"A Bigger Boat"

"A Bigger Boat"

Isaiah 9:1-4

Matthew 4:12-23

Sermon preached at Benson Presbyterian Church, Omaha, Nebraska, January 26, 2014

I love to go fishing.   My father started teaching me to fish when I was four years old.   I practiced casting in the living room of our house on Florence Blvd. and the first time we went for trout that summer in Colorado, I caught five.  I ran up to a man walking by the shore of the lake and proudly exclaimed, “I caught five fish!”  The man replied, “Well, you need to stop, honey, that’s your limit and I’m the game warden!” 

None of my three brothers liked to fish and eventually drifted away from it, but I didn't.  Pop and I still fished together until just before I went  away to seminary. I still have Pop’s fishing gear and it has been too long since I got a line wet, but some of the happiest days of my life have been spent with Pop pulling trout from a clear Colorado lake or stream.   I like to fish, but I wonder how much I would like it if I had to do it all the time, if I had to do it for a living.   I can still cast pretty well,   but I am strictly an amateur when it comes to fishing.

In today’s story from Matthew, we encounter some professional fisherman.  Simon, called Peter and Andrew are brothers, they are casting nets in the Sea of Galilee.  This is an interesting detail about Peter and Andrew, they couldn't afford a boat.   They would wade out into the water and cast their nets and haul in whatever they could.   It was very labor intensive, very hard work.

So there they are, casting their nets into the sea and this total stranger comes along, “Follow me,” the stranger says “and I will make you fish for people.” There must have been something very compelling about this guy because immediately they left their nets and followed him. Just like that. 

This guy Jesus continued along the shore of the Sea of Galilee and he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets. Now James and John were one step up economically from Peter and Andrew.  They had a boat and they worked with their father.  

Unlike Peter and Andrew, who could only fish as deep as they could wade, James and John and their father Zebedee could take their boat out and cast their net in the deep waters.  Still hard work, but they were able to catch more fish and make more money.  Once again, he called them. And once again, immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him. 

Once again, something was very compelling about this stranger.   Peter and Andrew basically were just leaving a subsistence career with no bigger investment than a couple of nets.  But James and John were leaving a boat and their father, Zebedee for this guy who just came out of nowhere.   Matthew does not record Zebedee’s reaction to this. 

So these four professional fishermen became the amateurs and rookies. "Catching people," that’s how Jesus described their new vocation. They had no training for this new line of work.

Yet it is such people that are chosen by God to spread the Good News.   People like Isaiah, minding his own business that day in the temple, not looking for a vision, but finding one.   People like Paul, out to persecute Christians, but becoming the most persuasive Christian of all. People like Peter and James and John, one day catching fish, the next day, netting people.  People like you and like me.  We are called to spread our nets in the broad daylight and bring in the catch of the hurting and lost.  We are called to bring people on board the boat.

One of the greatest movie lines of all times comes from the classic, “Jaws.”  When the three main characters are hunting the killer shark on a small boat, Sheriff Brody played by the great Roy Schneider sees the shark for the first time and we the audience see the shark for the first time.   Sheriff Brody, the amateur goes to the two shark experts and says, the great line, “You're gonna need a bigger boat.”   The shark is actually bigger than the boat that is being used to hunt the shark.  That line has passed into cultural history, for any problem that seems too big, someone, at some time has said “You're gonna need a bigger boat.”

Jesus called James and John, Peter and Andrew to leave fishing for fish behind, and to fish for people.  James and John left their father’s fishing boat for a bigger boat, to become a bigger boat, a boat that catches people.  These professional fishermen stop mending nets and become the nets, nets and boats that catch people.  

And still it continues to this day.  Our job still is to go out and start catching people.   Our job is to be the bigger, most welcoming boat.  Not to be the biggest congregation, but the most inclusive, the most loving.  Our job is to cast the net of God’s love and draw people in.

A fisherman walked past a game warden with a line of fish over his back.  The game warden said, "Great looking fish.  Where'd you get them?"  The fisherman said, "Come with me, and I'll show you."  He took the game warden out in his boat, took out a stick of dynamite, lit it, and threw it in the water.  After a big shuddering blast, hundreds of fish came to the surface.  The game warden said, "That's the most illegal way I ever saw of catching fish, and you're coming in with me."  The fisherman took out another stick of dynamite, lit it, handed it to the game warden, and said, "Ya gonna talk or ya gonna fish?"

That’s the question we have to answer every day.  "Ya gonna talk or ya gonna fish?" 

Amen.