Sermon:
October 31, 2004
Sunday Night Alive  

Scripture:
Luke 5:1-11

Fishing. When you grow up in Northern Wisconsin, you know a little something about fishing. It was something that most everybody did. It was something we did. I have many memories of my dad taking my brother and me out to one of the many lakes that surrounded our hometown for a few hours of casting our lines in hopes of landing one to bring home and show Mom.  

One of the best things about fishing is fishing stories. In my family, we have some that still get told from time to time. One of the most famous fishing stories in my family is about the time we were camping and my brother had a caught a bluegill. This was the first fish he ever caught and so he was very proud. He walked around the campsite with a big smile on his face, showing off his catch. My dad asked my brother if he would like him to clean his fish. My brother consented, and my dad took the fish over to a picnic table and brought out his fillet knife. As my dad began to take the blade to the fish, my brother screamed out, “Stop!” With tears rolling down his cheeks, my brother told my dad he thought he was going to clean his fish—you know, give it a bath or wash it with soap and water—not kill it! That’s one of the stories we like to tell.  

And then there is the story of the time my brother and I were fishing with my dad and we caught a handful of very small, I mean very small, pan fish. Truth be told, there wasn’t a “keeper” in the bunch. Oh, but my brother and I wouldn’t have any of it. Not only were going to keep every one of those fish, we insisted that my dad clean them (my brother now understood what that meant) and that we would have them cooked up for supper the next night. Well, my dad was not quite sure what to do. These fish were not big enough to clean and there surely wasn’t enough to make a meal, but he didn’t want to disappoint his boys. So when we arrived back at the house, my father, unbeknownst to us, threw out these tiny fish, snuck out to the grocery store, bought some fish fillets, brought them home, cut them up into small pieces and cooked them up the next night for dinner. As he retells it, my brother and I were so proud and were convinced that these were the best-tasting fish ever prepared. Fishing stories are almost as fun the fishing itself.  

Here is a fishing story of a different variety. Recently, I read about a staff writer for the Miami Herald, a woman named Madeline Blais, who was assigned to write the obituary of a young woman named Judy Bucknell. And for some reason, Madeline began to ponder, Who was this woman? What was her life about? So she checked the police report and discovered that Judy Bucknell, at age 38 and 109 pounds, was homicide number 106 for the year in Miami. It was the kind of story that would have been read on page 23 and then quickly forgotten, except that Madeline, in her investigation, happened across Judy’s diary. 

And reading the pages, this writer heard Judy tell of her worries.  She worried about getting old, about getting fat, about getting pregnant, about getting by. Judy lived in stylish Coconut Grove where she says people in Miami live if they’re lonely, but they want to act happy. Judy’s life seemed to be lived in confusion—half was fantasy, the other half a nightmare—for she was successful as a secretary, but she was a loser at love, unable to find any comfort at all. Listen to what she wrote in her diary: 

Where are the men with flowers and champagne and music? Where are the men who call and ask for a genuine, actual date? Where are the men who would like to share more than my bed, my booze, my food? I would like to have in my life, once before I pass through my life, the kind of sexual relationship which is part of a loving relationship. 

But she never did. 

Judy Bucknell wasn’t a prostitute. She wasn’t on drugs or welfare. She never went to jail. She wasn’t a social outcast. She was respectable. She jogged. She hosted parties. She wore designer clothes, and had an apartment that overlooked the ocean. She was just very lonely. Again, in her diary, she wrote, “I see people together and I’m so jealous I want to throw up. What about me? What about me? Who is going to love Judy Bucknell? I feel so old. Unloved. Unwanted. Abandoned. Used up. I want to cry and sleep forever.” 

