I grew up in Texas, as you know. Which means I have had many encounters with people who carry the King James Version of the bible like a machine gun . . . and then use it as a weapon: Pow! Pow! Pow! Twenty-two verses through the heart!

I have actually seen a church tee shirt that was imprinted with this slogan: “There is no gray, only black and white.”

 When I was younger and before I learned about the futility of arguing with those folks, I was often frustrated in dealing with people who always considered themselves right about all things religious and who never had room for questions or doubts. Certainty was an indication of a strong, and therefore correct, faith. Cheryl Wheeler has a line in one of her songs about a fellow she had encountered. He was, in her words, “Frequently wrong. . .  but never in doubt.”

            So, I’ve never really been comfortable with that kind of faith. I became a Presbyterian, because I loved hearing some Presbyterians use the phrase, “On the one hand. . . and on the other hand.” Most Presbyterians, it seemed to me, were comfortable with ambiguity. Most Presbyterians did not see things in black and whites. Many Presbyterians believed, as Frederick Buechner once wrote, “doubt is the ants in the pants of faith.”

So, I tired of the KJV toting crowd. I knew it wasn’t for me.  I still weary of them asking that infernal question in that smug way they sometimes have:

 “Are you saved?” hoping to add another notch on their bible for all the souls they have claimed for Jesus.

They are busy, according to them, being fishers of people. I have also learned that while I don’t agree with them on many, many things, most of them are well meaning, if somewhat misguided.

            Evangelical, from which we get the word evangelism, means “spreading the good word.” In the Greek, it is also the root for the word from which we get ‘angel.’ Eu-angel-icon. Spreaders of good words.

But  somehow evangelism has come to mean “getting people to join our church.”

 In Presbyterian circles for the longest time, increasing our ranks was done primarily in the maternity wings of hospitals. Evangelism, that “joining our church” kind of evangelism, only became a real concern when our denomination, along with all other main-line denominations, started losing numbers. 

            Those Presbyterians who leaned toward evangelism as a way of getting people to join our churches, however, have been plenty busy  . . . especially overseas as they have increased the numbers significantly in terms of their kind of doubt free Christianity.  They have been very active being ‘fishers of people.’

            And of course, today’s gospel is one of the reasons for that, for in this story, Jesus calls to these fisher folk to leave their daily work and become ‘fishers of people.’

I have always had some problems with this metaphor – all metaphors eventually break down, I know, but this one has always seemed especially problematic to me.

For you see, when one goes fishing, one takes fish from their natural habitat. .  for one’s own purpose. Usually, to eat. (Sometimes as a trophy, though I doubt there was much of that in Jesus’ day.) Fish were for eating. The fish die. The fish are sacrificed for our purposes. The fish lose their lives to sustain ours.  Don’t get excited vegetarians – that is not the point of this sermon. My question about the text is this:

Why would we want to do that to people? We aren’t going to eat people. Are we really going to pull human beings from their natural habitat and away from all they know so they can sit in the boat and do the same to others? I know there is the dying to an old life thing. . . but I don’t think that is the point Jesus is making here. It all seems rather pointless.

But I began to grasp this story in a different way when a tragedy happened . . . I was with a family whose father had been lost in a boating accident on a lake.  Along with the three brothers, he was tossed from the boat, but unlike the brothers, they were unable to find him.  He disappeared for several days. Those were long days, as you can imagine. I was with the family when the police came to tell them that the body of their loved one had been recovered.  They had, they said, fished the body from the water about a mile from where the accident had occurred. They had ‘fished’ his body.

I realized then that the fisher folk to whom Jesus was speaking would have understood this text: to fish for people is to rescue them from drowning, to pull them from danger, when water and currents threaten to overwhelm them . . . it is about saving from danger, not simply about getting people to ‘join one’s church.’ And it is about a physical salvation, not simply a ‘spiritual’ one. When I saw the tiny fishing boats along the Mediterranean similar to ones from Jesus’ day I knew it wouldn’t take much to toss a sailor overboard in that day and time. I knew that fishing was about saving lives. Rescue.

Jesus was talking to fisher folk about rescuing others from drowning when many poor people were hungry and without shelter and the means to provide for their families; when an unjust economic system was used to take the land and homes from subsistence farmers. When people were tiring of trying to hold on and lived in danger of being lost in the whirlpool of daily life.

To fish for people is to help people who are about to go under, to help people who can’t help themselves because it is overwhelming, and they are in over their heads. To help in real, material ways. 

