Diocese of RI Canon to the Ordinary
November 30th, 2012
I grew up on a farm in South Dakota where there is lots of land and not much water! We were farmers, tillers of the soil and not fishers in lakes. But every summer the day would come when my dad would declare that it was time for a vacation day. And yes, that meant a DAY, not a week or two. But we’d take a whole day off from work and all pile into the car and head off to a distant lake – to go fishing. My older brother hated fishing and I’m not sure what my mother and younger sister did, because dad and I were the fishers. We’d both happily head to the shores of some lake, slip an earthworm onto the hook, throw out the line – and then we’d sit on the shore and wait, and wait, and wait. Staring out across the water with an eye on the red and white bobber, waiting to see if some fish would take the bait.
Sometimes we got lucky and a couple of them would bite. Sometimes we went home empty handed, but it didn’t really matter. What fishing was for us was a day away from the hard work on the farm, a time to just sit in the sun, enjoy the peace and quiet, and do nothing.
That image of my dad and me, sitting on the lakeshore waiting for the fish to bite isn’t at all what the Andrew and his brother Peter were doing as fishers. We were recreational fishers. They were professionals. For them fishing was a job – and it was hard work, long hours, and a means of earning a living. They had to catch fish if they wanted to survive. We got to eat a fish if we happened to catch one.
I think we can learn something about life in the church and world today by looking at Andrew and his family of fishers, because I suspect that most of our churches today operate a lot more like my dad and me than like Andrew and his family.
When it comes to catching people for Christ, we’re recreational fishers. We sit in the warm sun, enjoying ourselves and occasionally throw a line into the water with a baited hook on it to see if someone might bite. An ad in the paper, a few posters promoting an event, a series of emails, a banner outside of our church. We toss out a line here and there and watch to see what happens, and mostly we despair of anyone taking the bait. We commiserate among ourselves about how church attendance is declining and how more and more people are choosing to declare themselves “spiritual but not religious.” We begin to think that the lack of hits on our fishing line is inevitable – that the fish just aren’t biting anymore.
I think that’s largely because we’re recreational fishers and aren’t fishing for a living. Andrew and Peter and their family weren’t throwing a couple of fishing lines into the lake – they got into a boat and tossed out huge nets. They were looking for big schools of fish where they could pull in hundreds, even thousands of fish at a time. They got up early in the morning and worked long and hard all day long. If they weren’t getting enough fish in their nets, they pulled up anchor and sailed to another place or threw the net over the other side of the boat. They went looking for where the fish were and pulled them into the boat.
“That’s a great image, Linda,” you say, “but where are the people who we can catch for Christ today? People don’t come to church anymore.”
You know, there’s another way to look at the situation today. When I was growing up, the town where we attended church had at least 90% of its residents in one of the churches on Sunday morning. The next closest town was about 40 miles away and it’s people were almost all going to church too. So there weren’t exactly a lot of fish to catch, so to speak.
But, our waters are teeming with fish! Rhode Island has one of the lowest church attendance rates in the nation. On any given Sunday morning, only about 25-30% of us are attending worship. That’s about 700,000 people in Rhode Island who aren’t in church on Sunday mornings. If we became fishers of people and only brought in 1% of those, that would more than double the size of the every church in the diocese.
The low church attendance rate in our state means there are a lot of people who aren’t part of a Christian community. There are tons of fish in the sea and lots and lots of people who are, at some level, longing to connect with God, eager to hear the Good News, or maybe just wanting something they can’t even name or identify.
Our problem is largely that we don’t see that and maybe we don’t even believe it. We’re recreational fishers and we’ve come to believe that there aren’t any fish in the lake because no one is taking our bait. I think that’s because we’re throwing out lines when we need to be throwing out nets.
Fishing in these times and in these waters is hard work, and most of us are used to taking it easy – doing recreational fishing. No more. The time has come to make fishing our vocation! We need to get out in the boat and start casting the net. And you’ll notice that when the fishers do that, they often get a big haul of fish – fish of every kind and including a few questionable fish and an old shoe or two for good measure! That is because, as our lesson from Roman’s reminds us, God is drawing near to everyone – because fishing today requires us to go beyond our comfort zone and draw in people who haven’t been in our churches before.
When you’re doing recreational fishing, you can determine what kind of fish will bite by what lure you offer them. Want a trout? Use a worm or cricket on the hook. Want to catch a sunfish? Use a red and white lure.
And that’s what we do. Consciously or unconsciously, we throw out a line that has a lure that will attract our kind of people. If we are going to be vocational fishers, we’ve got the throw the net out and pull in all kinds of fish. We’ve got to learn how to reach out to people we don’t normally encounter and don’t naturally relate to.
