“Gone Fishin’ ”
Sermon for MCC
New Haven
January 26,
2014
Rev. Brian
Hutchison, M.Div.
Psalm
27
Matthew
4:12-23
Brace yourselves; I’m going to open with a corny joke. Feel free to laugh, moan, or both. “What do Spaniards use when they
go fishing? Castanets.”
That’s
exactly what brothers James and John were doing when Jesus approached them at
the Sea of Galilee: they “cast the nets.” They were doing their everyday job of
catching fish. The Sea of Galilee was known to have an abundance of fish that
allowed towns such as Capernaum to thrive.
The story
seems simple at first glance. Jesus makes his home in a town by the sea and he
starts recruiting disciples and preaching the gospel. Brothers James and John
stopped doing their job and without argument decided to follow Jesus. The children’s
Sunday school moral of the story: we should drop everything and follow Jesus
too. The end.
But within
this text, there is a lot of meaning written in. When we read Scripture, we
need to keep in mind the meaning behind names. Let’s start with the setting. Capernaum
means “consolation.” This city would be the starting place where Jesus began to
show compassion, where he “consoled” those who were suffering. In the Hebrew
Bible, Joshua named Naphtali as a place of refuge. In that region, Jesus would
assure the people that God is their refuge. Galilee means “circuit.” Think of
the Methodist circuit riders that went from town to town on horseback to preach
the gospel. Jesus would travel all over the circuit of Galilee to preach his
message.
Now what
about the names of the people? The Hebrew version of Zebedee means “God will
bestow.” John is the English translation of the Hebrew name meaning “God is
gracious.” James is the English
translation (by way of Latin and Greek) of the Hebrew name Jacob. Jacob means,
“May God protect.” Just within this family of a father and two sons, we get the
message: “God will bestow grace and protection.”
From these
meanings, we get a picture of what Jesus’ ministry was about. He came to show
compassion, to give refuge, and to demonstrate God’s grace and protection. Go
to the first verse of this passage and we see why the people need protection:
“Jesus heard that John [the Baptist] had been arrested.” We know that John the
Baptist would soon be beheaded for his ministry. Jesus knew that as he
empowered his people, they would need all the protection they could get.
After
Jesus’ death, followers of Jesus were heavily persecuted for three centuries.
They were crucified, stoned, beheaded, fed to wild animals, and the like. They could not meet publicly, so they
met underground in catacombs. They would mark the walls of the catacombs with
an ichthys, which is the Greek word
for “fish.” In the 20th century, Christians started using this
symbol again on bumper stickers. It’s commonly called the “Jesus fish.” The
irony of our modern use of the ichthys is that it was a secret symbol for ancient Christians. If someone wanted to know if
another was a follower of Jesus, s/he would draw one arc of the fish. If the
other person was a Christian, s/he would draw the other arc to complete the
symbol. They then knew they were safe with each other.
Before the
Gay Liberation Movement began in the late 1960s, gay and lesbian people had
their own symbols such as the lambda
and code words to tell if the other person was gay. We too had to meet secretly,
lest the McCarthy era agents find you and charge you with Communism and conspiracy
against the government. The lambda stood for “liberation,” and in a similar
way, that was the hope of those who drew the ichthys nearly two millennia ago.
Empire is
empire. Oppression is oppression. Ego is ego. From Jesus’ time to today, there
have been those who have sought to control the lives of others through force
and fear. The Romans feared what the Christians could do if they organized, so
they killed them. Then the Christian Roman Empire feared what the Pagans could
do, so they killed them. Then the Nazis feared what the Jews could do, so they
killed them. For centuries, the Jews and Muslims of the Holy Land have feared
each other, so they kill each other daily. The KKK feared the freed slaves, so
they lynched them. In 1978, Dan White was afraid of gay San Francisco
Supervisor Harvey Milk and how he was organizing the gay community, so he shot
Milk in the head. Hate crimes against all kinds of people still occur today,
all rooted in xenophobia- the “fear
of the other”.
