Goin’ Fishin’

I want to start with something fun and simple. I invite anyone who wants to, to join me here for a “children’s message.”

I have here some basic fishing equipment. It’s a children’s set of rods and reels, and even some fish. Who wants to try to catch a fish? Play the game.

This is fun for small children, but pretty simple for older people. Let’s talk about how the game works. With magnets and metal.

When I have used this game with children, I have suggested we think of fishing as a way to help other people know about Jesus. We imagine we have a magnet in one hand and reach out to a friend with some metal in their hand. When our hands connect, we can bring them to church, or Sunday School, or camp, or Campus Ministry. I hope you’ll think of fishing for Jesus as simply as reaching out a hand to a friend and bringing them with you. … Thanks for coming up.

… I know that fishing for people is much more complicated for people older than about 5. Magnets and a bit of metal don’t work to connect us and bring us to one another. But let’s continue to think along with Jesus about this.

… In this Gospel text, we get the sad news that John the Baptizer has been arrested by Herod. And we get the news that Jesus has decided it’s time to step up his ministry. He moves from Nazareth to Capernaum and gets to know the city and the folks who live there. Matthew says he makes his home there!

I have always struggled with the idea that anyone immediately drops whatever they are doing to do something else. So, when Matthew says the disciples immediately dropped their nets to follow Jesus, I am filled with doubt. I have a different idea of what this means.

I think it’s likely that Jesus acts like a mission developer, seeking leaders to work with him to develop the ministry. So, he gets to know these four fishermen, and maybe a few other men. He talks with them about his vision for a different way of knowing and serving God. They begin to make plans to reach more people by traveling throughout Galilee.

Some scholars suggest these four fishermen are poor contract workers, owing their lives to the Roman fishing enterprise. Others suggest they are wealthier, and own their boats, and maybe even other houses, which means they have employees to run the business while they are gone.

My own hunch is that they own their small businesses, and they need to be out fishing most nights, because they have families to feed. So they make day or weekend trips to the various regions of the Galilee, rather than being gone for weeks at a time. As people get to know Jesus, he draws larger and larger crowds, and the disciples eventually need to do some major event planning. Once Jesus heads to Jerusalem for the last time, they have others who maintain their businesses while following Jesus full time.

Anyway, I suggest that Jesus has been talking with these four fishermen for a while, making preliminary plans, and when he says it’s time for their first mission trip, they are ready to go. Which takes us back to the “Children’s Message” about literally fishing for people.

… When we fish for people today, it is not about how many people we can get in the “going straight to heaven” boat. Fishing for people is about introducing them to Jesus and the benefits of knowing we are loved, cared for, forgiven, part of the family.

The Bible usually says, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” Church leaders around the world are seeking other terms for kingdom of heaven. Our reading today uses the term “dominion of heaven”. The point is to make sure we don’t think of the Kingdom of Heaven as a place, but a condition, an action.

Yes, the term Kingdom in the Bible is intentional. God’s kingdom contrasts with Rome and its power. But the kingdom Jesus is talking about is not a place, a territory. It is a state of being in relationship with God.

I think I have found an acceptable alternative. I was reading an article about Dr Martin Luther King, who talked about the Beloved Community. We can recognize the intent of the term kingdom of God as competition against the political and geographical kingdoms of this world, and go beyond it to a Community in which all are Beloved.

So, if we go fishing for people, we are inviting them to join the Beloved Community here at ULC, and the Beloved Community we call the Church (capital C) with all its diverse expressions. The Beloved Community comes together in many ways:

We gather around the word and its interpretation, and around the altar and the Meal with the Beloved Host. We gather for snacks after church, to seek justice through Family Promise, and to protest against the Baker Internment Center. We gather for education and for prayer. We offer mercy to hungry people with our donations of food and money. At ULC, we offer a place to be more of who God calls us to be, as small children, as students, as grown-ups, as elder folks.

When we head out to fish for people, our bait is love: love for God, love for each other in the Beloved Community, and love for those who have not yet found their way to Jesus. The fish we seek are all around us, in our neighborhoods, in the organizations where we work and play, and the organizations where we volunteer.

We need only to open our hands and offer to accompany those who do not know Jesus. We invite them to join us at something we both enjoy doing. And we allow Jesus to do the rest.

… A word or two of caution. When people go fishing for fish, they usually don’t catch anything the first time, in the first few minutes. It usually takes some time, some patience. It may be casting and recasting with the fly rod. It may take using the fish finder to locate the sweet spot where the fish are biting. It may take some time and work to haul in the fish once it’s on the hook.

Fishing for people takes persistence, and patience. Its reward is the growth of the Beloved Community.

And, a short story. I grew up loosely connected to church. It wasn’t a major aspect of my life, but when my first child was born, I connected with the local Lutheran church and occasionally went to worship. Some young mothers noticed me and began to invite me to join them at a circle meeting. It took several invitations over several months before I agreed to go.  

The third invitation included three key elements. “At a circle meeting, we have a speaker and talk about the topic, we meet in large homes where we can have a babysitter, and I’ll pick you up.” This inviter told me what happened at the meeting and countered my other challenges – a small child and no car.

When we go fishing for people, we invite them to something that makes sense for them, and offer to go with them. And if God is nudging us to repeat the invitation, we do it again, and maybe again.

Sometimes it fishing for people is as simple as reaching out a hand, to draw another person closer to us, closer to Jesus, and closer to God’s Beloved Community. This week, I hope you pay attention to the little nudges God’s Spirit is giving you to reach out to someone else, to tell them they are loved, and welcome in the Community. Amen