something about this work, this kind of fishing, that would help him cast a new, fresh vision of God’s reign for those very men, their families, their community – a vision that would catch their imagination, their lives, right where they were. 
            Certainly these rough and tumble men had been well-tested in physical and psychological endurance:  the heavy heave of wet nets, the sudden, dangerous storms that blow up on the lake.  They were men who know the necessity of patience, of dropping their nets and waiting for the haul to begin, not too soon, not too late.  At the end of every day, they checked the nets for tears or tangles – any hole or unwelcome knot would become bigger if not mended immediately.  Care was needed. 
Peter and Andrew, James and John – their families –also knew their work involved a lot of people.  If you’ve ever seen seine fishing, you know it takes at least three or four people to stand on the shore at one end of the 50, 60 or 100 foot net.  Four or more people hazard into the surf with the other end pushing, struggling against the surf to water almost over their heads and then turning around - turning against the current, so the current pushes the fish into the net.  It’s hard work to drag a long net against the current.  And everyone is needed at both ends. 
“Follow me, you fishermen.  I’ll make you fish-for-men.”  What a great way to start a conversation with these men.  With this sing-song, comic appeal, it’s as though Jesus is opening with a good joke – something that only fishermen would truly appreciate.  Something they would understand because it was said to them in words they would catch.  
 “Follow me, you fishing-people, and I will make you fish-for-people!1
One preacher has been playing around with some other possibilities:

Follow me, you farmers, and I will make you farm for people.
Follow me, you builders and I will make you builders of God’s kingdom.
Follow me, you tailors and seamstresses.  I will make you sew our lives together as well as our clothes. 
Follow me you, instrumentalists.  I make you instrumental to others!
Follow me, you friends, you parents, you children, you siblings, you neighbors, you strangers, you hosts and guests, I will make you all these things – to every other human being.2

I add this one after viewing “Hotel Rwanda” the other night in the Case Library.  The movie is based upon the true story of Paul Rusesabagina, hotel manager in an exclusive resort in Kigali, who saved the lives of more than 1300 Hutu and Tutsi people and their children during the country’s civil war in the early 1990’s.  When the world closed its eyes, he opened his arms.  Follow me, you hotel managers, and I will make you the key holder to a place of refuge for the frightened and the hopeless. 

Follow me, you fishermen, I will make you fish-for-men.  With those words, men born to haul fish from sunup to sundown, until their dying breath, were, suddenly, born into something big, stronger than any net they had handled.  All they had, all they had ever done – their hard work, their failures, too – was caught up in a larger vision, pulled into possibility by the net of God’s grace.   They would see, really see – themselves, those closest to them, and notice for the first time everyone else who had been there all along.  They were being born into their true life.  The work would still require endurance, patience, care, community.  They had all that.  Now as anglers for God, they would see others, themselves, the world from God’s angle; the angle love and justice, kindness, and forgiveness.  They would never be the same. 
That these men were not learned, wealthy, credentialed did not prevent Jesus from seeing their possibility.  That they failed miserably, at times, to the task before them is known:  Peter denying Jesus at his arrest and conviction. Even that did not halt Jesus’ call again to Peter to “feed my sheep.”  Jesus’ call to the brothers begins not with what he knows but with what they know.  Jesus’ call to each of us begins the same way.  It begins not with what he does best, but with what we do best.  “On our turf and in our language, insider jokes and all.”3

For those who struggle with this image of “fishing” because it suggests entrapment, for those who fight the question of discipleship, or tug against the demands of it: its rigor, its patience, its communal and contextual demands; those who wonder if they are worthy or have anything to offer to the work, hunger and hope of discipleship, the call is cast out again and again, even now.
Albert Schweitzer in his seminal work, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, casts this possibility:

He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old by the lakeside, he came to those men who knew him not.  He speaks to us the same words, "Follow thou me!", and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfill for our time.  He commands. And to those who obey him, whether they be wise or simple, he will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in his fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who he is.4

So, what are you fishing for?  What are we, Westminster Presbyterian Church, on the shore of Lake Erie, what are we fishing for?  To the brothers Jesus said, ‘Follow me’ and they left their nets and followed him.  We know what the brothers did.  The question is, How will you, how will we respond?