From the Prophet Jeremiah:
I am now sending for many fishermen, says the Lord, and they shall catch them; and afterwards I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks. For my eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from my presence, nor is their iniquity concealed from my sight. And I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations.
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Jeremiah 16:16-18 (NRSV) – March 11, 2013.)
I wonder if Jesus had this prophecy in mind when he called Andrew and Peter and said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” (Matt. 4:19)
When we modern, urban Americans read biblical references to fishermen, I suspect that a majority of us picture someone sitting lazily on the banks of a river with a pole stuck in the soil next to them, a line trailing off to a bobbing float; or perhaps we imagine Tom Skerrit standing in the Blackfoot River casting hand-tied flies trying to snag a large trout. Although hook-and-line fishing was not unknown in the ancient world, it was then, as now, a recreational sort of fishing. When God says through Jeremiah that he is sending fishermen to catch the wayward people of Israel, when Jesus tells his new disciples that they will become fishers of people, the reference is a very different sort of fishing.
The image we should have is of net fishing, probably using either a dragnet or a cast net. The dragnet is one of the oldest of fishing dating from the third millennium B.C. in Egypt. The dragnet, perhaps 250 to 300 yards long, and varing in height from 3 to 8 yards, would be taken out from the shore by boat which would proceed straight out for a distance, then turn parallel to the shore for a bit, and then turn back to the shore. The bottom of the net would be weighted with sinkers, and the top would have cork floats attached. Tow lines attached to each end of the net were hauled in by a teams of sixteen men for large nets, fewer for for smaller nets. This method of fishing is described in the books of Habakkuk, Ezekiel, and Matthew.
A cast net was, as the name suggests, thrown or cast onto the waters by one man either from shore or from a boat. After it had sunk to the bottom, trapping fish within it, the caster and others would dive down to it and either retrieve the fish individually placing them into pouches, or they would gather the footrope of the net, gathering the fish into a sort of purse formed by the net and bring them up together.
In either event, the picture we get is of teamwork. Biblical fishing was a community activity, something that required cooperation to be effective. So, although God promised to send a single shepherd, the Messiah, God in this prophecy of Jeremiah also promised to send a working party.
And, one wonders, who might that be? The church? All the baptized? No doubt. God’s team is made up of the spiritual descendants of the ones to whom Jesus said, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Midway through Lent as we are, this might be a good time to turn from individual self-examination and consider how well we are doing as a community of fishers.
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
The picture on the front of the bulletin today is one I found on the internet several months ago and which I just found intriguing. I can’t recall what I was doing or reading or searching for when I ran across it, but it grabbed my attention and seemed to me to be a great illustration for baptism and the baptismal covenant set out in The Book of Common Prayer.
Why has the health of the people not been restored? This is God’s question of the leadership of ancient Israel, but it could certainly be the question asked of modern America! Other questions could also be asked, even in the aftermath of the healthcare reform debates, the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and its vindication as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. Why is it that, in the practice of medicine, we do not have equal treatment for everybody? Why is that every American is guaranteed a lawyer, but not a doctor? Why don’t we (even now) have guaranteed health care for everyone?
Thirty or so years before the episode described here by John, Mary “gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn” in a town called Bethlehem. (Luke 2:7) We are told here and elsewhere that Jesus had brothers, and his brothers were named “James and Joseph and Simon and Judas.” (Matthew 13:55) He had sisters, too, but their names are not reported in Scripture.
Despite the tradition that the Psalms were written by King David, any good commentary will tell you that this Psalm was written probably in the first decades of the Sixth Century BC, at around the time of the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians circa 598 BC. Some scholars would even suggest that it was written as late as the Maccabean era (circa 165 BC). Personally, I tend to go with the earlier date; the Psalm’s description of wide spread destruction of religious meeting places seems more in line with the pre-Exilic invasion.
Recently, a graphic has been making the rounds on Facebook. I received it from another church and posted it on my parish’s Facebook page about 24 hours ago with the caption, “Something to think about.” As of the moment I am writing, this graphic has been “liked” 235 times. It has been shared 1,412 times. And according to Facebook’s calculations, it has been seen over 132,400 times. That’s only as originating our page. It is being posted and shared on other pages and, no doubt, has even larger numbers than these at some of those other pages.
A few days ago I wrote about my interest in superstring theory, m-theory, and the multiverse concept which springs from my life-long love of science fiction and the especially the “alternate reality” sorts of tales. I suggested that Jesus’ miracles might have been accomplished by his somehow accessing an alternate reality to affect this world; that would imply some sort of access to knowledge of those other universes.
Jesus walking on the water has always struck me as a very funny story. “Funny” in the sense of “oddly out of place”, although it also has a certain Monty-Python-esque quality to it as well. The fact that it is reported in three of the Gospels – in the synoptic Gospels of Mark and Matthew and here in John – attests to its importance for the early church. John’s version of the story is the simplest, but it contains all the elements – a storm, rough seas, disciples’ fear. Like Mark, John leaves out Matthew’s addition of Peter trying to join Jesus on the surface of the lake. 
How many places do we go where the Lord is and we do not know it? This story of Jacob reminds me of a song we sang in the Cursillo community where I meant my wife. It’s very pretty, very contemplative, and usually sung as an accompaniment to Holy Communion:
