GREETINGS TO THE CHILDREN OF GOD,
This isn’t a beautiful question but a question I wonder about. How do we translate God’s good news for our world today? Jesus who uses the metaphor of a fishing net saying he will make his disciples fish for people. We get to translate how this wonderful tool for fishing but not so wonderful tool for the fish who are captured in it becomes a vehicle for God’s good news in Jesus Christ.
For a fish the net means certain death to be caught up in it. Is this what it means to die to ourselves, to recognize the limits of our humanity, to name our brokenness? We are a caught people or in those old familiar words, “I am in bondage to sin and cannot free myself.” How do we translate that for today?
For the one who wants to catch fish, the net is a beautiful tool that gives access to fish. How does Jesus teach them to fish for people as he draws them in, capturing their attention so that they don’t dart away from the net? Jesus heals people, casts out demons and teaches the Hebrew scriptures with authority not just an opinion or a review of the best scholars of the time. Is our conversation about Jesus compelling and respectful so that it captures other’s attention? Do we share with others how Jesus has caught us up and drawn us in?
Is Jesus the net in the metaphor? Who slips around us, coming up to our speed and pulling us in? Is Jesus the one who fishes, casting the net, trying to pull us out of the waters of chaos into what looks like death for us but transforms us into food, food for the world. Jesus crosses those boundaries, God becoming human, giving his body for us to eat, so that we would remember, so that we would be fed on his very being, so that we would have life.
Jesus teaches us how to be disciples by giving us his body and blood in bread and wine and gives us his body and blood on the cross and into the tomb to resurrected and returned life that finds home in God. Is Jesus teaching us that he is both fish and net and the one who fishes for people drawing them into what seems like death in order to give them new life?
How do we translate this today? What lessons do we take from the net and fish and disciples following Jesus and Jesus teaching them how to fish for people. How do we cast our net, our tools with our family members and friends in daily conversations and life unfolding events? Jesus gives us plenty of metaphorical and symbolic room to figure out how our story weaves together with God’s story. The Holy Spirit works with us as we trust and keep looking to God’s story while we live our story now. Like fishing, we keep at it day after day. No fish are ever caught in a net that isn’t cast into the water. Little by little the Holy Spirit works in and through us as we figure out how to spread God’s good news in Jesus. It is a wild and death-defying story drawing us home to God. I am grateful we get to journey together on this fishing expedition.
Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,
Pastor Connie Spitzack
