A sermon preached at Trinity-Mount Rainier on the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, January 22, 2012.
A Fish Story
Jonah 3:1-5, 10 and Mark 1:14-20
(Other Reading Appointed: 1 Corinthians 7:29-31)
I believe many of us know of or have heard “Fisherman’s Tales”. And there quite possibly have been a few people who have even told some themselves. But we all know what these stories are all about. We hear of “the one that got away”. Or, there’s the ever popular one where a 10 ounce perch miraculously becomes a 10 pound bass without any pictures or witnesses to corroborate the story. Such tales seem to be popular, and are possibly only rivaled by tales of sighting Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.
The Old Testament account of Jonah is sometimes seen in a similar light as many “Fisherman’s Tales”. The story sounds, if you pardon the pun, “too fishy”. “Fish catches man” sounds every bit as crazy of a story as “man bites dog”, doesn’t it? So, to many in their minds, this just can’t or couldn’t of happened. So, it’s all just easy to dismiss as being “just another ‘tall tale’”. Yet, before one simply dismisses this account, simply chalking it all up to someone’s creative imagination, one needs to do something else: try to listen to what this Word wants us to learn about God and what He is doing for and with the people He created and loves.
Two words can best summarize what God wants us to come to know about Him and His relationship with us through the story of Jonah: repentance and grace. Repentance is seen clearly in God’s treatment of Jonah: sending the great fish to “convince” Jonah of his error in running away, leading Jonah to repent and to go about doing the work that God had called him to do. And grace is seen clearly in God’s mercy to the people of Nineveh who believe the message of Jonah and turn from their sins by turning to the Lord in repentance.
What we find in the account of Jonah is the very heart of the message that God has always sent to the people He desires to call to be His very own. And this is the same message that meets us as we see Jesus begin His public ministry. In today’s Gospel, we hear the content of Jesus’ preaching: “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Gospel.” These words announce what has always been God’s message to His people, once spoken by the prophets, but now directly from God through the Son of God. It is the very same call made to people to come and receive the grace and mercy of a loving God who desires not the death of sinners, but rather that they turn from their sin and live.
Throughout the Scriptures, we see clearly that the main theme is God’s constant seeking out the people He calls His own. From the first call of “Adam, where are you?”, to the calls of the prophets to the people of Israel, and finally in the appearance of God’s own Son, God has always been “fishing”: casting the net of His love into the sea of the peoples of the world, looking to catch those who would believe in Him and receive the message of His great love for them displayed beautifully in the power of His grace, mercy, and love.
All of this is wonderfully true, and we thank our God that it is true. But, where do we fit into all of this? We know that the message of repentance and grace spoken by the prophets and our Blessed Lord Himself is also a message that we too have heard and believed through the proclamation of God’s Word to us in our own day. We have believed in and on this message and hold to it as our life and our hope. But is there more? Is God looking for more from us because of this message?
To answer this, we need to look no farther than the lives of the people we meet in today’s Scriptures. Jonah was called by God to be a part of His people Israel and then called to be a prophet to the people God chose to send him to. But Jonah ran away because he did not want to do as the Lord asked, so God had to catch Jonah once more, bring him into seeing things God’s way, and then putting him to work for the purposes that God intended.
As Jesus began His ministry, He sought out people who would help Him in delivering that message and helping it spread. So, going down to the lakeshore, He calls out to a group of fishermen: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men”. And they dropped their nets, their work, and their livelihood to follow this Galilean Preacher. In many ways, we really don’t know why they did this. We don’t know if somehow these four men had heard about Jesus or maybe had a chance to listen to His preaching. We don’t know if they were somehow just simply drawn to the charisma of this Man who called to them to follow Him. But somehow, these men were caught by this One who they saw speaking to them and they followed.
And this then is the lesson that we learn about what God seeks to do through the people He calls His own. God goes out fishing for the people whom He created and who He seeks to save. And having been caught in the net of His great grace and love, each of us who believes in Him know of the wonderful life that we are able to live in because of the forgiveness of sins that we have been given through our turning to Him by faith in His Son, Jesus. We are able to rejoice daily in the knowledge that we are God’s own forever and that, even now, we enjoy the great gift of life in and with our Father, looking forward to the day when we will live with Him in His very presence for all eternity.
So, having been caught by God and His love, our God releases us to go out into the world and to be the messengers of His love and grace to those whom He still desires to catch as well. God catches people so that He can use them to catch other people, and so the kingdom of God grows. God could still send prophets to go out and proclaim a message similar to Jonah’s, telling them that the time is short so repent. It could work. Yet, what God chooses to do through you and me is this. We get to have the wonderful privilege to live out our lives day by day, showing to people in the living of our lives Who it is we belong to. And, when we have the chance, we can also speak the Word of Life to them, bringing that same message which saved us and changed our lives. Through this, God plants a seed which hopefully will, amazingly and quietly, bring another soul into the net of His love.
As we look at the great love story of God’s continual seeking out of His people seen in the Scriptures and in the stories of our own lives, we come to see it as one big “fish story”—the tale of how God has caught each one of us and will not let us get away, and then of how God turns around and uses us to catch even more and more people so that they too cannot escape the wide net of His love. But, this is no tale. This is all real because we know that God is the One who has been and is at work in it, and because we know that God has caused us to be a part of this story. Thanking God for catching us in the great grasp of His grace and love is only one part of our lives lived in Him. May we also ask God to grant us the strength to be faithful and true witnesses to the world of that grace which found and caught us so that many more might come to know that same grace and love of God as well. People of God, having already been caught, let’s go fishing. God grant it! Amen!