You say, “Hey, wait a minute, preacher. You said you going to tell us a fishing story. That certainly was not a fishing story.” Oh, but it was. Judy Bucknell was always fishing. She was always casting her hopes and dreams out into the vast ocean of life. She kept throwing herself out there, hoping that someday, something would catch, hoping that she would actually be able to land a relationship that would sustain her, appreciate her, validate her. Judy Bucknell’s story is a fishing story, all right. She spent much of her life fishing for something, anything, to hold onto. In fact, her story is the quintessential fishing story. It’s about the things in life that always seem to get away.  

Our scriptures tonight offer us a fishing story that might help make sense of Judy’s fishing story.  The story tells us that Simon and his coworkers had spent the entire night out on the waters and had nothing to show for it. Hour after hour, traveling from fishing hole to fishing hole, they dropped their nets and pulled them up without catching a single fish, not even a minnow. Empty nets are a demoralizing and frightful prospect for anyone dependent on the day’s catch to provide for one’s family. They could not afford too many nights like this. Empty nets are a fisherman’s worst nightmare. Can you begin to see how Simon’s fishing story and Judy’s fishing story intersect?  

Empty nets. You know, it is amazing how the modern sciences of archeology and sociology can shed light on the biblical text. These studies often help fill in the spaces that time has erased. In this case, these areas of recent scholarship tell us something about empty nets. Recent archeology suggests that Simon’s experience with empty nets was probably not an isolated experience. More and more fishermen in first century Palestine were struggling to make a living. This was due, at the least, to changes in the economic and political climate of the time. For thousands of years, fishing on the Galilee had been a very local, self-reliant and seasonal affair. Rapid spoilage fixed a limit on the market, localizing a self-sustaining economy. However, under the rule of Herod Antipas (who was anxious to make his backward region productive for Rome, by both taxes and exports), and with the development of preservative techniques in which hauls of sardine and carp could be pickled or salted, the pressures of a wider market seem to have begun altering the Galilean economy. Romans developed a taste for salt-fish. Spicy sauces and fish stews were highly valued as both condiment and medicine. The Galilee, little more than a large freshwater lake, was becoming virtually “industrialized,” and perhaps even over-fished. The result: more and more occasions of empty nets.  

Galilean fishermen were experiencing the reality of diminishing returns. They found themselves working longer and harder for little in return. What happens to a person when they wake up one day to discover that a lifetime of playing by all the rules, of doing everything that was ever asked or expected of them, neither got them ahead or left them satisfied? This day-to-day struggle to try and eke out a living, to try and eke out a life, left Simon and the other fisherman, left Judy Bucknell, can leave you and leave me, with far more than just empty nets. It left them—it can leave us—with an emptiness of soul. 

It is into this moment of struggle that Jesus showed up…showed up then and shows up now. Jesus showed up to respond to this silent cry of Simon’s. Jesus offered Simon some hope in the face of a hopeless world. Jesus gave Simon a glimpse of the abundant life, a life far different than the one he had known. Much to Simon’s surprise, Jesus said, “Push out into the deep water and let your nets out for a catch.” Simon replied, “Master, we’ve been fishing hard all night and haven’t caught even a minnow. But if you say so, I’ll let down the nets.”  

Imagine some of the thoughts that might have been running through Simon’s mind. “Sure Jesus, whatever you say. Never mind that we’ve been at this all night.” “You bet, Jesus. Never mind that we’ve got all our nets cleaned and put away.” “Drop our nets again? Aren’t you a carpenter? What do you know about fishing?” 

But no matter what he was thinking, Simon does what Jesus asks. He goes back out, a little deeper than before, and he drops his nets. Why did Simon do what Jesus asked? The scripture does not say. Maybe Simon glimpsed the uniqueness of Jesus. Maybe he did it just to humor him. Maybe he was at the end of his rope and was willing to try anything. Whatever the case, this small act of obedience had an unexpected and amazing result. As soon as Simon put the net into the water, it was full of fish—so full, it threatened break open the nets. The nets that had been empty for so long were now amazingly full. 

