Fish Stories

A Sermon Preached at Salem United Church of Christ

Higginsville, Missouri

10 February 2019

I. Introduction

• When we hear the phrase “fish stories,” we probably all think of tall tales, or outright lies – but I want to tell you a fish story today that is the absolute truth, or at least as absolute as I remember it
• Some of my favorite memories of my childhood involve my grandfather’s cabin on the East Fork of the White River near the town where I grew up – several times when we were younger, my brother and I would get to spend a week at the cabin with our grandfather, whom we called Daddo (I have no idea why) – our days at the cabin were a delight to me – they began before sunrise – the alarm clock, which was located next to Daddo’s bed, would ring out in the dark, but he would never turn it off – it was an old wind-up clock, so it would continue to ring until the spring unwound – we would sleepily get out of bed and dress so we could trudge down the hill to the river – then began the part of the day that was most exciting to me – Daddo placed trot lines in places along the river – a trot line, for those who do not know, is a line that extends across a stream or river – it has weights (Daddo used rocks, geodes, and railroad spikes) attached at intervals to hold the line on the river bottom – every five or six feet, there is a line with a hook on which he placed the bait – to the best of my memory, there were twenty-five or so hooks along the length of the trot line, but it might have been more or less – when my brother and I first arrived for our time at the cabin, the challenge was to find the trot lines in the morning glow as the sun was still behind the hill – the first day, Daddo might show us where they were, but he expected us to find them after that – we would move the boat downstream from the trot line on the side where it was tied to a fallen tree or a root, then motor up to the line until we could take hold of it – we would cut the motor and run the line, pulling the boat across the river by pulling on the trot line – if you have any experience with river fishing, you may know what we were hoping was on the line – we were looking for river catfish, which are bottom-feeding fish and can grow to several pounds – occasionally there would be a perch or even a bass, but mostly they were river cats
• After running the lines, starting with the line furthest downriver and ending with the one closest to the dock, we would put the fish in a live box that hung down in the river – then we would go to the cabin for breakfast – after breakfast we would return to the river to clean the fish, skinning the cats and scaling any others – after cleaning the fish, the remainder of the day was spent in napping or collecting bait – in all the times I went with Daddo to the river, I never saw him buy bait – usually we collected bait by seining in ponds and streams – the seine nets would gather minnows and crawdads, with crawdads being favorites of the cats – as the day grew late, we would listen to the St. Louis Cardinals games on the radio – and finally, the last thing to do before bed, we set the lines, which involved Daddo using a carbide miner’s headlamp, so we could put the bait on the lines, which were even more difficult to find in the dark – once in a while there would be a fish on a hook, but not often – usually, it was well after midnight before we got back to the cabin after setting the lines
• I can still hear the sounds of night as we lay in the cabin – the frogs, the crickets, and the train horns sounding from several miles away across the river bottom
• Those were wonderful times for me, although I am sure I complained about getting up so early – but one of the lessons I learned from those experiences was that fishing, even fishing using trot lines, requires work – without gathering the bait and keeping the lines in good repair and setting the lines and running the lines, there would be no fish to eat – and I loved eating the fish – I still do think there is not much to compare with river cat breaded with cornmeal and fried in a large quantity of grease – but to get the delight of eating the fish meant putting in the time and effort to catch the fish

