It was one of those late–night calls that every minister dreads, especially when it comes on a Saturday night. I looked at the clock as I picked up the phone. It was one am. The young woman on the other end sounded both teary and anxious. “Pastor Bryan,” she said, “It’s Rachel. My father was out fishing with my brothers this afternoon, and the boat turned over and my brothers are both okay, but they can’t find my dad.”

 “My mother is worried sick, and we don’t know what to do. I hate to ask you, but can you come over and pray with us?”

I dreaded the worst as I dressed as quickly as possible and drove through the quiet, dark streets to their home, where lights were blazing and many cars had converged. It was a large Hispanic family, and in that culture, family sticks together and friends are family as well. As I arrived, Rachel ran out to meet me. She had been waiting near the porch. Her eyes were red and swollen. The mood of those gathered was a somber and heavy as the summer night. She led me into the house, a way opening up for us through the gathered crowd much like I imagine the Red Sea parting. I was the Pastor: honored in that culture.  I went to the house simply to be with the distraught family, to pray and remember that there is a God, because we all knew there would be no more news that evening. No one was searching in the dark. The vigil had begun. When the sun was up, the search ensued, and, when that day also ended with no news, then we prepared for another night of worry, and an equally desperate search for hope as the dread continued to build. The waiting was awful. Time became heavy, because we all knew that the longer we waited, the bleaker the outlook.

Three days later, two game wardens showed up at the door with news that was both a heart break and some understandable relief: they had found the body of Rachel’s father.

“We fished his body from the water in a bay several miles from the scene of the accident.” they told the family.

They fished his body.

Those are the words that have stayed with me . . . whenever I hear this story of the disciples and the great catch of fish and Jesus’ words to Simon, James and John: “Do not be afraid: from now on you will be fishing for people.”

I grew up in the Bible belt. One of my good friends, whose name was also Susan, belonged, with her parents to a very fundamentalist church. They were always talking about being fishers of men. (And, believe me, they said men. As a kid, I was already displeased that Jesus’ didn’t want to fish for women, too.)

I can remember going to Sunday evening church with Susan’s family and being embarrassed by the reception I received. My friend was given a prize and a fish sticker on a construction paper boat floating on a tissue paper sea on the bulletin board in the Sunday school classroom.

“Good for you,” she was told in front of me, “You have brought in another sinner for Jesus.”

Since I attended a Methodist church every Sunday with my family, I took exception to the title, and said so. “I’m just a visitor,” I said. “I go to another church.”  I knew I was a sinner, but I also knew I was a child of God and that was what had been stressed in my home church.  When I had mentioned this behavior to my Methodist Sunday School teacher, she simply said, ‘Well, of course you’re a sinner, dear. We all are. What else does God have to work with?” So, it seemed rude to me to make it sound like I was the only sinner in the room.

But, of course, those Methodists were considered too liberal. What I was told was that my friend’s church was the only true church and I was destined to burn in hell if I kept going to my church because I wasn’t being saved.

(If they hadn’t had banana splits after those Sunday evening bible studies, I would never have gone back. Ice cream can go a long way in teaching one tolerance for theological differences.)

Actually, the time I spent in my friend’s church helped me define my own theology a lot. I became pretty clear about what I didn’t want to embrace. And I learned how to not be threatened by views vastly different than my own. It occurred to me, even at such a young age, that none of us has the truth in our pocket. The truth was found in a person, not a doctrine. One could have relationship with the person, but not a corner on the truth.

I am also convinced that her church’s understanding of this passage is different than mine.

I have always had a lot of questions about this text. For instance, the disciples were going to eat those fish they caught, or sell them to others who would eat them. That’s what we do with fish.

What exactly do we do with people that we’ve ‘caught?’ Yes, I know all analogies break down. But so quickly?

The tragedy of Rachel’s father’s death reminded me that Jesus’ audience – those fishermen -- would have known that one ‘fishes for people’  when people need to be rescued; when they are in the water instead of in the boat. When they are in danger of drowning. When they are in over their heads. When the seas are rough and there is nothing to hang on to, and much out there to fear.

Those fishermen lived in a day and time when the poor were in danger of drowning in debt. Those who were wealthy achieved their wealth by cheating the little farmers out of their land; and taxing everyone else at criminally high levels. Graft and corruption were the earmarks of the economic system of that day.

 I don’t think this text is about getting people to join our church. Or any church. I don’t think it is about ‘saving’ the souls of sinners as opposed to dealing with very real and practical matters. All the souls I have dealt with so far have come in bodies. Bodies that have the same needs as all other bodies. Very real needs like hunger, housing, and health care, among other things.

I think this text is about rescue in a very real sense. It is about seeing need and being willing to throw out a life saver. (And not the little candy kind.)

