Third Sunday after Epiphany
Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Come and follow me, and I will make you fish for people, Jesus says to Peter and Andrew, James and John. Many generations of church kids have grown up singing the Fishers of Men song, even with motions. You know he one?
“I will make you fishers of men, fishers of men, fishers of men.
I will make you fishers of men if you follow me.”
The motions we learned in Sunday school reflect the kind of fishing most of us are familiar with, the fishing for a single fish with a rod and hook. If you think of it, that’s not really a great image for inviting people. It’s quite predatory, with the fish dying and the fisher alone benefiting.
We have several terms of phrase in the English language from the world of fishing, and most of them have a negative connotation. An addict is hooked on drugs. Someone has been lured into a bad business deal. Something is fishy. We have to reel in that person. I want to get my hook into him. Interesting, right?
So what does Jesus mean when he calls the disciples to become fishers of men? Surely Jesus doesn’t want us to engage in predatory or deceitful practices?
Commentator Dennis Hamm helped me wrap my head around this.
The first thing he points out is that fishing in the Sea of Galilea in Jesus’ day was rarely done with rod and hook. It was done with nets, like the ones James and John and their father were mending, like the one Andrew and Peter are casting. These nets were large and round and had weights tied to it all around the outside edge. Fishers would cast these nets over the water; the weights would make them sink to the bottom, corralling any fish underneath. Then the fisher would pull the net up by the center, which would make all the weights contract at the bottom so that the fish couldn’t escape.
Thus there is a sense of gathering in this image. Fishing is not one on one between the fisher and the hooked fish. It is about a whole group being gathered together.
Second, the commentator reminds us that Jesus and his contemporaries as well as the original readers of the gospels all knew their scriptures very well. So they wiould have known about the prophecy of Jeremiah in the 16th chapter of his book. There, the prophet proclaims: 14 Therefore, the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when it shall no longer be said, “As the Lord lives who brought the people of Israel up out of the land of Egypt,” 15 but “As the Lord lives who brought the people of Israel up out of the land of the north and out of all the lands where he had driven them.” For I will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their ancestors. 16 I am now sending for many fishermen, says the Lord, and they shall catch them.
God will send fishers of men and women who will gather his scattered people and bring them home. Those being caught by the fishermen get to return from exile and live free in the promised land. In this context, being caught by fishers is a good thing, a blessing, a homecoming, a return to God.
With these two thoughts in mind, Jesus’ call for the disciples describes a gathering of people into the presence of God. The community of the faithful is tasked this gathering. Which brings us to the reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians this morning.
What an interesting text for us on the day of our congregational meeting! Paul reminds the whole faith community that all the members are one, that their unity stems from Christ, and that they should strive to be united in mind and purpose.
Why is unity among God’s people so important?
Well, get a group of pastors together and they can give you an earful about conflict in congregations! One pastor told of two cabinets in his congregation’s fellowship hall, both holding dishes and silverware, both locked, because one church group didn’t want to share their stuff with another and vice versa.
In the first church I served, a small rural congregation, there were two members of council who just didn’t get along. You could feel the air bristling between them. One day, my husband asked another council member what was the matter with those two. The answer he got – and I kid you not! – was, “Oh, their grandmothers didn’t like each other, either.” The conflict was now in the third generation!
Being in a group where there is conflict is not fun. It is exhausting, and the group usually doesn’t get much done. That’s a problem.
However, a bigger problem is that such a church will not encourage new people to join. Such a church is not effective at fishing for people.
When the pastor with the two locked dish cabinets came back for a reunion years later, guess what: The cabinets were still locked, and the church had not grown.
When my husband and I accepted the call to our last congregation in Pennsylvania, we moved into a cute little house. We moved in with our three children, aged from preschool to 2nd grade. We did all the repairs and adjustments you make when moving into a new house, and then happily put away the tools and looked forward to settling in.
Then came the day when I got home from work and could tell right away that something was wrong. There was tension in the air. The two younger kids were in a corner of the family room, playing very quietly and trying to be invisible. Our eldest child was sitting on the sofa, obviously unhappy, looking at me with an expression that said, “Please rescue me!” My husband was in the kitchen cooking dinner, making a tremendous noise with pots and pans and cabinet doors; you could hear how angry he was.
I carefully approached and asked what was the matter. He told me to go look into the room the two younger girls shared. There I found a huge hole in the ceiling above the girls’ bunk beds. Turns out, my eldest had been lying on his back on the top bunk, had pressed his feet against the ceiling, had pressed too hard, and broke through the drywall. And that just after we had put away all the tools.
If I hadn’t been a member of the family, I would have left the house. The tension I felt immediately upon entering would have driven me away.
Research has shown that new visitors to a church make up their mind about the congregation in the first minute of being there. Long before worship begins, before they hear the pastor preach or the music or are invited to the communion table, they already know whether or not they will come back. It’s a gut feeling, and it has a lot to do with the atmosphere they perceive when they enter. Is there tension in the air, like at my house that day? They will never come back. Is there joy and harmony? They are much more likely to return.
In our mission statement here at Calvary, we acknowledge how important it is for a congregation to be in nourishing relationships. Our statement is: As followers of Jesus, we are called to be an inclusive and compassionate community, where everyone is connected in relationship with God and each other to foster wholeness of mind and soul.
In order to fish for people, to bring them back into the loving presence of God, to offer them a homecoming into a faith family, to connect them in relationship with God and each other and foster their spiritual well-being, we need to be united in the same mind and the same purpose, as Paul writes today.
The Apostle Paul is adamant that unity does not stem from agreeing on everything, or on all being alike. On the contrary, he later celebrates all the different gifts people contribute to the life of the congregation and its calling to fish for people.
The church’s unity comes from Christ. Christ gathered us, fished for us first, brought us into the presence of God. We were baptized in the name of Christ and blessed with the Holy Spirit. With that baptism, our own agendas fell away, drowned so to speak, and we adopted Christ’s agenda. Andrew and Peter, James and John leave behind their nets; similarly, we leave behind our pet projects and pet peeves and align behind the leadership of Jesus Christ.
We remember that we are united in our conviction that Christ is the light that shines in the darkness, that in Christ we encounter God’s love and wisdom and grace, that Christ died and rose for us, that the life of a disciple, though sometimes challenging, is a joyful, fulfilled, meaningful way of life.
And so we do our best to work out our differences and conflicts (and no group of people can avoid having those now and then). We work them out respectfully and transparently and faithfully and in a way that serves the whole body of Christ.
This church is really good at that. It is the most harmonious, healthy congregation I have ever served. Let us continue that tradition as we meet today and as we serve in the weeks and months to come.
So that this body of Christ can continue to serve the world by fishing for people and bringing them home to the love of God. Amen.