If I were
asked what the root of all evil was, I would say, “unnecessary fear.” The
emotion of fear is natural. If I’m being chased by a rabid animal, my brain
reacts with fear and I will run to safety. If I’m being chased by a rabid
fundamentalist, I run to the safety of my God. Fear is natural. But
unnecessary, ungrounded fear leads to oppression, suffering, and the
disintegration of the human family and the earth.
The Psalm
we heard today- Psalm 27- demonstrates what we should do when we face fear. The
Psalmist so beautifully writes, “God is my Light and my salvation; whom shall I
fear? God is the stronghold of my life; of whom should I be afraid?” These are
rhetorical questions, but their answer is plain: no one and nothing! Now don’t
go testing God’s protection by putting yourself in a dangerous situation. God
may have kept Daniel safe in the lion’s den, but that was just a metaphor. We
all have lions (and tigers and bears, oh my!) in our lives. There are people
who will seek your destruction. That’s not paranoia; that’s just the truth.
God has
promised to protect your spirit from the teeth of the beast if you allow God
to. I know some of you who have been bitten by spiritual snakes. But instead of
turning away and allowing God to protect you, you went back to the snake again
and again and kept getting bitten. Maybe being bitten and surviving makes you
feel tough. Maybe the venom gives you a high. But what Spirit is telling us
today is this: Stop it! Stop letting the snake bite. Stop answering those phone
calls from poisonous people. Stop going to churches where they call you an
abomination. Stop injecting yourself with the venom of worry over what may come
to pass. Stop listening to preachers and political leaders that are trying to
keep you down. And perhaps most importantly: stop storing those poisonous
messages within your mind and your heart. God can only keep you in Her refuge
if you turn away from the negative and focus on the positive. Positivity is
the anti-venom.
Just like
Jesus, we are recruiting today. We aren’t here to save souls from the fires of
eternal damnation; we are here to save lives from a living hell. There
is a lot of poison in the world, but it’s all an illusion. If anyone calls you
anything less than a child of the living God, it is an illusion and a lie. Only
Love is real because God is Love and God is Eternal and Omnipresent.
There is an
image that I want you to keep in your minds this week. The Ojibwe Native Americans
started the tradition long ago of making what we know as dream catchers. As the
Ojibwe legend goes, the Spider Woman Asibikaashi is the protector of their
people. But as the Ojibwe people began to spread out to different parts of the
country, the Spider Woman had trouble finding them. So they began making Dream
Catchers to represent her protection. It is said that when a person dreams, all
dreams are filtered through the web of the dream catcher. The bad ones go
through and out the window. The good ones get stuck in the web, trickle down
the feathers, and return to the person.
There’s
nothing magical about dream catchers or any other object. Many people wear
crosses or other symbols around their necks as good luck charms or for
protection. But the objects themselves do nothing. If a sacred object does
anything, it reminds us of the power of God to protect. The dream catchers that
hang above my bed remind me that I can allow God to filter my thoughts and my
dreams. The ichthys reminded ancient Christians that God was their refuge and
strength. The lambda reminded gay and lesbian people that liberation was on its
way.
Whatever
symbol works for you, use it as a daily reminder that you alone are in charge
of your thoughts and feelings about what is going on around you. Not only is
the positivity that results good for you; it is good for our church.
There is a
fad in the New Thought community called “The Secret” or “The Law of
Attraction.” It is said that whatever you think and feel, you attract more of
in your life. Regardless of the hype behind the fad, I find this to be a
spiritual truth. You attract into your life whatever you focus on. This law
also works with communities. If our church chooses to focus on negativity, more
negativity will walk through the door. But imagine the possibilities of our
community if we all together chose to focus on the positive. Imagine what
miracles could happen here if we all made positive thinking a spiritual
practice.
I am
calling you and I alike to repentance. Remember that to repent means to “turn
away.” Choose today to turn away from the poison, turn away from the darkness,
for “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who
sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.” Do you hear Jesus
calling? “Come, follow me. Let’s fish for people!” Cast your nets with me!
Amen.
