“Gone Fishing With Jesus”
First UMC Fort Dodge
January 27, 2008
Mark Haverland
Matthew 4:12‑23
Now when Jesus heard that John had
been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in
Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what
had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: "Land of
Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee
of the Gentiles ‑‑ the people who sat in darkness have seen a great
light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has
dawned." From that time Jesus began to proclaim, "Repent, for the
kingdom of heaven has come near." As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he
saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a
net into the sea ‑‑ for they were fishermen. And he said to them,
"Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." Immediately they
left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other
brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their
father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left
the boat and their father, and followed him. Jesus went throughout Galilee,
teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and
curing every disease and every sickness among the people.
A few years ago,
while in Wyoming at our usual vacation spot, I went on an overnight trip into
the mountains on horseback. We had about
a three hour ride into the campsite where we stayed just one night and then
rode back out again. The trail meandered
along a boisterous mountain stream through thick woods full of pines and
poplars with occasional meadows alive with splashes of sunshine and colorful
wild flowers. Dexter Smith, the wrangler
and friend who led the trip, observed during our ride how different the horses
reacted to being out in the wilds as opposed to the dogs, which also came
along. As the horses stayed to the path
and exhibited a stolid determination to get the trip over with, the dogs raced
back and forth with hyperactive enthusiasm.
They chased every squirrel they could find, no doubt buoyed by the fact
that they actually caught one. “That’s
the difference between being a carnivore and a herbivore,” Dexter said. “The hunters love being out in the wild. But the hunted would just as soon stay in the
barn.” It makes a lot of difference in
life if you are the hunted or the hunter.
Jesus did not
seem to know much about hunting, but he was very familiar with fishing - which
has the same dynamics. In fact, fishing
is a familiar biblical metaphor for the life of the Christian. Sometimes we are
the fishers as in this morning’s scripture reading. Sometimes we are the fish, as in the
following passage from Matthew 13:47-48
Again the kingdom of heaven is like a
net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was
full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw
out the bad.
When Jesus
goes fishing and catches us, we want to be deemed good enough to keep. Last week I told the story of taking my wife
on her first fishing trip. I described
how startled she was as the fish gave out a loud croaking sound as she squeezed
its sides. It hadn’t occurred to her
that successful fishing meant that the fish had to die. This is a problem, of course. It’s hard to fish if you don’t like the
thought of something taken from its natural element to die. But this is what happens when God’s net traps
us. God is not distressed to scoop us
out of the waters of life and watch us croak to the life we have been living. God rejoices when he catches us and puts us
into his creel. God doesn’t mind that we
die to our old and familiar ways of living.
God doesn’t care that we fight and flop about in frustrating and vain
attempts to escape his net. God wants us
to die to sin and live forever in the kingdom of God. In fact we hope that when God lifts us from
the net, we are “keepers” and are not thrown back into the darkness of our
current lives.
In this
morning’s scripture, however, we are not the fish. We are the fishers. Jesus wanted Simon and Andrew, James and John
not just to be fish caught in the nets of God.
Jesus wants his disciples to be fishers of people themselves. He wants them and us to go fishing with Jesus. In other words, Jesus wants them to help
others know the saving grace of God.
Jesus introduces the encounter with James and John with the call to
“repent.” To repent is to change, to
change one's mind, to change one's way of thinking, to change one's behavior.
It is not merely a matter of going out to dinner thinking you are going to have
a steak, but when you look at the menu, you decide you would rather have
chicken. That’s just changing your mind.
To repent is to change who you are.
This is a point made often in the NT, particularly by Paul when he says
in a variety of ways: "Put off the old person. Put on Christ."
Jesus wants his
disciples and everyone else to repent. The
way you repent, it seems to me, is to let Jesus scoop you up in his net and
take you forever from the familiar environment where you now live. The simplicity of his words conceals the
important consequences of his command. "Follow me,” is all he says -- all
he needs to say-- to change forever the lives of these two simple
fishermen. It's a dramatic picture. The
two young men leave their nets, their father, and their livelihood to follow
Jesus. All that is familiar, comfortable and life-sustaining, they leave behind
with hardly a second thought, or so it seems.
