Let’s Go Fishin’

January 22, 2012
Epiphany 3
Mark 1:14-20

Four years ago, while I was serving as the intern at First Lutheran Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I became acquainted with Frank and Elaine, members of the church and grandparents of two of the members of the youth group. For a while after we met, Frank and I would chat between worship services about random topics…football, auto racing, the weather…then Frank found out that I enjoy fishing and have enjoyed fishing since I was a child. All the conversations we had after this revelation revolved around fishing. On February 4th, 2008, I took my first trip with Frank and Elaine to their cabin on Grand Lake and while Elaine stayed up at the cabin and watched birds, Frank and I took our fishing poles down to the dock and spent the day sitting by the water, fishing lines in the water, enjoying the 75 degree weather and hoping that we would maybe catch something.
I’m wondering if that is how Jesus felt when he came upon the four fisherman and invited them to follow him and become fishers of people. We don’t know if or how Jesus knew Andrew, Simon, James and John…or if Andrew, Simon, James or John even knew who Jesus was when he approached them in the middle of the work day and asked them to drop everything and follow him. But drop everything they did…and they did so immediately, Mark says. Simon and Andrew left the nets they had been casting into the sea…James and John left the unmended nets, their father Zebedee and the hired hands…and they followed Jesus, who would take their skills in fishing and use them with people.
When you think about it, it takes a certain person to be a good fisherman. For one, a good fisherman is patient...a good fisherman knows that they may have to wait a while to catch a fish…a good fisherman knows that sometimes the actual catch of fish might consist of fish too small to eat…a good fisherman knows that sometimes fish will get away (though not all the ones who get away are worthy of the big fish stories that are often told).
I wonder, if nothing else, if Jesus knew that when he came upon Simon and Andrew, and later James and John, the fact that they were fishermen told him all that he needed to know about them at that point…and so he called them to use their skills to assist him in the beginning of his ministry.
I also wonder what it was about Jesus that caused Simon and Andrew and James and John to immediately drop what they were doing and follow Jesus. As I mentioned in my sermon last week, Mark wasn’t very interested in embellishing his accounts…he gave the important information and moved on. And the important information Mark tells us is that immediately after receiving the invitation to follow, the four men left their nets, their families, their hired hands and their boats and followed.
You know, it’s tempting for us to ask the questions about why Jesus picked four smelly fishermen…and I will admit that I have preached a couple sermons on what unlikely candidates these four were to become the first disciples and, eventually, Jesus’ inner circle of confidants. But when you think about it…yeah, they probably were smelly, after all they were around fish a lot and seas are not always known for smelling too great.
But they also exhibited qualities that made them great candidates for the job Jesus had for them. First, we can assume that they were at least decent fishermen…sometimes we can take the story about them having a bad day of fishing as an indication that they were bad fishermen…but if they were bad fishermen, they wouldn’t have still been fishing…and James and John’s father, Zebedee, would not have been able to afford the hired hands that assisted them in their fishing endeavor. So the qualities of good fishermen would have been there…which is good, because much of the time, people require more patience than fish.
The other thing that made the four great candidates to be the first four disciples called is that God had equipped them and set them apart to be a significant part of Jesus’ ministry, even before Jesus spotted them in their boats and asked them to follow. Whether they knew it or not, Simon and Andrew and James and John had been given proverbial tackle boxes filled with every gift that they needed to be not just fishermen but also fishers of people.
Eventually, eight others would be called to become the core group of disciples that would assist Jesus in his ministry…these men also followed…and created a very strange conglomeration known at the disciples. In this group were fishermen, a tax collector, a zealot, and some other men that we know little or nothing about…again, Mark wasn’t too big on the little details. This was not a group that would be destined to hold hands and sing kumbaya in the evenings around the fire…and they would not have been like minded men, especially the tax collector and the zealot…and I’m sure there were arguments here and there among the twelve. But there was one thing that held them together, they had been all been approached by Jesus and asked to follow…and for reasons that Mark doesn’t share, all twelve of the men followed. The other thing that they had in common was that God had equipped all twelve of these very diverse men to be a part of Jesus’ ministry and had given them everything that they needed to do the work of spreading the Good News.
And just as Jesus called and God equipped Simon and Andrew and James and John and the other 8 disciples, so Jesus has called and God has equipped all of us to be a fisher of people in some way. And just like the disciples, we are a very diverse group of people who are not of the same mind…to some extent, we are a similar strange conglomeration that the disciples were…and that’s great because if we were all the same and all of the same mind, the church would be pretty boring and there would only be so many people that we could reach with the Gospel. But being that strange, diverse conglomeration of people, called and equipped to be fishers of people, we have the ability to reach more and more people with the good news of the Gospel, through the way that we live out the Gospel in our daily lives.
That day on Grand Lake yielded three fish…all tiny blue gill that quickly found their way back into the lake. But it wasn’t a day wasted, it was a day spent out on the water in the middle of nature. And that’s the reality of fishing, some days you are inundated with fish and other days you can’t get a nibble to save your life. And just like fishing for fish requires you to be equipped for the trip, so answering the call to be a fisher for people requires you to be equipped. But unlike fishing, you don’t need to run to the bait store and fill your tackle box with the latest gadgets in order to be equipped to answer Christ’s call to follow, God has already filled our tackle boxes and equipped us with everything that we need to be fishers for people…AND God has given teachers who help us to learn how to use our gifts and skills to be the best we can at what God has called us to do.
We’ve got everything we need, let’s get fishin’