Matthew 4:12-23
1/26/2020
There is something that has always been deeply spiritual, prayerful, meditative about the practice of fishing. And, for me, without a doubt, one of the best pieces ever written that captures the relationship between spirituality and fishing comes in Norman MacLean’s poignant novella about his life growing up along the shores of the Big Blackfoot river, aptly titled “A River Runs Through It.” In it, Maclean writes about the experience of his family growing up outside of Missoula, Montana in the early 20th century. And in his writing, Maclean tells of how, for them there was no line that demarcated where their religion ended and the art of fishing commenced. And I have been drawn to this story many times over the years both because of my love of fishing but also because of the manner in which the author’s father, a taciturn Presbyterian pastor, fuses the Calvinism of his faith and the damnable mess that he sees in humanity with the perception of God’s creation as completely and utterly beautiful—a word he uses throughout the story and how that perception is largely gotten through fishing. One of the best sections of the book comes as the boys have reached the age where the Rev. Maclean believes that he may teach them how to fly fish. Now, as anyone who, as a kid, has ever stood in their yard trying to figure out how to get 30 or 40 yards of line out from the real simply by flicking the tip of the rod back and forth in a rhythmic motion will tell you, this is not a skill that is easily acquired. So it is that the Rev. Maclean, for his part, had his children learn by moving their rods to the beat provided by a metronome that would give them a four count to hear while they were casting 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. So respectful was their father of the art of fishing that he would say to the boys that, “nobody who did not know how to fish would be allowed to disgrace a fish by catching him. So it was that the boys grew in stature and ability until they eventually begin to fish on their own while their father increasingly uses this time to commune with the spirit in nature, read his scripture, and pray. Indeed, there are few things that fuse together the relationship between me and my father than the practice of fishing. From an early age, I had a Snoopy rod and reel set, a rite of passage for all children of my generation, with a bobber on the end of it and a cricket baited just 6 inches or so beneath the water awaiting some whale of a bream to come and have a meal. As I grew older, my Snoopy rod was replaced by a longer rod, and then a casting reel that I had to learn not to cast to hard lest I spend precious fishing time trying to pull a backlash out while everyone else had lines in the water, to finally trading in my cork and cricket for actual tackle and the quest to catch the largemouth bass found in every good southern lake. Our location would change, too. Starting off in a small pond off of McLeod road in my hometown. We soon moved of to the larger lakes that sit just to the south of the town and the river that bisected it then to the intracoastal waterway that runs the length of the east coast, and finally fishing on large boats out on the gulf stream that sits a two hour ride from the beaches in the state. And there was a definite spirituality to that time, as well. Learning how to fish required one to be silent, lest they scare the fish away, to focus all of one’s energy on the tip of a rod and casting it out just the perfect amount, lest one end up hooked in a tree or down in the gunk, and to concentrate, feeling for the slightest twitch that told you that a fish was beginning to play with your bait—pull to early and the fish isn’t on the hook enough, pull to late and the fish will have moved on to its next conquest. It is in the art of fishing that one’s focus and silence and patience can also teach him, her, to see and perceive the beauty of the spirit infused world because there are few things as stunningly gorgeous in this world as the intersection of sea and sand, of ocean and sky, of water and trees. Moreover, this shared passion of mine and my father’s gave us the space to have conversations that could never be had in the hustle and bustle of a house with three boys, a dog, a cat, hamsters, hermit crabs, and the feeling of grand central station with the comings and goings of the friends of the three boys. It was sitting in a boat rod in hand that I told my dad about wanting to go to seminary, just as it was sitting in a boat jutting in and out of the canals at Ocean Isle Beach that I told my dad that I thought I had lost my faith, just as it was sitting on the shore of a lake when I told my dad that I was sure I had gotten it back. In each instance, it was the space, the awareness of spirit, and the calm quiet that had provided the chance to talk about difficult and life-altering things. And I wonder if that was not something of the experience of the disciples when Jesus comes upon them in the midst of their fishing excursions to tell them that he has a new calling for them to base their lives upon.
