More than Fish
Jesus caught up with those who would soon be his disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. These men were frustrated and exhausted from a full night of fishing but not catching anything. Such was life for them. They were fisherman, not a cushy job back then. They must have overheard Jesus’ powerful teaching as he taught the crowd nearby, because when he addresses the fisherman, they respond by calling him “teacher”.
I know that when I am done with a job at the end of the day, especially when it has been a humiliatingly fruitless job, I want to cut my loses, tuck my tail, and return home licking my sores. If there is one thing I hate doing, it is finishing up a long day’s work only to be told by my boss that there is still work to do – especially whenever everything is cleaned and put up, like it was for Simon and his fellow fishermen. So it must have felt just a little crazy to heed Jesus’ words by hopping back into the boat, with freshly cleaned fishing nets for one more try. I would have had a nagging sense of doubt running through my head the entire time!
Even as they began to pull the impossibly heavy net back onto their boat, I would have doubted. “It’s full of sea sand, or rocks.” I would have had myself convinced. I’m not sure if I would have responded the same way Simon did. Recognizing whose presence he was standing in; looking to the left to see a boat sinking in the water under the sheer weight of the fish caught, and looking to the right to see a strange teacher who seemed to know all of this was going to happen, I would have been less concerned about my sin, and more excited about the day’s income! Just think, this was like hitting jackpot at the slot machines! What would my family say when I rode up on a new Mercedes camel? What would the competition say when they saw us selling all these fish in the market later that morning? Finally, their “ship had come in”, and as the fisherman were dreaming about their summer vacation in Havana, Jesus spoke up.
“Soon you’ll be fishing for people!” he said. Something inside these grungy fishermen broke. The disciples caught a glimpse of the end of their lives, peeking cautiously into their final moments. They may have thought, “What good would it do to spend a life casting and reeling in nets? Our whole identity has been wrapped up in catchin’, guttin’ and sellin’ fish, working endlessly every night just to start it all over again the next night! Such a shallow, short sighted life will only leave me without a real life to look back on. There has to be something more lasting, more meaningful to life that a day’s work. I’m tired of living so day to day – I want a life’s purpose, a purpose I can participate in that is so much bigger than myself.”
This story ends by saying, “And they left everything and followed Jesus.” I’ve got to believe that the heaping pile of flopping fish lay stranded on the shores of Galilee. Maybe there were a few from the crowd Jesus had been teaching who are picking a halibut or a trout from the nets for a free morning’s breakfast. As a fisherman, it would have been difficult to leave that pile of potential cash just laying there in the morning’s rising sun…but not if I had my sights set on a higher purpose, an eternal one.
What will I look back on as I lay on my death bed? What are the “eternal things” that give my life substance and a purpose beyond myself?
Last 5 posts by Mark
- Chicago Spiritual Map: Rogers Park - August 8th, 2008
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