Gone Fishing 

a sermon by Rev. Rebecca Segers 

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Mark 1:14-20 

What do you think of when you see a sign that says “Gone Fishing”?  Most of us imagine that behind it there would be an empty room or perhaps even an empty house, and that beyond it we picture in our minds a person out there somewhere in rolled up dungarees and bare feet, perhaps with a wooden fishing pole in his hands, a straw hat tipped over his eyes and maybe even a gentle snore coming from his lips.

But this is not at all what Jesus means when he goes fishing.  Oh, no.  Not at all.  When Jesus goes fishing he means business.  Our second scripture lesson today begins post haste.  We’re still in the first chapter of Mark, yet Jesus is already on the move.  In the first 13 verses, we met John the Baptist who preached baptism for the repentance of sins, baptized Jesus and saw the heavens torn open proclaiming him the son of God.  Then Jesus went into the wilderness and was tempted by Satan.  All that happens in only 13 short verses before we even get to where we are today.

Then in the rest of the chapter, John is put in prison, Jesus begins his ministry, calls the first disciples, heals many, prays and teaches and by the end of it all, he is being thronged by people seeking his help, no longer able to go anywhere anonymously or spend any time alone.  Clearly there is a lot going on in this short chapter, and it makes it even more important that we break it down little by little and take each biblical morsel and savor it.  I’m going to focus primarily today on just one verse: verse 15.

The reading opens in verse 14 saying: “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God and saying – here’s verse 15: ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’  So in 14, John is arrested and then Jesus begins his ministry in earnest.  Where?  In his home region of Galilee.  And what does he say?  Verse 15: ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’

First he says that the time is fulfilled; then the kingdom of God has come near.  Then he gives them two imperatives: repent and believe.  Believe in the good news.  I want to take these backwards, because that’s how it often works for us humans.

First we believe.  What do we believe in?  We believe in Jesus Christ, God come to earth to love and to save us all.  God in human form who has come to offer us forgiveness forever.  God who can change our lives through involvement in them through the Holy Spirit.  God who will be there no matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done, no matter what you’re going through.  God who is reaching out to each and every one of us even as we hide from God.  God who can’t wait for us to reach back so that He can enter in and participate with us in all our comings and goings all the days of our lives.

Once you know this, once you believe that the great God of the Universe is with you, surrounding you and flowing through you, what do you do?  Repent.  Once you know, once you are aware of the generosity and mercy and love of God for you, you can’t help but at the same time become aware God’s enormity, immensity, majesty and grandeur as compared to our own insignificance and need.  When we recognize Who God is, we realize Whose we are.

And in realizing that this same awesome and wondrous God is with us, we also become aware of the dark places in ourselves.  The places we are ashamed of or want to hide.  The places where God does not live – and we all have them.  The petty anger, the quick temper, the lazy attitude, the negativity, the rigid ideas, the tendency to gossip, the prideful arrogance, the willful self-righteousness.  We all recognize ourselves in there somewhere and know when we have forgotten God and instead lived in the dark.  Jesus calls us to repent, to turn toward the light, just as the prophet Jonah did so many years before him.

This call to repentance is as old as humankind and I expect will continue as long as we live on this earth.  In our first scripture reading today, we heard God send Jonah to Ninevah.  Now this is the second time that the Lord has sent Jonah on this mission.  Jonah has already tried to run away, been caught out, spent three days in the belly of the big fish, and been vomited up.  After all that horror and hoo-hah, this time Jonah is willing to listen.  He sets off for Ninevah, which the Bible tells us is such a big city that it takes three days to walk across it.  Jonah enters the city, walking a full day in, shouting out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”

Jonah the prophet is in full voice, out, crying out against it as he was told to do in chapter 1, verse 2.  “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” Jonah cries.  God, however, didn’t tell Jonah that he would overthrow the city; God merely told Jonah to cry out against the city because of the people’s wickedness.

