Mark 1:14 - 20 "Let's Go Fishing!"

         Let’s go fishing!  Come on, let’s cast a wide net!

You know, you can fish in many ways.  You can sit under a cypress tree in the cool shade by a riverbank down South like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn might have.  Your fishing pole would have been a sturdy stick you had found, and your line would have been some string that you had nicked from your mother’s kitchen drawer when she was looking the other way. 

         Or - you can wear full length rubber waders and stand at the junction of great trout rivers in Western Montana like Norman Maclean and his brother, Paul, did in the novel, A River Runs Through It. You would cast your line in perfectly rhythmic time – a metronome ticking in your head - just as your Presbyterian minister father had taught you as a child.

         Or - you can wade into cold mountain streams here in Maine, flicking back and forth the delicate homemade flies with their brightly colored feathers you had painstakingly created last winter when a fire burned brightly in your wood stove.  Dragon flies would dart over the pool around you, and, every once-in-a-while, you would see the flash of a glittering trout surfacing in the sunlight.

         Or - you can bait a hook as the sun begins to set and cast a few off the dock at your cabin in Algonquin Park in Canada.  You would watch to see if the red and white plastic bobber suddenly sank and then jerk the rod to see if you could catch a bass or perch or sunfish.  You would also watch in awe as the sun set into its deepest pinks and reds and oranges, like the sky itself were on fire.

         Or - you can take the motor boat across the bay to where the dead tree limb still lies in the water by the shoreline decades after a beaver felled it, where the rocks below are big and numerous and offer hiding places for bass.  You would watch as your daughter in her green bucket hat read her book and as your two young sons dropped their fishing lines over board. 

The boys hope to catch enough fish for breakfast before the mosquitoes get too thick and your daughter gets tired of swatting them.  They relish the idea of dipping the bits and pieces of fresh fish in egg batter, rolling them in crushed corn flakes, frying them, and proudly presenting them the next morning to their mother to enjoy with her tea. 

They know their father will not clean whatever they catch anymore, so they carefully consider what is a keeper and what they will throw back. They have been taught to properly use a sharp filet knife – and to dispose of the fish guts deep in the woods where only the raccoons - and not the family dogs - will find them.

         Or - you can track in the newspaper the comings and goings of schools of striped bass, set the alarm for all hours of the early morning, and head out with your father to Cousins Island or some other sandbar or beach.  You always hope that this time will be different and that you will catch a big old striper – or at least get a bite.

         Or - you can fish like Simon and Peter and James and John did on the Sea of Galilee which lies 30 kilometers west of 1^st century Nazareth.  Their fishing hole was not really a sea though.  It was an inland lake – a big one too – 12 miles long by 7 miles wide - with the Jordan River running through it from north to south.  It was known for its fishing, and many small hamlets and villages had cropped up along its shoreline.

Though fishing may have been pleasurable at times, in the end, it was a business – a family business.  Each of the four young men in our story had come from a long line of fishing families.  As far back as they could remember, the most precious family asset had been the sturdy wooden boat with its oars and small sail, a boat that could hold a dozen people.

Over the decades, it had been rebuilt and repaired too many times to count, displaying the patchwork of wood salvaged from other fishing boats that were no longer seaworthy.  The fishermen would cast their rope nets over the edge of the boat and haul them back in.  The muscles in their sun toughened backs were strong and sinewy from the effort of years. 

The circular nets up to 20 feet in diameter had small stones with drilled holes woven into them to weigh them down, so they would sink properly.  It was crucial to keep the nets repaired and in good working order because their lives - and the lives of their families – literally – depended on a good catch.  That was why James and John at least were mending the nets that morning. 

You see, fishing was not as easy as it had once been.  Under the greedy eyes of the wealthy elite, the fishing industry had changed dramatically over the years.  As blogger Chad Meyers notes, it was “being steadily restructured for export, so that the majority of fish were salt preserved or made into a fish sauce and shipped to distant markets throughout the empire. All fishing had become state-regulated for the benefit of the urban elite…They profited from the fishing industry in two ways. First, they controlled the sale of fishing leases, without which locals could not fish….

Second, they taxed the fish product and its processing, and levied tolls on product transport….This transformation of the local economy… functioned to marginalize and impoverish formerly self-sufficient native fishing families. Leases, taxes and tolls were exorbitant, while the fish upon which local people depended as a dietary staple was extracted for export.  Thus, fishermen were falling to the bottom of an increasingly elaborate economic hierarchy. “

         No wonder then that Simon and Andrew, James and John, perked up that morning when Jesus came recruiting.  Jesus had been – and perhaps still was – a follower of John the Baptist.  When John was imprisoned, Jesus actively took up his cause, preaching the Good News, the Gospel, that the Kingdom of God was near, and so it was time to repent, to turn around, to be open to transformation.  The culture of God, the dream of God, was about to be fulfilled. 

