Epiphany 3

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Epiphany 3
PROPER: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: January 23, 2000



TEXT: Mark 1:14-20 - Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” . . . And Jesus said to them (the disciples), “Follow me and I will make
you fish for people.”

ISSUE: Jesus is not merely inviting the new disciples to follow him down the road and listen to his teachings. He is calling and creating them to be something different. They are to participate with him in being people of good judgment. They are called upon to help people see the difference between the ways of the world and the way of God. In the same sense to be a follower of Jesus is not merely a matter of attending church and putting money in the offering. It is a matter of being changed and taking on the judgmental qualities of knowing what is of God, and what is of the world. Discipleship is unity and partnership with Christ who teaches dependence upon the only dependable patron, God.

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It is so important that we do not trivialize the message in the Gospel for today. Today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark is the account of Jesus calling some of his first disciples. According to Mark’s account Jesus’ ministry begins with the death of John the Baptist. It is believed by many scholars that Jesus was himself a disciple of John’s. With the death of John the Baptist by Herod, Jesus begins to strike out on his own, and begins to call some of his own disciples. You will notice that Jesus picks up on the same message of John the Baptist, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” It is a message based on the importance of repentance, or turning around, and reclaiming one’s allegiance to God. It has the same and real impact of judgment. It’s time for return to God.

The calling is marked by Jesus saying to a group of fishermen who are busy mending their nets, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Mark implies they immediately drop everything and follow him down the road. What Mark may be trying to convey is that there was great power in Jesus’ words that was very compelling to some people, and that in fact Jesus did have a significant number of disciples. However, it is not likely that people, especially these fishermen, spontaneously just dropped everything to follow Jesus. News traveled fast in these days, and the fact that Jesus was proclaiming a message of hope, the coming of God’s Kingdom, would have created news and discussion. Fishermen had it extremely difficult. Their work was hard, and they were heavily taxed and paid large sums for the rights to fish to government tax collectors. They formed family corporations as implied by the fact that James and John are sons of Zebedee and Simon and Andrew were sons of Jonah. It is highly likely that they knew of Jesus’ work and message, and shared as many people did in the discontent of the period which Jesus seemed to be addressing. The only one you could count upon was the Justice of God, and God’s Kingdom, and to reclaim that was the only hope. With this teaching and message, the disciples consider following him. And indeed, to leave family and business behind was a very traumatic thing to do, and you Simon, Andrew, James and John would have had to have good cause.

When Jesus calls the disciples, he reportedly says to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Those words sound innocent enough, even a little clever to call fishermen to fish for people. Again we get the idea that they were all going to go down the road with Jesus and listen to his parables and words of wisdom, and sort of help manage the crowds for Jesus. But it is so important here to know that these words like so much of what Jesus did and said was rooted in Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus says that he is going to make the disciples to fish for people. It means that in following him, they would be made, or created or shaped, into something different. Their work and place with him would be of great significance. Following him did not merely mean walking behind him down the road. They were called into partnership with him, and they would be an integral part of that ministry which called people to repentance or change, or to become aware of the Kingdom, or Reign of God.

The whole expression to be fishers of people had roots in the prophetic writings. Jeremiah (16:16) wrote at a time of coming punishment, “The Lord says, ‘I am sending for many fishermen to come and catch these people . . . I will make them pay double for their sin and wickedness, because they have defiled my land with idols that are as lifeless as corpses, and have filled it with their false gods.’” The calling of fishermen in this instance is an issue of judgment, and the prophetic call to end idolatry, alienation, and sin, and to restore the faithful to God.

A passage from Amos (4:2) uses the fisherman imagery again in a judgmental sense: “Listen to this, you women of Samaria, who grow fat like the well-fed cows of Bashan, who mistreat the weak, oppress the poor, and demand that your husbands keep you supplied with liquor! As the Sovereign Lord is holy, he has promised, “The days will come when they will drag you away with hooks; every one of you will be like a fish on a hook. You will be dragged to the nearest break in the wall and thrown out.” God’s people are always under judgment, and the unfaithful will be cast out.