So some fishing lessons we can take from Andrew:
- Vocational fishing requires a net and not just a fish hook and line.
- Using a net means bringing in anything and everything – anyone and everyone.
- Vocational fishing is hard work, not just some time in the sun throwing out a line and waiting to see what happens.
- When there are lots of fish in the lake, you can catch them!
But there’s something more that Andrew has to teach us this evening. You’ll notice that Jesus doesn’t show up, stand on the shore, commend them for their fine fishing skills, stop at the snack shack for some fish and chips and then move on. Jesus calls them to leave their boats and follow him.
Now we’re so used to hearing this story that I think we miss the impact of what that implies. Jesus shows up and calls out to these two young men working the nets with their father. They immediately get off of the boat, leave behind their family, friends and neighbors; abandon their life’s work and family’s fortunes and follow this guy. They don’t seem to know him. They don’t know where they are going. They don’t know what they are going to do, how they will earn a living, where they will get food to eat, where they will sleep at night, or what will happen to them but they go anyway. They leave absolutely everything that is important, loved and familiar to them to follow Jesus into the completely unknown.
And, by the way, you notice that their call didn’t require a discernment committee or a Commission on Ministry; they didn’t go to seminary for three years, take the General Ordination Exams and get ordained. It’s probably a good thing. If the disciples had to go through some of our ordination processes, Jesus would have been dead, buried and rose again before any of them would have gotten to be a disciple!
There’s another reason why I’m focusing on the fact that they immediately followed the call of Jesus, and that is because the disciples weren’t being called to a job in the church as an ordained person or even to a lay ministry in the church. The disciples were being called to follow Jesus – to hear his Word, see him in action, to learn from him and to practice his ministry of proclaiming the Gospel, teaching and healing the sick.
Being a disciple of Jesus probably wasn’t that easy for Andrew and the others. Preaching, teaching and healing aren’t exactly the skills you acquire as a fisher. Andrew and Peter knew a lot about how to sail boats, cast nets and haul in fish. They didn’t know much at all about preaching, teaching and healing, but that’s what they, and we, are called to do. All of us. Not just the ordained or the laity who are active in church life, but all people and all kinds of people are called to follow Jesus and share in his ministry of proclaiming the Kingdom, teaching and healing.
To do that today is just as challenging to us as it must have been to the disciples. They didn’t have those skills and most of us probably believe we don’t either. They had to leave everything familiar behind – and so will we. Like them, we need to get off of the boat and head out into the unknown countryside. We need to follow Jesus – wherever that leads us. The disciples ended up following Jesus into some pretty unfamiliar and often uncomfortable territory. They headed off to the big city and into enemy territory. They didn’t have a familiar home where they could lay their head each night. They didn’t have a lot of time to go fishing for fish – because they had a new task of fishing for people.
We too are called into the unfamiliar places and called to do unfamiliar things if we are to follow Jesus and become fishers for people. There are people out there, right outside these doors, right in this neighborhood, who are longing for God, who want to see Jesus. There are people, lots and lots of people, right outside of the doors of your church and just outside of the doors of your homes who want to see Jesus.
As Paul says...
But how will they call on God if they do not believe?
And how will they believe, if they do not hear?
And how will they hear, unless someone proclaims the Good News?
And how will they proclaim it, unless they are sent?
My friends, in this day, more than ever, we are called – and we are sent. We are called to follow Jesus. I know we have a new bishop now and we’re all looking to him for leadership, but we aren’t called to follow Nicholas (sorry boss), we’re called to follow Jesus.
We’re called to follow Jesus, and Jesus will proclaim the Good News to us, will teach us and will heal us. Jesus will send us, just like he sent the disciples, out into the unknown to proclaim that the Kingdom of God is here, to teach, to heal and to make disciples of all people in all places.
How will we do that? Fear not, as Paul says, “the Word is very near you, it is on your lips and in your heart.” The Word IS very near you. It already is on your lips and in your heart.
So, let’s go fishing! Because WE CAN DO IT! We can be fishers who haul in nets full of all kinds and sorts of fish.
Let’s be brave and head off into the unknown. Because WE CAN DO IT! We can proclaim that the Kingdom is right here Rhode Island, we can teach others about the Jesus we know and love, we can heal the sick and we can make disciples.
So let’s do it! Let’s just do it.
Because God, acting in and through us, can do far more than any of us can ask or imagine. For that we give thanks and praise, in Jesus name. Amen.
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