I think that there were a lot of people who had been treated shabbily, and who also thought there was not much they could do about their plight, who heard this story of empty nets after fishing all night and then nets so filled with fish that they threatened to break. I think Jesus wanted them to trust in a God of both justice and abundance. I think he wanted them to imagine that what they had previously considered to be impossible might be possible after all. I think he wanted them to see that things could be different and there was enough, more than enough for all. In God’s reign, that was the way it was meant to be. It meant taking the risk involved in going deeper – further – out of their comfort zone – and trying something different.

Jesus was first showing these fisherman what a little faith could do, and then inviting them to apply that faith to help others.

He was calling disciples:  those who are active and involved in pursuing the alternative reality in the face of the pain of the world, and in making a difference for those who have been left out, and in many ways it echoes the Isaiah text about Isaiah’s call.

Though of course, one call happens in the temple, the other in a boat.

And they happened at different times. We know what was going on when Jesus’ called these disciples. Scholars are not that clear what was going on ‘In the year King Uzziah died.’ That phrase may have been simply a chronological marker, but, if that is the case, it was rarely used. Chances are that, because King Uzziah was the last of Judah’s truly powerful monarch’s -- this was a signal that things were headed down-hill. Just as we might say, ‘The day that Pearl Harbor was bombed” alert those familiar with history, that it was the point that defined our country entering World War II.  If that is indeed, the case, then we know that Judah was going to be in special need of God’s grace and we also know who suffers the most when things are bad: it’s the same folks who were suffering in Jesus’ day: the least, the powerless, the marginalized.

 Isaiah has a glorious dream of angels and seraphs and holy beings flying about singing, “Holy, holy, holy.” He had an experience of awe.

Simon’s experience would have been just as overwhelming, and awe inspiring– especially for him. Angels might not have gotten the attention of a fisherman—but a huge catch of fish would – and there were probably shouts of “Holy -- holy, holy!” or something along those lines as the little boat groaned under the weight of the catch.

Simon on his knees is just as aware as Isaiah that he is in the presence of the divine, or at least something beyond his comprehension. (Note the connection between worship and service: they are integrally linked.)

Neither Isaiah nor Simon feel worthy or ready to be so aware of God’s presence . . . so near the source of all light, with that light shining so fully on them. Perhaps they feel exposed. Perhaps their lives flash before them. They both utter words that proclaim a sense of not being good enough. Of having shortcomings. “I am a man of unclean lips and I have lived among a people of unclean lips. . .” says Isaiah. While Simon Peter simply says: “Go away from me, for I am a sinful person.”

There is a pattern here, and one that could encourage us, if we would only pay attention:

When a call is offered – the invitation to be a servant of God; the first response seems to be to decline and point out to God (as if God doesn’t know) the lack of qualifications, a statement of unworthiness, or other reasons God must surely be mistaken. God then intervenes – assuring the one called that none of that matters. Then of course, the one called says ‘yes.’ (Or, in the stories written to inspire us, they say ‘yes.’)

Once again, we discover that God’s opinion of us is the only one that matters: we are not limited by what others may think of us, or even what we think of ourselves – God sees beyond all that. As in so many things of a spiritual nature: there is paradox here. As we read through accounts of people being called to serve as leaders of God’s people, it seems clear that each did have limitations: Samuel was young, Isaiah was from a people who had turned from God, and Simon Peter had his limitations and shortcomings as well; they are pretty well-documented in the gospels.

 As do we all.

But God chooses these less than ‘perfect’ people by the world’s standards because of qualities we can not fully know. We are paradox, each and every one of us, yet God chooses us. And often the very things we think of as our shortcomings may be the very strength for which God is looking.

Who are we to question who God chooses to do God’s work?

Call seems to come in bits and pieces: little glimpses or grand epiphanies. I had such an epiphany myself before I attended seminary, when I was working as a DCE in Texas.

I worked with a wonderful pastor, Henry Chisholm, who was from Scotland.

And one day, after I had been there for about six months, a woman in the church had a rather unusual request: she wanted to paint my portrait.

I told Henry about the request and he encouraged me. “I can’t get through her wall,” he said, “Perhaps she will talk to you.”

So I sat for the portrait . . . . and I sat and I sat. I tried to ask subtle questions of the woman, whose name was Charlotte.

But she wanted to know about me, and I later determined that she was trying to figure out if I was safe.

I guess she decided that I was for one day she told me her story. She was married to a man named John. They had twin boys, and then they had a little girl, who was also named Susan. John was very excited about having a daughter, but he had some expectations: he wanted a petite Kathy Rigby kind of girly-girl, and instead, Susan was tall, large-boned, and athletic, built more like Molly Ivans.

John made no secret of his disappointment. Susan was different in other ways, too. And so by the time she reached high school, in order to cope with her father’s disapproval and her own internalized self-hatred, she turned to first alcohol and then drugs, and was in and out of treatment centers. She was an artist and later I saw some of her art. During these years it was dark and desperate.

But during college, one treatment center landed her in with a therapist who really saw Susan and helped her deal with all that troubled her. This therapist also helped Susan name and claim the fact that she was a lesbian.

For the first time in her life, Susan found she no longer needed drugs to deal with life. She was like a butterfly – and had a new way of seeing life.