         However, Jesus, this self-proclaimed rabbi, was smart enough to know that he could not go it alone – and so he was looking for his own disciples.  However, as a rabbi, he was different.  He did not wait for folks to come to him, assess his message, and then ask permission to be a disciple as would typically happen.  No – Jesus chose his followers.  Simon and Andrew and James and John did not choose Jesus.  He chose them.

         Who knows what Jesus saw in the four men?  They probably were not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier.  They certainly were illiterate.  They were physically strong and had nimble fingers, but that was it – and Jesus knew that physical strength and nimble fingers would not make a whit of difference.

         We who have heard this story before know what comes next.  Jesus calls out to first Simon and Andrew and later in the day to James and John, the sons of old arthritic Zebedee who no longer had the strength to cast a net and whose fingers were no longer nimble enough to mend one and so depended on his sons to keep the family business going.

         “Come with me, and I will make you fish for people,” Jesus declared confidently.  It was almost like a promise he was making to them.  Come with me, and together we will cast our nets deep and wide.  Come with me – not to simply catch new church members to fill the pews on Sunday mornings, increase the number of volunteers, and expand the number of pledging units. 

Come with me – and do something even better:  Make the dream of God, the culture of God, a reality in this greedy and unjust world you live in where the rich get rich and the poor get poorer.  Come with me, and be transformed and in the process maybe even transform others. 

         And Simon and Andrew and James and John turned their backs on, turned away from, their secure livelihood and everything they had known since their childhood and followed Jesus.  Of course, they had no idea what was in store for them, and they did not seem to care. 

Maybe they were sick and tired of casting nets one day and mending them the next.  Maybe they saw a future in fishing that was no future – and wanted to get out while the getting was good.  Maybe they were young and impetuous and wanted an adventure – see the world – or at least see the world beyond their small village in backwater Nazareth. 

Or maybe – just maybe – without their even knowing it, the Spirit was nudging them out of their old identity and encouraging them to claim something new.  Maybe they were risk-takers, trusting, as the Psalmist once affirmed, that God would get them through whatever it was that God was leading them toward.

Though the four fishermen did not know it at the time, Jesus was promising them lives of integrity and meaning.  He was offering them an existence immersed in the ethics of love.  He was offering them the lens of compassion through which they would see those around them in a new way – the marginalized ones, the ones living paycheck to paycheck who must choose between fresh produce and health insurance, the lepers, the ones in caravans seeking asylum from the violence of their homelands, the ones in wheelchairs who never quite feel welcome, but more like a burden.

It would not easy, but it would be life-changing.  There would be those moments when they would know that they were a part of making God’s creation a little bit better, a part of making God’s dream for the world a reality – moments that would make the whole journey – even the bad parts, the sad parts, the difficult parts – so worthwhile.  And so, Simon and Peter and James and John dropped everything and followed Jesus, answering his call to discipleship.

         This call to discipleship, this call of Christ, is not cheap grace.  It is not the words of the Gospel written down to read and discuss and only to pray over.  This call to discipleship, this call of Christ, is the call into a life rich in meaning and purpose. 

Jesus invites us today – just as he invited the fishermen long ago.  There is work to be done now just as there was then.  There is work for us through the ministries of our church, this church, that place where each Sunday morning we remember that we are called to be the embodiment of all that Jesus stood for, where we are challenged – you and I - to stand with the refugee, the homeless, the hungry, the poor, the handicapped. 

         This call to discipleship, this call of Christ, is not the call to sit here in church listening to the preacher prattle on Sunday after Sunday.  This call to discipleship, this call of Christ, is not to give an hour a week over to so-called spiritual things.

         This call to discipleship, this call of Christ, is to let the Gospel we hear and sing about Sunday after Sunday, the Gospel we say we embrace, leak and gush and run out everywhere until our very lives are drowning in it, until a river of compassion and reconciliation runs through our heart and soul. 

This call of discipleship, this call of Christ, is living the Gospel.  That is what casting our nets wide means:  to live each day as if the Good News of Jesus really mattered, to be a risk-taker and err on the side of radical welcome and compassion, to question the economic and environmental decisions this nation has made, and to intentionally reflect on what constitutes a “national emergency”, then act on who we choose to be as the church in the 21^st century -  no matter the cost (financial and otherwise).

“Come with me, and I will make you fish for people,” Jesus declared confidently – and his words echo down through the centuries even to us, even now.  It was almost like a promise he was making to Simon and Andrew and James and John.  It is almost like a promise he is making to us. 

Come with me, and together we will cast our nets deep and wide.  Come with me – not to simply catch new church members to fill the pews on Sunday mornings, increase the number of volunteers, and expand the number of pledging units. 

Come with me – and do something even better:  Make the dream of God, the culture of God, a reality in this greedy and unjust world we live in where the rich get rich and the poor get poorer.  Come with me, and be transformed and in the process maybe even transform others.