Gone Fishing

The scriptures referred to are Luke 5:1-11.

Doing the very same thing over and over and expecting different results has been called insanity. As someone who prefers precise language, I've never cared for that descriptor. What it is is stupid. Insanity, which is not a medical or psychological term but a legal one, means not knowing right from wrong. That's why it is sometimes used as a legal defense, albeit a rarely successful one. Not learning that what you keep doing is failing to work is stupid. It doesn't however mean you should give up. It may mean you have to modify certain elements in what you are doing; that is, experiment. Edison famously tried about 100 different elements before he found one that worked as a long-lasting filament in his light bulb. He didn't give up and work on something different. He tried doing the same thing but doing it differently. That's smart.

We have an example of this in today's gospel. Jesus is teaching people outdoors and they are crowding him. He sees 2 boats at the shore. The fishermen have been fishing at night and are now washing their nets of stuff other than fish. Jesus notices a boat is empty and comes up with a novel use for it. He has Peter take the boat out just a little so he can teach the people without getting mobbed. And it will have an amphitheater effect, allowing everyone on the shore to fan out and both see and hear Jesus. (Jesus, you'll notice, sits down to teach. So I have a good precedent.)

Afterwards, perhaps as a reward for letting him use the boat, Jesus tells Peter to go further out into the deeper water and let down his nets for fish. Peter objects that they have just come in from a spectacularly unsuccessful night of fishing. But since it's Jesus, he will try again. And you know the rest. They catch so many fish they just about swamp 2 boats.

Now the interesting thing is not that the fishermen did the same thing and got different results. What's important is that Jesus changed how they did things.

First, Jesus changed the time. They had been fishing at night, which makes sense since during the day fish went deeper to avoid the heat of the sun. At night they are in the shallows. But Jesus suggests they go out during the day. Sometimes changing the time or the timing makes a real difference. Often we fall into routines and we need to change in order to shake things up and get different results. High schools that changed the start time of morning classes from 7:30 or 8 am to 9 found they got better attendance and the kids got better grades. Why? Because of the well-known fact that teenagers are nocturnal creatures and don't like to get up early. Duh!

Although in this case Jesus is going against conventional wisdom. The best time to fish is early morning or late afternoon when the fish are usually in shallower waters. But the conventional wisdom wasn't working for Peter. So why not try something different?

And here's the second change that's being made. The place. As we said, Peter was fishing in shallower waters. Jesus has Peter go to the deep water. If you want to catch fish, you go to where they are. It's day and so they are in the deeper waters. Jesus may have known this simply by hanging around fishermen. And while Peter doesn't say, “Yes, I know that at this time of day I'd have to go to the deep water. I am a fisherman, after all,” you do pick up a note of exasperation in his reply to Jesus' suggestion.

Now Peter needed to catch fish to sell to support his and his brother Andrew's families. So why didn't he just do this anyway? Possibly because night fishing had worked before. You are going to have a bad night now and then. You just have to accept that. Or possibly because fishing is hard enough without having the hot Middle Eastern sun beating down on you. No use in getting sunburned and still having no fish to show for it. Or maybe he was just tired. He'd try again the next night.

Peter gives in to Jesus' suggestion and that meant another change. When fishing in the shallows fishermen at that time used a 15 foot wide round net with lead sinkers around the circular edge. They threw it into the water and it would sink like an open umbrella trapping the fish under it. Then they would pull on a rope they still held, which caused the net to draw together like a purse and they would haul it up, full of fish, hopefully. But the Sea of Galilee gets to a depth of 141 feet. So if you are fishing in the deeper parts, you need a dragnet to pull behind your boat.

Thus to follow Jesus' advice, Peter and his brother had to change the time, the place and the equipment they use. And they get so many fish they need the help of their partners, James and John, the sons of Zebedee. Even so the boats are on the verge of sinking.

There are two dramatic events that happen right after this humungous catch of fish. First Peter falls at Jesus' feet and says, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” Now this is surprising, because in the last part of the last chapter, Luke tells us that Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law. So why did this miracle have a greater impact on Peter?

It may have been that Peter had already seen Jesus heal many people. And it may have seemed to him that, of course, Jesus, who was anointed by God, had mastery over disease. He was holy; the causes of disease were demons in most folk's eyes. But here Jesus shows mastery over not spirits but nature, specifically fish. Peter knew fish. And if they had caught a decent amount with the dragnet, Peter would have been impressed but not astonished. But nobody had caught this many fish at once. This was not natural. Jesus, who was a carpenter not a fisherman, was not merely lucky; he had to know or even have been responsible for this superabundance of fish being right there where they dropped their net. Peter saw that Jesus was not your average preacher.

However the more important sequel to this event was Jesus telling these fishermen that they would be fishers of men. And I don't think this story was just a clever anecdote leading to Jesus' saying. I think it is an enacted parable. It doesn't just lead up to Jesus talking about evangelism; it is offering us insights into evangelism.

In Jesus' day, the only way to spread the gospel was orally. Jesus preached in synagogues and outdoors. Even in Paul's day, that was the primary way to broadcast the message. Paul's letters were sent primarily to answer questions and settle disagreements in specific churches, not to be used to convert people. The Gospels, which came later, were written to preserve the accounts of Jesus' teachings and life at a time when the apostles and other eyewitnesses were being martyred. But the principle way to introduce people to the good news was by mouth, mainly because literacy was not that widespread and books were rare and expensive. Eventually that changed.