She came out to her parents, thinking they would be thrilled to know she was better. The father was livid. He told her he no longer had a daughter, and ordered Charlotte to never mention her name to him again.

Charlotte and Susan made arrangements to stay in touch – by having Susan call home during a time they both knew John was out of the house.

Susan went on with her life, meeting the love of her life and the two of them moved out of state, bought a little house in the country and a big dog and were very happy. Susan’s partner taught in an elementary school, and Susan painted and they were known and loved in the community. They joined a small church where they worked on the lawn and with the youth group. Life was going so well. Charlotte loved hearing the joy in her daughter’s voice each week when she would call.

And then, one summer evening, the pastor of the church called the two of them into his office to talk. It seems there was a rumor that Susan and her partner were more than just room mates. And the pastor couldn’t risk having ‘people like them’ working with the youth group. Actually, it would be better if they didn’t come back to church.

They drove home, stunned. They had figured out that if that was the rumor and the response at the church, the teaching job was already threatened.  They wondered where they could go, how they could live.

Charlotte didn’t get a phone call from Susan that week. Nor did she get one the following week. It was summer, she didn’t know who to call. She was worried sick. The next week, when there was no call, she alerted one of her sons and they made the trip to the home of her daughter, where she discovered the bloating and rotting bodies of her daughter and her beloved.

While she told me this story, she handed me a small white handkerchief, trimmed in lace. By this point, that hanky was stained with mascara, wet with my tears. She reached out for it. And I told her I wanted to take it home and wash it for her.

“No.” she said, practically wrenching the hankie from my hand, “I am not going to wash this handkerchief. These tears are the only ones shed by anyone in the church for my daughter. These tears are the only hope I have that God knows the pain in my heart and the grief I have.”

I decided that day that I was called to working toward making the church a more loving, more accepting place.

Mount Auburn has a long and brilliant history of recognizing God’s call over the objections of self or other. Including those in our own denomination. God bless those churches who had the courage to fight for the ordination of qualified leaders no matter what race, gender, or sexual orientation. God may indeed be calling leaders because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation. The church surely is in need of those voices.

That work is not yet complete. We still have some fishing to do, and some nets to mend in our denomination.

With so much ministry to be about in our world – so many folks fighting for their lives in the water, so much need all around us, it does seem more than a little crazy that some would still be arguing over who can do the fishing.

I imagine scenes from the Titanic – but the difference being that in the life boats, where there is plenty of room, people are instead arguing over who is worthy to throw out the life lines.

But that’s how the powers and principalities work: they seek to divide; they get us working against one another instead of together for the good of all. We must be vigilant – ever vigilant to the wiley ways of the powers and principalities. We must continue to work in ways that bring together rather than divide.

Of course, these stories of need and awe and confession and call are empty unless there is a ‘yes.’

Unless there are those who are able to say Yes to the God who never fails to say Yes to us.

For these stories are not really about call – they are about  the ‘yes’ they are about commitment. They are about letting go of life as we have known it to say yes to a God who wants us to care deeply about others.

And for those of us who think there might be some reason to keep us from saying yes, Jesus shows those would-be disciples that there is nothing God can’t do. Nothing that stands in our way. It is only our with-holding of the needed ‘yes’ that can throw a monkey wrench in the works.

I have been in ministry for over twenty years and I have heard from many churches the same little tale of woe. It goes like this: We don’t have enough time, we don’t have enough people and we don’t have enough money.

I can tell you this with certainty after all these years. Phooey.

The issue for the church is never about money or time or numbers. It is about commitment. It is about saying yes. It is about making God’s work a priority in our lives, in our life together. It is about giving ourselves to God’s dreams.  When the commitment is there, the other things seem to take care of themselves. Where there is no commitment, I don’t care how many people or how much money you have, God’s work will not get done.

Shortly after the burial of Rachel’s father, I was in a swimming pool and looked up to see a sign that read: No Lifeguard on Duty.

No Lifeguard on Duty.

It occurred to me that the church has been called to fish for people – to be the life guards – the ones who can and will make a difference for the poor, the marginalized, and the outcast – those clinging to bits of flotsam in the seas of life – and we are tragically, but surely missing.

I think of this story and how Jesus’ invitation landed on the ears of those disciples and I see the nets and boats abandoned on the shore as Peter, James and John – instead of waiting for a crowd or a windfall or a large donation to arrive to finance their adventure – left all they had: possessions, livelihood, and family to follow this stranger with the power of both hope and faith. They committed their lives on this life-long venture, without even imagining the consequences. They said “Yes!”

They surrendered themselves to being completely transformed.

And the invitation is there for us, as well.

Are we willing to let go and be willing to be transformed—by love and grace?

Can we hear these words of Jesus as we listen to God’s call in our lives: “Do not be afraid. .  .”

Can we see that the first lives saved were those of these fisher folk, and we can be as open to the joy of life lived fully in service to God?

Wouldn’t we rather be fishing?