To pluck them from water where they don’t belong, back into the safety of the boat, and land, and breath, and life itself.

To be fishers of people is to help when they can’t do it all themselves. To give them the resources to survive and thrive. To help them get sure footing on land. To keep people from drowning.

Since that dreadful weekend, the sign that often hangs at swimming pools has struck me. The one that says simply: “No lifeguards on duty.”

            Perhaps that is in a way a reminder of what the church has become.  If Christ is calling us to be ‘fishers of people’ then it is time to ask ourselves how are we doing? What are we doing? It is not about getting people to join our church. It is about something much more important than that. It is about being the lifeguards on duty. 

            We are still in a getting to know you phase. That is, I, as your new pastor, am still getting to know you. And I have heard you tell me that you want to do more ministry here. That you don’t want to be a one-issue church. And I’m with you on that. But then, over lunches or dinners or on other occasions, I have listened to you tell me what you do for your livings, and what you do in terms of volunteer work and frankly, I have been impressed.

It may surprise you that I think we may actually being doing more of the real ‘fishing for people’ than any one of us may realize.

            Let me point out a few things, and this is just a few of the things I have heard that some of you are doing:

Working to end the death penalty. Organizing so that there will be health care for everyone in the state of Ohio. Working with special needs children. Working at Planned Parenthood. Some of you work for Habitat for Humanity and clothes and food pantries.  Working to save the endangered cheetahs.

            Now, as we are getting ready to determine the directions we take in this church, I think it is important to know what directions we may already be moving in. I would like us to take an inventory of sorts. An inventory of involvement. An inventory of ministry and passion. I would like you to write down for me (either now or within the next couple of weeks) what kinds of things you are doing with your time and energy to make the world a better place. You don’t have to write your name if you don’t want to.

You may be a teacher and get paid a pittance for your time. That still counts. You may be involved in the healing arts. Healing is a ministry. One in which Jesus himself was engaged. Write it down.  You may work at a nonprofit. What does that non-profit do? In addition, you may volunteer some place, or many places. Tell me. Don’t be shy, don’t be overly modest. I am not asking you to brag. I am asking us to be real with one another about how we really are doing ministry already.  We are all connected. What one does, one is doing on behalf of the whole. We need to know who we are and what we are doing.

            And, let me also say this. God is a God of truth and beauty. To bring more beauty to the world through music, art, drama, poetry, architecture, or literature is a ministry. Art feeds souls every bit as much as food does. And art can also challenge systems and imagine the world in a different way.  Angels sing, according to scripture!  So, don’t ignore the ministry that is done through the arts.

And you lawyers, who are always taking it on the chin . . . don’t forget that God is a God of justice. You are often on the front lines of speaking truth to power.  Some of you are willing to really get in the trenches in politics. It counts!!

Many, many of you are filled with grace in all you do. You, no doubt, are thinking that what you do does not count. But it is how you live, how you are with people that is it’s own ministry. To your sisters and brothers I say: let these gentle people know how much their kindness and gentleness and graciousness is healing in our lives, in our world. They are far too modest to claim it for themselves, but encourage them to write it down.  The root of the word gracious is GRACE. It is a ministry and it counts!!

I am not saying that God is not going to continue to call us and stretch us. I’m not saying we are doing enough for God’s sake and we can quit looking for ways to serve. And I am not saying that we don’t want people to join us in our efforts.

But I don’t think that is our focus. Our focus is on the ‘fishing’ part. The lifeguard part. If we are faithful to that, then others will want to join us in our efforts for the sake of those who cannot yet do it on their own.  If we are not involved in true ‘fishing for people’,  helping make the world a better place, reaching out to those who need help, truly helping confront systems of oppression, then why in the world would we need more people? (You see, if the answer is to benefit us . .. to take some of the burden from us financially  . . . then we are on some pretty shaky ground.)

I think we are going to be surprised by how much of the real ‘fishing for people’ is done by members of this church.

            I do think we are going to find we have never been a one-issue church. I think we are going to find we have always been a passionate church. A church filled with people who have long been fishers of others in the most profound sense of that phrase.

            Truth does set us free. The truth is not always about our shortcomings. Sometimes it is about the good we fail to see, and the gifts we fail to claim. God is working here. I see it. Others see it.  I want us all to celebrate it, and give thanks to God as we channel our efforts and move in to even deeper waters to cast our nets wide for those who desperately need our help. As we continue to fish for people.