Fishers of Men

February 2018

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

“Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”

Matthew 4: 19

Jesus says these famous words to Simon and Andrew and they each follow him. We’ve all heard this metaphor used in the context of evangelism. “Be ye Fishers of Men,” stating that our main job in discipleship is to fill the church with freshly saved souls. The church sign, maybe you’ve seen it, “Gone fishing: we catch ‘em, God cleans ‘em” comes to mind. Although, I do think being fishers of men points us towards evangelism, a deeper entry into thinking about “Fishing” can help us get a better handle on some of the issues the metaphor raises, and can help us see better what it is we are truly being called to do, and why.

First let’s look at the most negative connotation that is raised. When you fish you fasten a shiny desirous, at least to a fish, false image to a hidden hook. Or sometimes you use live bait, but still there lies hidden the hook. The fish is lured to take a bite and ends up hooked through his lip. Then you reel him in, then scale him, clean him, filet him, and fry him up for dinner. Or you go out in a boat and cast your net into the water where you know there are fish, and scoop a bunch up all at once, but it still ends with scaling, cleaning, fileting, frying, and eating.

Now obviously, that is not what we see ourselves doing when we evangelize. We are not offering up a frying pan, but salvation from such things. But we have to be honest; the “fish” we seek do not know that we are seeking to help them, and have been taught, shown, and led to believe the opposite. Most who have left the church are not rejecting Jesus, but instead the frying pan of the church. They were lured by what the churches say, but kept finding the reality of the hook lying beneath the shiny façade.

That is one problem, but another is that the fishing metaphor can suggest that success in discipleship is measured by numbers. It suggests that there must be that “Catch” threshold, that the way to determine success is by how many people congregate Sunday Mornings at 11:00 each week, or how many join, or how many tithe, etc. People always like to have quantifiable measures for success, so they can judge effectiveness, but these can be harmful to the life of a church and its disciples. It may lead a church towards making its lures shinier in effort to hide the hook better, instead of being the genuine loving people we are seeking through Christ to be. We all want to see our church grow, but we must keep these things in mind, lest we fish for the wrong reasons.

I want to offer two alternative ideas that I hope can help us move forward in our efforts. The first has to do with purpose—why we do. And it leads naturally into the second that has to do with methods—what we do. They are in direct response to the issues just discussed.  

So why does Jesus tell us to be “Fishers of Men?” Is it for the fish, or for us? I ask this because, when Jesus says this to Simon and Andrew in Luke, he has just filled their nets with fish. They had been struggling all night, and he just simply miracled a bunch of fish into their nets. Jesus has people flocking to him in droves, attracted to his miracles, his healings, his message. He doesn’t need fancy lures, and he doesn’t need anyone holding the line and jiggling his message in the water either. So who is it all about?

My dad used to say there were two types of fishermen, those who liked to fish, and those who liked to catch fish. He would ask me, typically after a long period of fishing without catching, “Son do you like to fish or do you like to catch fish?”  The distinction is self-evident.  To fishing there is an art, a patience, a being outside with no other distractions, a sense of connectedness to methods passed down from generation to generation, a silent fellowship with others who are going fishing with you, and memory making that lasts, beyond any catching of fish. The big fish you caught becomes larger in the legend, and you can hold it out in front of you to make it appear bigger in the photo, but the smile on your face in the picture has nothing to do with the fish. Perhaps, Jesus knows this, and tells us to fish not because he needs results, but because we need the rest of what is fishing.