II. The Fishermen of Galilee

• Jesus’ first followers, however, did not fish the White River – they did not set trot lines and leave them to soak for the night – they did fish at night, but it was much more labor intensive than my childhood experience – they had to row out into Lake Galilee (or Gennesaret in the Lucan text), throw nets out from their small boats, pull them back into the boat, and remove the fish – it was hard, back-breaking work – and there were times, as anyone who has ever fished knows, when the fish just are not there
• Such was the case one morning when a group of fishermen return to the shore after a frustrating and fruitless night of toil and hard labor – as they clean and repair their nets, a man, Jesus, comes toward them with a crowd close behind him – Jesus gets into a boat that belongs to Simon, one of the fishermen, whose mother-in-law Jesus had already healed (Luke 4.38f.) and asks Simon to put out from shore a little so that Jesus can speak to the crowd – when he is done, he tells Simon to go out to catch some fish – on the face of it, this is a silly idea – the fishermen had not caught anything all night, and daytime is not the right time for fishing – even so, Simon does not refuse – he puts out, and when he and his crew drop the nets, they cannot pull them back into the boat – they signal their fellow fishermen to come help with the catch and there are so many fish that both boats are in danger of sinking
• When Simon sees the great catch of fish, he falls down on his knees and says to Jesus, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” – interesting response, is it not? – what did catching all the fish have to do with Simon Peter being sinful? – his response seems to me to be the result of a comparison between Jesus and himself – Jesus had told Simon to lower his nets, and Simon had done it, perhaps not expecting anything to happen – when the nets come up full, Simon recognizes, what? – his lack of faith? – his doubt? – his cynicism? – whatever it is, it does not stand up well to the comparison with Jesus
• The load of fish, however, is not only a good haul for the fishermen – it also becomes a metaphor for Jesus to use to make an unusual declaration to Simon Peter and his fellows – they are going to be catching people, Jesus tells them – when they get back to the shore, Simon, James, and John leave everything to follow him – these three may or may not have been all of the fishermen, I think they were not, but they make an immediate choice in that moment – they are going to be doing new work, and they drop their old work, at least for the moment, to go and do it, with Jesus as their teacher

III. Our Fish Stories

• I believe that every sermon I have ever heard on this text from Luke has emphasized the responses of the fishermen, the way in which they left their nets, their boats, their livelihood behind so that they could follow Jesus, who they had just met, and learn to catch people for the Vision of God – to be sure, that is a powerful message, and one we should hear with ears of faith – for, indeed, I believe that Jesus calls us all, whether we answer the call or not – Jesus invites us, urges us, to become people who commit themselves to the Vision, to inviting others to share in the Vision – I believe that the Vision is worth our time, our effort, and our commitment, and we should want to share it with others – we should want them to be a part of the fellowship we have and of the work that we do – so I do not want to disparage any sermon I have heard, or that you have heard, that stressed the immediacy of the fishermen’s response to Jesus
• For the moment, however, I want to focus on the fish story, not on the truth or untruth of the story, but the story itself – what we have here is a miracle story that becomes a call story – Simon and the others have heard Jesus and they have seen him do a miraculous thing – but do not get too caught up in the miraculous nature of it, as amazing as it might be – the thing that seems important to me is that, for the fishermen, the catch of fish is a demonstration of Jesus’ identity – whether or not they think at that moment that he is Messiah, they understand that he is different, that he is a man that has something to do and that he wants them to share in it – in effect, this becomes their fish story – it is their fish story in the sense that they could say to anyone, “Wow! Do I have a story for you! We had fished all night and caught nothing, and then Jesus told us to try again, and what a catch we had! There is real power in his words and in his actions” – do you see what I am saying? – the story of their transformation, what I am calling their fish story, is not a story they read or made up – it is what happened to them – and it is a story they could tell time and again
• If we are followers of Jesus Messiah, we have a fish story of our own, but most of them are not so dramatic as this – for us, it may refer to the example of parents or grandparents or friends – it may be a story of a sudden transformation, like a light coming on in our heads and hearts, or it may be a story of a process that took place over years upon years – but all who follow Jesus make a choice at some point – we choose to identify ourselves with the message, with the community, with Jesus, with the Vision, and the story of that identification is our fish story – it is the story we tell when anyone wants to know why we go to Salem Church, or why we try to follow Jesus – it is the story of one transformation, ours, and it can lead to others

IV. Conclusion

• I began by talking about my childhood – it was not a story of transformation, although I will gladly tell you that story if you ask – what I told you was story of my formation – those memories, whether the events happened just as I remember them or not, are part of who I am – and the stories we tell bring us together
• Our fish stories do the same – but they bring us together in spirit, in the fellowship of the church – and they invite others to share their own stories with us as well – we are not here to give answers so much as to listen to people’s stories – so go and tell your fish stories to all who will hear – in the name of Jesus Messiah, go! and listen!

Tags: Luke 5.1.11, Mission, Stories, Testimony, Witness