So is Jonah making God meaner than God really is?  Or is there another way to read this section?  According to the Hebrew, Jonah says that Ninevah will be nehpāket.  This word does mean “overthrow”, but it can also be translated as “overturn” or “turned over”.  The illustrious Jewish scholar, Philo, who was a character in our recent book discussion of Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord, suggested 2000 years ago that Ninevah was not to be overthrown, burnt to the ground in fiery anger, in the way that Jonah was anticipating, but instead, it was the people’s hearts which were to be overthrown, overturned, or turned over.  He believed that God was not out to overturn stones, turning cities into rubble, but God’s intent was to overturn hearts, turning people into his advocates.

This is indeed what happens in our first story today.  The Ninevites hear Jonah’s call and they do repent and turn back toward the Lord.  They believe in God first.  And then they institute a fast, putting on sackcloth, which was a symbol of mourning in those days.  It meant that they were sorry for their previous behavior and had intent to change, to transform, to turn around and go the other direction with their lives.  These two pieces together – the fasting and the sackcloth – were penitential activities.

So first the people believe, then they repent.  These two things – the believing and the repenting – change their future.  In verse ten, because of their willingness to turn back and change their ways, God forgives the people of Ninevah and rescinds his potential punishment.  Verse ten has the same focus of turning away from previous ideas and changing the end result as the earlier verses do, but this time they are in reference to God.  Because the people have changed their minds, their attitudes, their actions, God does the same.  In the face of repentant hearts and renewed positive actions, God is merciful.

Now we’ve got Jesus doing the same thing that Jonah was doing.  He is preaching God’s message to repent and believe, believe and repent, when he passes by the Sea of Galilee.  Arriving along this stretch of water, he sees four fishermen – Simon and Andrew, James and John.  These are not fisherman out on holiday like our imaginary fisherman I opened this talk with, but men who are working at their jobs, their occupations, their professions.

Archeologists have uncovered groups of small houses that were clustered along the lakefront where Jesus would have been walking that day.  These were small houses with courtyards that often were attached to adjacent homes, suggesting that they may have been occupied by related families.  At Jesus’ call, it seems at first as though Simon and Andrew, James and John left not only their livelihoods, but their families and family structures as well.  And in the case of James and John, we are told that they are fishing with their father, Zebedee alongside hired hands.  This would suggest that James and John are not merely part of a small family business, but what would have been a relatively successful enterprise, one which they probably had responsibility for continuing.  To up and leave everything – family, friends, home, business – can any of you imagine doing that if Jesus were to walk in here today and say, “Follow me”?  It certainly would have been an extraordinary disruption in a person’s life.  It might have even seemed offensive to those hearing the story.  I mean, if the sons’ participation in the family enterprise was critical, it may have even put the welfare of the whole family at risk.

But we must put this story in biblical context as well as historical context.  For while these sons left for periods of time to be with Jesus, there are also stories later in the Bible, in the same chapter even, where Peter’s family home in Capernaum becomes a center from which Jesus and his followers operate.  In Mark 1:29-31, Peter’s mother-in-law who lives there is sick with a fever.  Jesus goes to her and takes her hand and she is healed.  This verse and others suggest that the burden of the discipleship responsibility was shared by the family.  The disciples may have given up their routine day-to-day lives, but they did not necessarily give up their families or support system.

Nonetheless, it would have been a big adjustment.  Other workers must have been brought in at times to help fulfill the duties of these four.  Or perhaps other family members stepped up to the plate in ways that they had not before.  Meanwhile, Jesus tells his new disciples that now they will fish for people instead.  Here it is, the very beginning of his ministry and Jesus is already being wild and outrageous and radical.

You see, in the Old Testament, references to hooks and nets and such generally carry a negative overtone, suggesting traps and ensnarement.  Remember in the story of Jonah, the part we didn’t hear today, he runs away from God’s first call for him to go to Ninevah, by traveling toward Joppa – going out to sea in the totally opposite direction.  What happens to him, but that as soon as he is out on the water, God has him thrown out into the sea and be caught, trapped in the belly of a big fish.  You can’t escape God, even when you want to.

