‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people’.

Or, to put it in the more commonly found, non-inclusive language of older translations—

‘fishers of men’.

This image or expression is one that diffuses throughout the Christian tradition. 

In Texas, it’s the name of a large Lutheran church.

It’s also the name given by the US Catholic Bishops Conference… 

to their programme for encouraging men to consider a vocation to the priesthood.

But, more than anything else, the expression is used in reference to missionary endeavours.

Up in Brisbane, ‘Fishers of Men’ is the name of a non-denominational Christian charity… 

that seeks to help the homeless and drug-addicted.

But, despite its overt charitable work and social outreach…

you don’t need to dig too far to see that its true purpose is ‘saving souls’.

And it probably won’t come as a surprise to discover…

that it’s the name of an evangelism training programme in the US—

of course!—

a twelve-week course—

including a graduation ceremony—

teaching people how to ‘share Jesus with their friends, neighbors and relatives’.

And, while we’re over there…

the expression ‘fishers of men’ also looms large in writings by Mormon leaders…

encouraging their faithful to pursue worldwide missionary endeavours.

 

You really don’t have to look too hard or too far… 

to discover that expression and that mindset within the contemporary church.

But the same mindset has been at the heart of so much of our religious tradition down the centuries.

Churches have sent out missionaries to the four corners of the globe…

in an effort to ‘enlighten’ the irrational and superstitious natives—

to ‘civilise’ and educate them.

Christians have preached on street-corner soapboxes…

undertaken ‘beach missions’ to holidaying young people…

or ministered to the destitute and needy, often with a pretext of ‘saving their souls’;

Christians have produced pamphlets, tracts, and TV commercials…

all in an effort to convince people that what they believe…

and how they live their lives…

is deluded and detrimental.

But, in doing so… 

the church has often gone even further—

we have condemned people to eternal damnation for not believing in our God-construct;

for not accepting our religious stories and beliefs;

for not living by our definition of a holy life.

And we have claimed a divine mandate for so believing and acting.

 

So, it’s with considerable religious and cultural baggage that we approach this morning’s reading from Mark’s Gospel:

“As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew…And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people’.”

Here, clearly, Jesus was inviting his would-be followers to become evangelists—

to go forth and to proclaim the Gospel;

to save the souls of the lost and the damned.

That is our great calling—

a calling that demands our all, our every allegiance.

Or, at least, that’s how it appears on the surface;

that’s how it has been interpreted in the Western, Protestant tradition;

that’s how so many of us have been taught or told to understand it.

And yet… 

if you step back and think about it carefully…

‘fishing’ is not a very benign image or metaphor.

In fact, it contains more than a hint of predation and consumption.

But— 

leaving aside any modern vegetarian or vegan sensibilities—

is that really what’s going on here?

Is this a call to evangelistic outreach and old-fashioned missionary endeavours?

 

Frankly, no!

 

As one Biblical scholar points out…

within the broader cultural world of the first century… ‘fishing’ could be used as a metaphor for teaching…

such that a good teacher would fish out students from the masses.

In other words…

the call, here, may be for the disciples to teach people—

presumably, teaching them about who God is and what it means to be faithful to God.

But, more than that, the Biblical scholar Ched Myers points out that…

within the broader Hebrew tradition, the metaphor of ‘fishing for people’…

doesn’t refer to missionary endeavours or ‘the saving of souls’;

rather, it was a metaphor that we find not infrequently in the Old Testament—

especially in the prophets—

that was specifically related to the prophetic task.

For example, Jeremiah uses the metaphor of fishing for pronouncing God’s judgment upon Israel for its faithlessness;

Amos uses the metaphor to pronounce God’s judgment upon the rich for their treatment of the poor;

Ezekiel uses the metaphor to pronounce God’s judgment upon the powerful… 

for their oppression and tyranny.

Far from a call to go to the unbelieving and unconverted…

and preach a message of spiritual repentance—

of hellfire and brimstone—

with the reward of some sort of ‘pie-in-the-sky-when-you die’…

Jesus’ call to the would-be disciples may be an invitation to a prophetic vocation.

As such… 

in his first act of ministry on behalf of the ‘Kingdom’ in Mark’s Gospel…

Jesus invites a bunch of smelly, dirty, frowned-upon, working-folk…

to work for a very different world.

Jesus invites some common folk to join him in a socially subversive struggle…

seeking to ‘overturn the existing order of power and privilege’.

In joining him, these humble fishermen leave everything behind—

and within a traditional, collectivist society such as theirs…

leaving their jobs meant leaving their families…

potentially imperilling their family’s survival…

and surrendering their only form of social security.

In effect, the story of Jesus’ call and the first disciples’ response…

is an enacted parable—

a symbol— 

of the sort of reordering of the structures and relationships of society that the prophets envisioned.

Far from the call to would-be disciples to follow…

as a call to engage in some mission of individualistic conversion—

or the ‘saving of souls’—

it’s a call to a life of subversive protest and advocacy.

 

And yet…

while that makes more sense of this strange saying…

can we be certain that that’s what is meant here?

No.

Not at all.

As another Biblical scholar points out…

while this saying is one with which we’re all very familiar today…

it was probably far from obvious at the time.

In fact, Jesus—

or, probably, the author of Mark’s Gospel—

may have coined it on the spot simply because the ones being called were fishermen.

In other words…

it was a spontaneous attempt at a pun—

a bit of a ‘dad joke’—

and not a very good one.

And yet…

that simple pun has been taken as a serious theological statement…

and analysed…

interpreted and re-interpreted…

and invested with all sorts of meaning over the centuries…

which was never originally intended.

As such, is it not, in fact, a highly ironic but unintentional parable—

a warning about the way in which we impute meanings to religious symbols…

language…

and traditions…

that were never intended;

and which, ultimately, divide us as people of faith;

or create moralistic demands that we have placed on others or ourselves…

as, somehow, of the essence of what it means to be faithful disciples;

none of which was ever intended?

 

Once again, perhaps, we are simply being reminded of the power and the danger of symbols.

 

In the end, our call to follow Jesus is a call to love as he did.

Anything beyond that is a bit fishy!