We encounter this story for the morning in the midst of a time of profound change within the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Having been baptized and seen the skies rip open, having perceived the spirit, like a dove landing upon him, having heard the voice of God calling him God’s own child and the beloved of God, Jesus gets out of town to refocus his own life. And, as we know, while in the midst of this time of retreat he encounters the last vestiges of his old life in the form of the Devil tempting him to seek earthly power and acclaim while leaving behind the God of Abraham and Sarah. And we know that after he dismisses this final challenge by the darkness that dwells in the world he returns from the wilderness prepared to begin his ministry to the people of first century Palestine. The passage for this morning is introduced with the knowledge that John the Baptist, the leader of his own movement, has been arrested and thrown in jail—an event, by the way, that is actually recorded within the history books of that time. The arrest of John would have carried a two-fold meaning for Jesus. On the one hand, it would create the vacuum in leadership from which Jesus’s earthy ministry commences. On the other, it was suggest that this was not a safe time for John and those who followed him, Jesus included. So what we see if Jesus traveling to the safety of Galilee when he first begins to call his followers together. And maybe Jesus knows that he is going to be calling together his first disciples on that morning or perhaps he is just finding that peace and calm that arises from early morning walks on the beach but, in any event, he comes up on this group of fishermen and speaks the words that each one longs to hear. And I am always moved by the crudeness, the grittiness of this scene as it plays out in scripture and I lament that most of us have been cursed by the presence of felt board characters and well-meaning Sunday school teachers because there is something that is lost about this conversation between Jesus and Simon and Andrew. Absent the pristine conditions of characters made of cloth stuck to a board in a Sunday school classroom is the fact that being a fisherman in that time would have been a filthy, smelly, dirty, and totally gross profession that these guys would have undertaken. This is not like the images of men wearing perfectly clean and pressed robes while they walk along in their Roman sandals with clean faces and kept hair. This is not like when John Holcomb posts pictures of himself holding trout and wearing a perfectly clean Bass Pro Shops hat on Facebook or even when Chip Prevatt posts pictures of himself in his rain slicker holding up a 4lb(?) largemouth from the deck of his bass boat. No, these guys would have been covered in fish guts and they would have smelled like it, these guys would not have bathed in a week and they would have smelled like it, these guys would have holes in their clothes and mud in their hair and would have been the perfect picture of gross when Jesus comes upon them. And maybe it is because they have been fishing that they were so aware of the presence of the spirit in their midst. Maybe because even back then, fishing took silence and concentration, patience and awareness. Maybe they had spent the night on a lake that was undisturbed by the conquests of man and so the beauty was almost palpable. Maybe Jesus just saw and knew that these two guys were looking for something more to come from their existence than simply being fishermen, if such a thing is possible. In any case, it was in the stillness of a single moment that Jesus appeared to them, peered into their souls and called them to put down their nets and come follow him that they might be about God’s work of reconciliation and redemption in the world. And we can be fairly sure that there is some kind of a relationship between fishing and the spirit because soon after they depart from their nets and boats the scene repeats itself at another part of the coastline as Jesus reaches out to two more would-be followers mending their nets and calls on them to join his mission of love and grace in the world, and they, too, drop whatever they were doing, whatever they had, whatever life they lived previously, and followed Jesus as he taught in the synagogues that dotted the landscape, as he preached the good news to all those with ears to hear, as he healed all those who had infirmities of the body and the soul. But more than all that, he tasks those first disciples, just as Christ continues to task all of us, with the sacred duty of fishing for people.
We come to this passage at something of a crossroad for both the Church and for this individual congregation. We continue to find the line of those exiting our houses of worship to be far greater than those who are coming in. We continue to see churches of all sizes and shapes contract as those who believe that they need Jesus in their lives grows smaller, even as we see our world become more individualized, more compartmentalized, more secular, more separated from the foundations of civilizations thousands of years in their making. In many ways, this is simply a reaction to the manner in which the church has infused itself in every aspect of life. In many ways, this has been brought about by some of the church’s less than positive qualities. And yet, and yet we still are called to be fishers of people. And yet, we are still called to follow in Jesus’s footsteps wherever they go. And yet, we are still called to inject love for love’s sake into every moment until the whole of the world is infused with the love and light of God and the redemption of Christ, until the whole of the world is enlivened by the presence of the Holy Spirit. One God, upon which all of time and space and existence is grounded. And yet, we are called to plant the seed and have faith that it is God who actually waters and tends, prunes and brings to full bloom a faith that can move mountains.
This church faces the same sorts of circumstances that challenge the larger church. We, too, struggle to reverse trends that have affected the larger church for much of the past hundred years. We, too, struggle with folks looking to other sources for truth, for goodness, for hope and yet, Christ is still alive, Christ still shatters all our expectations about what should happen, Christ is still about the work of redemption and reconciliation and arising hope where before there had been only despair. Christ is still calling all the children to come home and find rest and love and acceptance and a peace that surpasses all understanding and that is good news that we can share with folks. That is a Gospel that will still appeal to all those who search for something with more depth. That is a message that will resonate as much in 21st United States as it did in first century Palestine when Jesus drew in those in his time who believed the world to be a callous and unfeeling place, who believed the world to be dark and suffocating, who believed that no one cared about their plight and he said, “I do,” and then showed them how the whole of the cosmos is built on the singular truth that we are God’s children, that we are forever and always only held in the palm of God’s loving hand, that we are made in the image of God and that it is to God that we will all one day return forgiven, whole, holy, and alive. Sisters and brothers, we in this place, have to figure out a way to be conduits for that message, for that love, and for that grace in a manner that causes others to want to come be a part of our work, our ministry, our family. We have to advance beyond the feelings of uncertainty and nervousness that too often accompany sharing this wondrous news with those who need to hear it most. We have to allow the Spirit to blow where she will in each of our lives, unhindered and unencumbered. We have to be disciples for Christ. I thi
nk back to those bodies of water that dot the story of my life. I think back to my father and those spaces of holiness and honesty between us that gave us the space to share the gospel with one another. I think back to the feeling of a bass on a hook, a bobber being pulled under, a wahoo breaking the surface of the water confirming to me again and anew that the whole of the world was teeming with life. I think back to that feeling of divinity and blessing and peace and think that if I could just offer a moment of that feeling to those around me, I could justify the whole of my existence before God. Sisters and brothers, let us, inspired by the pursuit of a peace that surpasses all understanding, work together, work as one, as a family to draw in the lost and the lonely, the hurting and the dispossessed, the least of these and those who believe that no one cares, and let offer them that feeling of holiness and blessing, peace and love, and the willingness to meet folks right where they are and walk the road with them. Let us be courageous in the living of this day, and the next, alleluia, amen.
Image taken from: https://medium.com/ecotourism-benefits-through-river-conservation/blackfoot-river-valley-montana-8bad56cf3a03