Have you ever
done such a thing? Leave something
behind – something important – something familiar – something comfortable – to
take on something new? Throughout our
lives, we face some of these big decisions that call us to leave one thing for
another. When we do, we close the door on some options forever. I'm thinking
mostly of the big choices we make, like what career to pursue, whom to marry,
what college to attend. Out of the many choices you have when you face those
big decisions, when you choose one you cut off the others. Sometimes we don’t even know the
consequences. Our lives are full of such
moments of decision that change the course of our future in ways far beyond our
understanding.
Seldom is the
choice as dramatic for us as it is for Simon, Andrew, James and John. They may have had some clues about where
their choice to follow Jesus would lead them, but I doubt they knew all that would
happen to them and to the world because of the choice they made.
Every so often
a cult of Christians gets convinced that the end of the world and final coming
of Christ are immanent. They sell all
their property and leave their families to be ready. Like the early disciples, the commitment of
such groups to Jesus is even stronger than their loyalty and obligations to
their kin. How sad it must be for
parents to see their children ignore their relations and march off to follow
some religious kook. Do you suppose
James and John had mothers or wives who wondered why the two didn’t come home
for supper? Did the families of Simon
and Andrew grieve their death to the world and rebirth in discipleship to
Jesus? How did Zebedee run the family
fishing business without the help of his two sons? Did the four disciples stop to consider the
costs to those who loved them and depended on them? It’s tough on lots of people when someone is
caught in God’s net.
And
once caught, Jesus asks us to catch others. “Follow me and I will make you
fishers of people,” Jesus says. You and
I are here today in this church as contemporary disciples of Jesus, having been
caught in his net. Just like those sons
of Zebedee, you and I have been called to help Jesus catch people, to throw out
the wide gospel net and bring people into the kingdom, this new family that
Jesus is forming. We need to go fishing
with Jesus or maybe it’s for Jesus, on his behalf, that is.
So, have you
caught fish lately? As a member of Christ’s
Church, our job is to catch fish for Jesus.
The annual conference of the UMC has a mission statement which puts it
this way: “Make Disciples, Develop Leaders, Transform the World”.
Have you
reeled anyone in lately? When people are asked why they are not active in a
church, the primary reason given is that no one ever asked me. So have you asked anyone in recent
memory? When is the last time you have
been fishing with Jesus?
I suppose the
truth of the matter is that we resist being caught in God’s net is because the
consequences frighten us. And we resist
catching others because we dare not demand of others what we cannot demand of
ourselves.
I was
surprised to learn that the churches which demand the most get the best
response. Those churches thrive where
joining a church takes weeks of lessons, financial support is a strict and high
standard, and worship attendance is a unflagging requirement. By comparison, we United Methodist make few
demands. Tolerance and diversity are our
values. Decline is our fate.
Would we do
better to take seriously the consequences of following Jesus? Should we demand that like Simon and Andrew members
of FUMCFD leave their normal lives and obligations behind to follow Jesus? Should we, like James and John, fish
aggressively for others helping them die to their normal lives also?
I think the
answer to these questions is “no.” We
are not called out of our ordinary lives to abandon all other allegiances in
order to dedicate ourselves exclusively to God’s work. Some people may be called to this kind of
total commitment, but it is not what most of us are asked to do. The United Methodist belief is that we are
called to live out the Gospel in the midst of our ordinary lives. You are not called to stop being a teacher,
salesman, electrician, clerk, student, carpenter, parent, spouse or any other
normal human enterprise and join a monastery.
You are not called to abandon your family and friends to follow
Christ. You are not called to give up
being a citizen of the world. Instead,
you are called to bring Christ to all of those ordinary obligations. You are called to transform the world by your
Christian witness, not to abandon the world because of your commitment to
God. In fact, it is nonsensical from our
UM point of view to abandon life as God has given it to us in order to serve
God. We ask no one to abandon their
human obligations in order to follow Jesus.
We don’t even
expect or require that people belong to our church or any church. The Sidewalk Sunday School of which you are
so proud does not ask the children or parents to join our church in order to
participate in the program – nor should they.
Our goal with this program is just to bring the love of God to those who
otherwise might ever know that God loves them.