The message was clear to Simon. His life needn’t be consigned to empty nets and empty dreams. These nets, now full of fish, symbolized an abundance, a fullness of life, he had no longer thought possible. In this catch, Simon sees extraordinary possibilities. In the one who told to him “drop his nets again” and “go deeper” than before, Simon heard an invitation to leave a life of struggle and desperation for a new way of life with the promise of abundance. 

I wonder if anyone ever told Judy Bucknell that there was a way out of her loneliness and isolation? I wonder if anyone ever invited her to the shores of the lakeside where she too could hear the words of an itinerant preacher who promised to all who would follow a life abundantly different than the one she knew? 

But here is the catch. Once Simon and the others glimpsed the abundance of life Jesus offered to them, they had to make a choice. For in that moment, Jesus turned these Galilean fisherman away from the fish they had caught and turned them towards the crowd of people who had gathered there, and said, “There is nothing to fear. From now, on you’ll be fishing for people.” In essence, Jesus was saying to them, “You longer fish for yourself. You no longer need to simply be a cog in wheel of the world’s economic machine of over-consumption. You can become the fishers for them—for all the others who have found that life has too often left them with empty nets. You can help them discover a life full of hope and meaning. The catch here is that you no longer work for yourself, you no longer work for the market place. You work for me. And when you work for me, you really work them. Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” 

How did they respond? Remember the last sentence of today’s scripture. They pulled their boats up on the beach and left them, nets and all, and followed him. They left their boats, their nets, everything that symbolized their servitude to the economy of the Roman Empire. They left them to follow Jesus, and the new journey they embarked on would now be in service to the crowd, a crowd full of Judy Bucknells. Together with Jesus and each other, they would embark on a journey to build communities of love, faith, hope, peace and justice. They would begin to build a movement that would model God’s compassion to the ends of the earth. Jesus called the fishermen out of their lives of emptiness and desperation into a life of service where an abundance of joy awaits all who walk down its path. Later Jesus would say to them, “You want your life, then you have to lose your life.” Those fishermen left everything to follow the one who offered them a place in a movement that was abundantly full of purpose. I wonder if Judy Bucknell knew that there was a place for her in this movement Jesus had begun?  

So what is the “big” catch here? You. Me. Judy Bucknell. All of those who make up the crowd of nameless folk seeking a life radically different than the one they are leading. The God made known in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the God who desires to get us all caught up in the movement of the Holy Spirit that will transform the world as we know it. So do you hear the call tonight? If so, then it is time to get your spiritual fishing pole out of storage.  It is time to put on a pair of holy hip-waders and fill up your tackle box with all the promises of the Gospel. And it is time to start fishing. Our story tonight makes it pretty plain. If you are going to fish for the Lord, then you have to get out of church and get among crowds. Let tonight be a night to rededicate your life to becoming a disciple of Jesus, and then inviting others to join in this journey.  

Tonight, Jesus meets us on the shorelines of our lives. We have come for different reasons. We have followed different paths. But no matter our reason for being here tonight, Jesus offers us all the same word: 

There is nothing to fear. Leave all you troubles in the boat, leave all your cares on the beach, drop the broken ways of your past alongside of your nets and follow me. Follow me. 

Brothers and sisters, let’s go fishing.

Note:  The story of Judy Bucknell came from Max Lucado’s book, No Wonder They Call Him the Savior. Max’s books are always full of great stories that bring our contemporary life in touch with the ancient scriptures. 

On the transformation of the Galilean economy and its impact on the empty nets of local fishermen, I am grateful for an article by Bill Wylie-Kellermann entitled “The Power of Alliance,” which was printed in the 1998 Sept./Oct. edition of Sojourners magazine.   Kellermann is an ordained pastor here in the Detroit Annual Conference and one of the folks I consider to be mentor and friend. He has done as much as anyone to help me understand the connection between evangelical faith and progressive politics. Sojourners is also a recommended read. They are daring to go where so many in the church are not these days—boldly walking the religious divide in our churches between “liberals” and “conservatives,” seeking to find the areas of our common faith to build community, dialogue and the Kingdom of God.