Yet in Jesus’ ministry, people are not trapped because they deserve judgment, but instead, upon being ensnared, are saved.  Just as Jesus’ preaching shifts away from traditional interpretation, when it comes to Jesus and repentance, those who are caught are not caught up into judgment, but instead into fulfillment and salvation.  This is a drastic difference from previous rabbinical teaching.  Jesus, if you will, has over-thrown, over-turned, turned over the way that God was conceptualized before.  You see, when Jesus goes fishing and catches you, when you surrender to God and God’s will for you, when you let go of all your old ideas about what the world is like and what we should be doing and what is important and instead fall hook, line and sinker for the Lord, the whole world changes.

When we believe, when we repent, when we turn ourselves fully over to God, wild and crazy and radical things begin to happen.  But they don't happen by us sitting here and doing what we’ve always done, the way we’ve always done it.  God demands more of us.  Jesus demands more of us.  When Jesus went up to the disciples, he didn’t say, “Hey, guys, great job!  I want you to keep on doing exactly what you’re doing exactly the way you’re doing it and the kingdom of God will come near.”  Oh, no.  He tells them to drop everything and follow him.  Surrender to him and his will for them.  They must completely transform the way that they look at the world and the very living that they make in order to be a part of that coming kingdom.  They’ve got to give some things up.  But in return, look at what they got.  Imagine the awesome blessing of fishing for people instead for sardines.

The fact of the matter is, we’ve all got some work to do if we want to claim that sign on our doors that says “Gone Fishing”.  We must believe, we must repent and we must all be willing to give up something in order to bring the good news to others.

Now I’m assuming that if you’re in this room today, you believe – at least a very little bit.  At least in a God even if you’re not entirely sure of what that means.  And actually, if that’s where you’re at, you may be in better shape that those of us who are more sure.  For believe you me, God is greater than any of us here in this room can possibly pin down.  To quote St. Augustine: ‘God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand.  If you understand you have failed.’  I am with St. Augustine 100% right here, which is why I am not a big fan of the whole “What Would Jesus Do” syndrome.  How do you know what Jesus would do?  Jesus was constantly flummoxing the righteous people of his day, turning their ideas of God on their ear.  If it doesn’t have to do with the two primary commandments given to us by Jesus himself: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and all your strength…and love your neighbor as yourself”, I think you should keep your opinions of what Jesus would do to yourself.  Because you simply don’t know.

What is far more important, is to look at yourself and consider, in what ways do you need to repent in order to more fully serve the Lord?  What are the little dark spots in your heart that need to have some light shed upon them?  What is it that you do or have done of which you are ashamed?  What characteristics do you have that not only harm others, but harm yourself?  Where is it that God is calling you to be overthrown, overturned, turned over?  For that is the meaning of repentance, my friends.  It is not, “I am so sorry!” which admittedly is a very nice sentiment.  It is “I am changing my ways.  I am asking God to take this part of me which is painful and harmful and wretched and aching and to change it, transform it, make it into something new.  I need a makeover, God and I want you to do it!  And when you’re done with that piece of me, Lord, show me how you want me to use it to your good and your glory.  Show me how I am to be a light to you and harbinger of your kingdom.  Show me how you can take this weakness of mine and turn it into a strength.”

Because that is what God does.  God can and will use every single one of us in this room today for the coming of the kingdom if we will only choose to allow Him.  If you reach out to God and let Him fish you out of that stream, don’t be surprised if God cleans you up and sends you right back in to fish for others.  That is what it is all about, folks.  It is about looking in and then looking out.  Doing over and then doing for others.  Getting caught and then going fishing.  God expects more of us than that we come here once a week and have a nice time together and then go eat some lovely snacks and go home.  God wants your life.  Not just one hour a week.  But the whole thing!  And if you give it to him, you may not be richer materially, but you will be richer, I guarantee.  You may not be more beautiful externally, but you will be more beautiful, I guarantee.  All your problems won’t be fixed: your sister with whom you haven’t spoken for twenty years may not all of a sudden give you a call, your bills won’t necessarily all be magically paid, your popularity may not suddenly sky-rocket.

On the other hand, who knows?  ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’  If you do, trust me: nothing will ever be the same.  Amen.