I watched a fascinating documentary about the history of communication technologies. And they pointed out that, whether we are talking about the printing press or movies or records or radio or TV or the internet, Christians have always been early adopters of each of these inventions. They see every new medium as a opportunity to share their message. Christian book publishing is a $1.2 billion market. Christians buy more more books and spend more money on books than the average reader. There are over 2 dozen Christian film companies releasing some of the most successful independent films. There are around 1600 Christian radio stations and you can tune into at least one in every city and county in the US. There are around 100 Christian broadcast TV stations and more than 40 Christian TV networks on cable and satellite. Besides innumerable Christian websites not associated with churches, of the 320,000 churches in the US somewhere between 69% and 78% of them say they have websites. That's more than 200,000! As Jesus suggested, the church has made changes in order to catch people.

But unfortunately this makes it seem that as far as evangelism is concerned, we've got it covered. We don't need to duplicate what others are doing so widely and so well. Except we are a culture that loves to watch things rather than participate in them. Millions watch sports who never go outside with a ball and a bat or golf club or a helmet to play the games they say they love. Right now millions are watching the Olympics. If they all were inspired to, say, go ice skating, all the rinks in the US would be booked solid. That isn't happening. And the advertising industry is in turmoil because even with their saturation of all the media, folks are fast-forwarding and scrolling past and tuning out ads. Hearing about something or receiving an offer doesn't mean you will act on it. And despite the popularity of Christian media, 3700 churches close their doors each year. In part this is due to a passive Christianity, conditioned by a culture that “likes to watch.”

James writes, “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only. Otherwise, you are deceiving yourselves.” (James 1:22, Berean Study Bible) We need to be active and if what we are doing is not working, we should listen to Jesus and make changes.

In today's 24/7 world, with Sundays not necessarily a day off, we need to rethink only offering services on Sunday mornings. And we may have to rethink only offering services in a church building. Jesus told Peter to go where the fish are. We may need to go further out and away from where we are used to operating.

But I think we also need to go deeper. One problem with the Christian message is it has been reduced to catchy slogans and sentimental sayings and simplistic solutions that do not work for everyone. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God does not give us more than we can handle. Were that true we wouldn't need God's help. Jesus is not the answer to everything, like, for instance, math problems. When it comes to how the physical world works, you need science. When it comes to spiritual matters, you need Jesus.

That is what the church is here for. To bring Jesus to the spiritually sick. And you only have to listen to the news to know that the world is ailing, not only physically but spiritually. People are losing faith in humans and the products of humanity: politicians, scientists, the police, the military, the companies we work for and buy from. Everyday we learn our heroes, past and present, have feet of clay. And while technology keeps inventing amazing new things, a lot of us feel like Jeff Goldblum in the original Jurassic Park: “...your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.” Precisely. Whether something is morally right or spiritually healthy is not a question science can answer.

Unfortunately the church has been focusing on a few hot button issues that are mentioned in the Bible infrequently or not at all, and studiously avoiding deeper issues because they put us out of our comfort zone. They require that we not accept the status quo but change it. They require us to change what we have been doing in the past. They require us to go out and do God's work in broad daylight. They require us to be active rather than passive.

And the dragnet Peter used brought in not only fish but sea creatures of every kind. Some were not kosher for Jews. But the sorting came later, once you got the fish to shore, not before. I knew a good Christian man who thought evangelism meant asking people about abortion. That's not the gospel. And you are automatically forcing people to declare a side. You are not casting a wide net. You are pre-sorting. You're not going to get some people to even consider visiting your church.

The gospel, the good news, is Jesus: who he is, what he has done for us and is doing in us, and what our response should be. And unfortunately a lot of Christian media act like my Christian friend: talking about peripheral issues rather than focusing on Jesus.

One good thing my friend did do was talk to people. Because, again, the media is not really personal. It can be passively watched or ignored. I still think the best way to spread the gospel is as Jesus did it: in person, by mouth. And by ear.

On the chaplain's Facebook page, someone posted a question as to whether they should rename the position of hospital chaplain to something like Spiritual Care Provider or Pastoral Counselor. I suggested “Hospital Person who Actually Has Time to Listen to You.” And it was one of the more popular answers, though I was being a bit tongue in cheek. But just a bit. Quite frankly that's what I try to be at the jail. And that's what all Christians need to be. We live in a busy, non-stop world. And most people don't have or take the time to listen to others. So we need to be the person who listens. And we should only offer Jesus when and if it is appropriate to their situation.

Notice that Jesus tells Peter to take the boat out. When Jesus was going somewhere, he didn't do the sailing. The fishermen did. And they didn't bring people to Jesus; they brought Jesus to people. That's our job, too. In Ireland our family visited an ancient church, the Gallarus Oratory, built in the shape of a boat. You can think of the church as the boat in which we are bringing Jesus to people—where they are, at the best time for them, not us, and rather than using oars, using our two ears more than our one mouth.

The church did not grow from a dozen men to 2 billion people today by staying home and staying mum. Yes, it's safer for a boat to stay in the harbor, but that's not what boats were built for. As long as we have Jesus on board, we are to set sail. And remember, it's not our job to sort out the people who find themselves drawn to Jesus. Our job is to cast the wide net of God's love for the world and bring in all we can.