How to Fish for People

The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year B, 1/21/24

Readings: Jonah 3:1-5, 10, Corinthians 7:29-31, Mark 1:14-20 (Fishers of People)

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.

“I will make you fish for people,” Jesus said to Simon and Andrew. This is one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite passages in all of scripture. It’s playful, it’s creative, it’s poignant, and for me it’s personal. Whenever I hear the passage of the calling of the fisherman, I cannot help but connect it to my own family history. For generations, since they arrived off the boats from the shores of Ireland at the turn of the century, the men in my family did two things. They were either commercial fishermen and oystermen along the coast of the American South and mid-Atlantic, or, if they were clever and did well in parochial school, they went to seminary and became priests. I was fortunate enough to fall into the latter category, though if I had not become a priest, I like to think, perhaps with a degree of romantic naivete, that the life of a fisherman would have also suited me just fine. After all, the Gospel today reminds us that ministry and fishing are not so different after all. In many ways they draw on a similar set of skills, at least metaphorically.

So to do the metaphor of fishing and ministry justice, let’s think through some of the parallels between these two endeavors. First of all, fishing, carried out at the scale done by Simon and Andrew in the Gospel, and my own predecessors, required a great deal of preparation long before their boats even set out on the water. Nets needed to be mended, bait needed to be prepared, lunch needed to packed, boats needed to repaired, and sails needed to be set. All of this, of course, is a tremendous undertaking before the actual work of catching fish can be done. In fact, the careful work of preparation is so important that it can make or break a fishing expedition and there is no way it can all be done by one person. In order to fish well, you need an entire community of people, each playing their own integral role in concert with one another in order to make the operation successful.

I’m sure you can see where I am going with this. Christ’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church is in many ways like a ship. Many, in fact, I’d say all of you, already know this is true because you each play the important roles, even right now, in making our ministry happen. Take this worship service for example. In the week before we got here bulletins were constructed, the choir rehearsed, the altar was prepared, ushers and liturgical ministers volunteered, this sermon was written, and a quantity of emails known only to God was exchanged. And that’s all before any of us even got here! And even if you were not directly involved in those tasks this week, you too, are still playing an incredibly important role in making this ministry of worship happen simply by being here. All that work would have been for nought had you not walked through the doors this morning to give glory to God.

Yes, the Church is like a ship. There are captains and quartermasters who take the helm to chart a course together in our various ministries. There are cooks, surgeons, and craftspeople who undertake specialized roles in making our work of teaching, praising, and healing possible. And perhaps most importantly of all, there are everyday members of the crew who show up with willing hearts to do whatever is necessary keep God’s ship afloat by living out the Gospel in their lives.

Sure, anyone with a rod and reel could walk out onto a dock, cast their line, and catch a few fish here and there like the solitary street preachers and evangelists we occasionally see on street corners.

But this is not the model of ministry we see being lifted up in the Gospel today. At the start of his public ministry, Jesus, our gentle captain, sets out to find a seaworthy crew. Though none of the disciples, especially Simon and Andrew, felt like they were particularly well-equipped for ministry, Jesus recognized that the gifts and skills that they did bring were more than enough. They likely felt intimidated by the calling at first. Afterall, they were just common fisherman. They probably felt that they didn’t know enough about scripture to be disciples of this peculiar rabbi; they might have felt insufficiently pious or prayerful; they might have felt embarrassed about how they might be perceived by their secular comrades on the high seas. Sailors are a notoriously worldly lot, as we know. 

But these worldly folks were exactly who Jesus wanted as his crew; as his disciples. He would give them a new identity and teach and empower them to repurpose their abilities in service of a catch of infinitely greater value than what they were used to hauling in.

And though they don’t verbalize it yet in this passage, we know that these disciples carried this sense of lingering suspicion about whether Jesus had really chosen the right people for the job. Even as they set about following Jesus and taking part in this new ministerial fishing expedition, they were constantly asking him why, how, and who is going to accomplish the miracles that are performed throughout their ministry. Disbelief, doubt, and feelings of inadequacy are in fact hallmarks of almost every successful call narrative throughout scripture. And I think this is actually of great help to us as we learn to balance our own feelings of disbelief at the seemingly impossible mission that God has set us out on.

Our catechism states very clearly that the mission of the Church is to “restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ” (BCP, 855). That’s the catch that we’re after. Unity with God and Christ together.

It’s a daunting task that causes us to ask ourselves, how can we ever expect to do this on our own? What if our equipment, our nets, sails, and skills aren’t enough to accomplish the job that the Gospel calls us to?

Well, if I’m honest, if it was entirely up to us as individuals to haul in this catch, we wouldn’t be able to do it ourselves. And even as a community, we are dependent on the grace of God to accomplish anything at all. Though when we come together, our various gifts, skills, and strategies become magnified, they are only part of the equation in our ministry expedition. We as individuals, or as a community, are not solely responsible for bringing in the catch. And thank God we’re not!

Our job is to set our sails and cast out our net as best as we can. Beyond that, we cannot bring the fish into the net. This is where faith and trust in God comes in. God is our partner and leader in our ministry who makes everything possible. God guides us into waters that are ripest for ministry and equips us to do the work, even when we doubt ourselves or grow worried that our efforts will not be enough.

God is a gentle and capable captain, who wants us to set down our anxieties, especially when they’re caused by an overdeveloped sense of self-reliance. After all it’s God, not us, who makes anything at all possible. So have faith that God is in control, it’s not all up to us.

God has given us tremendous tools for this work that we can trust in.

Trust in the winsomeness of the Gospel. Trust in the wiliness of the Holy Spirit. And trust in the exuberance of God’s love.

At the end of the day, all we can ever do is set our nets and have faith that if we have done our work well, if we have heeded God’s call, and if we have given our best efforts to the tasks God has set us to, then God will fill our nets abundantly. Amen.