Fishing Tacoma

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany

Jonah 3:1-5, 10, 1 Corinthians 7:29-31, Mark 1:14-20, Psalm 62:6-14

As a child, I was either reading or moving. I usually read when fishing with my mom because fishing was, well, boring. Fly fishing was less boring, at least I was moving. One day I set out from camp, found the perfect hole, did my fly flick thing, and in about 5 minutes decided this hole wasn’t good enough. So off I went wandering along the bank, scrambling around underbrush and over logs, randomly trying holes. At some point, a fish bit! I pulled it in, made a little rock pool to keep my fish alive, and put the fly in again. After maybe 7 minutes this time, I had had enough. I may also have noticed that my prize had worked its way halfway out of my impervious little pond. So I grabbed it and headed back to the campsite, scrambling over briar and bramble with a fishing rod in one hand, and a fish in the other. 

The expression on my mother’s face as I proudly handed her a dirt, leaf, and bark covered, board stiff, 12” trout was full of incredulous laughter.

You understand perhaps, why the metaphor of fishing for people has always struck me as a bit … off. Everytime I hear it I see that poor stiff trout clenched in my dirty fist, thrust towards my mother so we can roast it over our campfire. 

I always think, “I am not sure this is what Jesus means by fishing for people.”

Add to this the common notion that fishing for people is saving individual little souls, and my discomfort turns to revulsion, as if people were just poor sad fish waiting to be reeled in, captured, and eaten. Souls are not food for ministry. Ministry is food for souls.

How wonderful then, for the gospel of Mark to come to my rescue. 

The ministry of Jesus begins with the execution, by the state, of his mentor, John the Baptist, He loses his cousin to the notorious and violent Herod, and immediately invites fisherfolk to put down their nets, and instead, fish for people. 

Which they do in what appears to be just a bizarre moment of abandoning their livelihood to follow a random rabbi with a rabble-rousing, and now dead, cousin.

Perhaps it isn’t quite so surprising though. In ancient Israel, fishing the lake of Galilee had become a government-regulated industry that required individuals to join state-sponsored syndicates in order to get a license to do the thing their families had been doing for generations. Instead of fishing to feed their families and the local region, most of their catches were sold to wealthy urban buyers, and taxes and tolls were paid at every point of sale, and at every moment of transport.

Fishing for the state was expensive, and took what had sustained the local economy and sent it across the empire for others to consume. To make it worse, fishing without a license from a state-sponsored syndicate was illegal. 

Everyone was forced into this system, a system setup by the very family of the man who had just executed John the Baptist.

It is quite possible that Simon and Andrew, James and John, were unhappy, even angry, at their situation. They may very well have been ready for the invitation from Jesus, a known associate of a man who spoke out against their exploitation. They may have been very ready to accept an invitation to walk away from state-sanctioned servitude, and do something that is at least metaphorically, illegal. 

They likely know well that in Jewish scripture, the metaphor of fishing is a bit of a double barbed hook. Jeremiah (16:16) uses it as a symbol of God’s censure of Israel. In Ezekial (4:2) and Amos (29:4) hooking fish is a judgment on the rich, the powerful, the exploitative. In the prophetic tradition of Judaism, and John the Baptist, and Jesus, fishing is about hooking the criminal, not saving a soul. 

The story of Jonah (one of my absolute favorite bible stories), is the story of a man hooked by a fish that then spits him out onto the shore he was avoiding. God called Jonah to go to Ninevah and say that God required them to turn away from, repent, of the violence and exploitation of the poor that had become rampant by the powerful of the city. Jonah, petty man that he is, didn’t want to be God’s prophet. Not because he was afraid of God’s anger and judgment as we so often seem to be, but because, as he angrily says to God, “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing” (Jonah 4:2).

To be a prophet is not to sentence punishment, but rather, to speak God’s judgment of mercy and steadfast love in the face of exploitation.

Jesus is not calling his disciples to save souls. He is calling his disciple to walk away from work that is exploitative, form a system that serves only the powerful, to speak out against that same exploitation, and to practice God’s steadfast mercy and love towards all, but especially the most vulnerable. 

Shifting the famous fishing metaphor from saving souls to a prophetic practice of love and mercy actually fits fishing as it is practiced here, on the Salish Sea and its many feeder waterways, much better. 

Our church is built on the land of a fishing people. Fishing is, and always has been, central to the flourishing of this place and the Puyallup people. Not just because fishing feeds, but good fishing requires good stewardship. 

A friend from Portland but formerly of Seattle sent me an article on the Boldt decision of fifty years ago to affirm the treaty rights of local tribes to fish on ancestral waterways. What stood out to me as they told their story, is that for the Tribes this is not just the right to catch fish. It is also a responsibility to steward the waterways, and the lands through which they run, so that fish and people can both thrive. 

To be a disciple of Jesus, to be a follower of Jesus, is to recognize the injustice of our place, the resources of our place, and to steward those resources. 

And to practice the gospel in our particular place, we need to know our place. 

We need to know our place not just so we can tie the right fly to catch the right fish, but so we can know the stream that is home to this family of fish and remove the dam or build a ladder over it. We need to know the sensitivity of our neighbors’ ears so we limit the sound of engines that pierce the water, allowing them to have the kind of conversation a family pod needs to travel safely and together, or, as I recently learned, to hear the dawn and dusk choruses some fish sing.

I want to get to know this place. Not just you and Christ Church, but our neighbors. This church sits on the border between a downtown full of arts and education institutions; a comfortably wealthy neighborhood, and one shaped by redlining and racial discrimination; and a growing healthcare complex. 

What are the sounds our neighbors hear that drown out their conversation, or make them sing along to a joyful tune? Does their workplace treat them justly, or exploit their labor? Are they even able to labor? Where do the parents of the children in Mary Bridge go for quiet sanctuary in the midst of stress? Do people feel safe on the streets?  Is there enough shelter?

I want to get to know this place with you. I hope that over the next months and years, you will join me in learning about this place. Certainly share what you already know, but also join me in learning new things so that we know the fish in our sea, and how we can join in stewarding the waterways that flow all around all of us.