Note well the Parable of the Net, told by Jesus in Matthew (13:47f): “Also the Kingdom of heaven is like this. Some fishermen throw their net out in the lake and catch all kinds of fish. When the net is full, they pull it to shore and sit down to divide the fish: the good one go into the buckets, the worthless one are thrown away.”

What are the implications of these references as they relate to the calling of Jesus’ disciples to be Fishers of Men? They are called upon to be prophetic, to be teachers, to be astutely able to make judgments between the ways of the world and the ways of God. They are called with Jesus to be a challenging force in world between what is right, what it is of God, and what is evil. No easy task!

When you understand the calling of the fishermen in this sense it gives a whole new appreciation of the story. We think discipleship is following Jesus down the road to be a kind of corps of ushers. We think of following Jesus as a matter of being good people who come to church on Sunday and who contribute. We get an extra feather in our cap if we dare to bring someone else to church with us, and that makes us really fishers of people.

A colleague of mine in a study group that I am a part of remarked that back in the fifties our churches were relatively full of people. They were good times following the War, and the church seemed to be doing well. Lots of contributing folks in the pews. But when the 60’s came and the church’s leadership began to talk about Civil Rights and bringing an end to racism, and putting some of its money in grants where its mouth was, there was a significant dramatic exodus of people from the church! Membership wise we’ve not yet recovered. But the point and issue is that when the church boldly followed Christ in terms of holding up to the light the evil injustices of racism in the world, many of the followers, and so called fishermen, left and went back to their nets. Some dare to be the fisher folk of Christ and met the challenge and still embrace the church today.

This issue of discipleship and being fisher people with Christ is important. We have to be so careful that we don’t either trivialize or sentimentalize the calling. Just sitting in a pew and giving, and hugging on one another is not what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Even the pagans can do that. We are called upon to walk with Christ discerning what is it exactly that God is calling us to do and to be. We need to be prayerful. We need to be students of Scripture, a part of which we do in church. We need to be in dialogue with one another and the people around us, and form ideas as to what we believe is right and Godly. We need at times to stand up and be counted. When things are wrong, we have to be with Christ the ingredient to bring about change. Jesus’ ministry to the weak, the least, the last, the lost, the poor, the sick and the dying was in sharp contrast in this time to the injustices of the period that kept these people poor, sick, and oppressed. He was himself a statement of judgment exposing the powers of the time.

Parenthetically, we Christians in our sentimental church seem to fear being judgmental. We’re afraid we may be seen as self-righteous and bigoted. I suppose that that is one of the risks. But we also know that Christ’s ministry was also based upon mercy, forgiveness, and understanding. Further, we must not just act alone. Jesus always called his disciples into fellowship and community. The church is a community, and we need one another to help us to keep within the Spirit of God. Acting totally alone is very risky. But we do make judgments all the time. Sometimes good and not so good, and it is hardly possible to live without making judgments. Yet we must remain in the community and in prayerful relationship always with Christ to be in the Spirit.

Being a fisherman was not easy. You made very little money. You were heavily taxed. You were out on the sea at times of terrible storms. It was risky. And you had to judge between what was the good fish and throw away the bad fish. To be fisher people with Christ is no less dangerous. You can meet with great opposition in this world. But in each of our lives there are risks and mighty storms. We just have to be prayerful and knowledgeable of God’s will in our lives. We have to live that out not only by what we say and think, but by what we do. We have to ask God to give us the strength and courage to do those things in such away as to be witnesses and lights with Christ.

Sometimes its a matter of pulling out of the segregated Country Clubs and organizations and stop our prejudices. Sometimes we need to stop our cheating and lying, and our infatuation with drugs and alcohol. Sometimes we have to be more intent, outspoken, and involved in ecological issues. We may need to reconsider the violence that we perpetuate in our own homes among spouses and children. We need to keep wrestling with the issues of abortion and gay and lesbian rights. We need to examine the ways in which we spend our comfortable and abundant lives in relation to the needs of other people and nations.

To be fishers of people. . . . . . . isn’t that to be close to Jesus Christ and to bear a courageous witness to what is right and just in the world. Doesn't that mean to stand with Christ, to walk with Christ and to take on our roles as prophets and teachers? It is also a matter of wrestling with the issues of our time and asking God what God would have us to do and convey to the world God calls his own.