Perhaps we should demand more of people who belong to our churches, but
once again, it is not our way as United Methodists. I do not resent it when a family in the
neighborhood calls to say that their grandfather from down the block has
died. He lived in the shadow of the
church steeple all his life, but scoffed at all that religion stuff. It was beneath him to come to worship with
all us deluded religious types. I rush
out to visit the family, comfort the grieving relatives, and minister to those
who have always rejected us. I do so in
the name of Jesus, who was rejected by almost everyone, but brought the grace
of God even to those who didn’t want it.
I occasionally get asked to do a wedding for divorced people whose own
churches won’t marry a divorced person.
I always do so. I will without
hesitation marry the children of those who belong to our church but never
participate and give us no money - and even for non-members whom we have never
heard of. I will bless the union of any
two people who sincerely seek God’s presence in their commitment to each
other. I will pray in their grief with
those who reject us for whatever reason.
I will confirm anyone who wants to be confirmed even though they act
like we are torturing them by making them come to confirmation class and even
though they skip out as often as possible.
There is no one whose sin is so great that we do not welcome him or her
into the communion of the faithful. There
is no one whose soul is so black that we deny access to the grace of God found
in the love we share with all God’s children.
It’s not our job to judge each other; our job is to love each
other. William Sloan Coffin is right,
“the church exists for the primary benefit of non-members.
Jesus is
knocking on the door to every heart.
Just as we cannot open that door and let Jesus into someone else’s
heart, neither should we place a bolt on that door so that it will never open. Our goal is not to die to the world, when we
land in God’s net. Our goal is to be set
free to swim again as new and renewed creatures of God’s kingdom. Our goal is not to snatch people from their
normal lives and force them into our understanding of God’s will for them. Our goal is to help them open the door to the
Christ who knocks, so that Jesus can transform their lives by the power of the Holy
Spirit at work within them.
This may not
be a recipe for rapid church growth. But
it is our United Methodist way of remaining faithful to the Gospel call to love
our neighbor and welcome sinners. If it
means we get caught up in the fishing nets of God and are changed forever, so
be it. If it means that others get
captured by those same nets and changed forever, then so be it. It doesn’t
matter to us if we are the hunter or the hunted. It’s all catch and release in the Kingdom of
God. Our task is simply to be
faithful. I certainly don’t think our
task is to make everyone a Christian.
God created the world with a diversity of human faith traditions on
purpose. God knew that none of us would
get it completely right. All religions,
including out own, are imperfect. All
religions are human creations and bear the imperfections and frailties of human
beings. Our job is to spread the grace
of God around by competing to see who can be most loving and who can do the
most good. Religion is a personal matter
between each person and his or her maker.
We should take our evangelism marching orders from the rose. A rose does not need to preach. It simply spreads its fragrance. The fragrance is its sermon. The most effective way of preaching the
Gospel is to live it in one’s own life and thus let our lives speak for us even
as the rose needs no speech but simply spreads its perfume for all to admire
and desire.
Offertory
Prayer
Our gifts seem
so small, dear God, in light of your never-ending love. Thank you for honoring
our gifts by accepting them and blessing them. Thank you for lifting us out of
our self-concern and placing before us the needs of others. Give us your
strength in our daily struggles with selfishness. In Jesus' name,
Amen.
Prayer of
Thanksgiving
It is both
duty and delight, gracious God, to thank you and praise you for your mighty
works revealed in the stories of scripture. The story of Jesus' birth, still
fresh in our memories of Christmas, was not your final work. He grew and
matured and was shaped for his life's work so that after his baptism and God's
naming him as the Son, the Beloved one, he began to walk the path of service no
longer alone. He called to his side ordinary people, fishing people, and they
dropped what they were doing to join him and his cause. They taught, proclaimed
good news, and brought healing to the crowds. We have seen your light in their
lives, and we trust you are still calling people to Jesus' side in today's
world, including us. We thank you for the honor and the challenge of being
called to Jesus' side to do your work in the world. We thank you for the
example of Peter and Andrew, James and John who heard Jesus' call and said
"yes" to that call. May the immediacy of your calling be heard in our
world today so that many may be drawn to the mission of Jesus even now. In
Jesus' name,
Amen.