So freed from results how would we go about fishing differently? There are many answers to that question, but I want to focus on one. The pelican is a Christian symbol because it is known to pierce its own breast to feed its young from its blood, a mirror to Christ. I remember sitting on the beach and watching a pelican fish, and saw another parallel. When the pelican fishes it flies over the water, and then dives into it, and swims, becoming a fish for a moment itself. There are obvious problems, like we mentioned before, since the fish is eaten, but we can see another parallel with Christ. He comes into our world, to be us and to be with us, and nothing else would do. Our fishing must be the same, not on the end of a hook, but ourselves fully submerged in the water with the other. We have to seek to understand those people we hope to reach. We must seek to serve them, rather than luring them in to serving us. In actuality, the distinction of an us and a them must altogether disappear, which is why I hate the term “unchurched.” Church is not a process that can be given or taken away. These walls must be torn down. The first steps in doing this has to be listening, hearing, studying someone else’s why, coming to know their hopes, their fears, their frustrations, and if we do so we will find that everyone’s story is unique, so much time, patience, and practice is needed.

So I ask you as we head on down to the river, “Do you like to fish? Or do you like to catch fish?

All my love,

Pete

Three Old Fishermen

They were both fishing in the evening as the sun set to my back,

And I watched, trying to figure out for myself who was the more

Successful, that is if the definition of fishing success is actually

Catching fish because from my experience it may not be the case.

I never saw either catch any fish, though the pelican could have,

Being so far away, certainly been packing them away in his beak,

For it was made for him special to hold more than his belly can,

But I couldn’t see, and so, set my mind imagining his failure in

Tandem with the man to my right. I watched him for hours, sitting,

Beer in hand, line extended out into the surf, waiting, so patiently

For exactly zero bites. Though I didn’t know for sure, I imagine,

He was so patient because the rest of the world moved so fast,

This extended moment was a break from it all, to sit, with nothing

More to do, than to get to sit and wait, and that somehow the reel

And rod made it active enough to be considered doing something.

He couldn’t simply say, “Hey Honey, I’m going to the beach to do

Nothing,” and it had been years since heading to the beach to drink

Beer (as the only attraction) was an acceptable pastime, and fishing,

Therefore, was somehow something enough, and so there he was

Sitting and waiting. In the time I watched him, I never saw him cast,

Nor did I ever see him reel. In fact, I never saw him raise the rod,

Jiggle the line, or bring in the slack enough to check for a bite. No,

He just sat, and waited, taking occasional sips. He didn’t even drink

Aggressively, but rather seemed to wait for that, too, with no need

To rush the buzz. Like an Old Bull, sauntering slowly down a shady

Hill, knowing that what he sought awaited, so he must seek other fruit

Than fish. I wonder if the pelican shares such silly notions, for his

Fishing ritual, is at least as ancient as ours, if not more. Could he,

This avian symbol of insentient freedom, fish to escape, to pass time,

To rewind, to clear his mind, to seek and find, something sublime,

Like we do? His inherited ritual is much more active, gliding, this way,

Then that, just above surface of the water, when something flashing

Beneath, catches his eye, just enough, and he rises up, just enough.

He gets that perfect angle, and dives, disappearing for a moment,

A fish for a split second, before emerging back to the surface, floating,

Wings tucked, like a duck, perfectly still. Is there something to turning

Into what you want to catch, for a moment? We don’t do that, instead

We send our surrogate to lure our prey, a little wiggly worm, or squid,

Or some plastic fish replica, shiny and bright enough to hide a hook.

I wish I could have seen whether he hid some fish in his beak because

Then I would prove my preconceptions about birds, like other animal

Species, that they do not fish for fun, but for food. As fun as it looks,

The flying and the diving, alone and part of a V, it’s necessary to life,

And tied directly to surviving. Do we feel that when we fish, despite

The sport, the escape, or is the escape just that, an escape from life’s

Imposters, for a moment of the real? I don’t think my fisherman, beer

In hand, was seeking such things, but I was—when I headed to the beach

As the sun was sinking behind me, facing my shadow stretching ahead,

Watching a bird and a man fish, seeing with much more than my eyes,

Allowing my imagination to soar, to sit, to dive and to ponder—seeking

A sense of the sublime, and found it in a connected empathetic moment

Of place in my mind, and I will take it with me the next time I go fishing.