Amanda McMillen, “Gone Fishing”
“The kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe in the good news” These are the words that begin Jesus’ ministry. In our Gospel passage from Mark today, Jesus, after having been baptized by John, comes to Galilee and begins preaching the Gospel - “the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news”. And there are two pieces of information in this word of Gospel preaching that are both very important - the first, is that the kingdom of God has come near. When we pray the Lord’s prayer each week and say “thy kingdom come, thy will be done” we are praying for God’s reign to come to earth, for the power of God to reign supreme over all other powers in our world and in our hearts. We are praying for a whole new way of things in our world, that the powers that think they are in control, inside and outside of us, are put in their place, and the reign of God, who is our Good Shepherd, instead prevails with truth and grace. The reign of God has come near.
Jesus then says “repent and believe in the good news”. Hand in hand with the proclamation of God’s reign coming near is the directive from Jesus to repent and believe in the good news. These are connected statements. God’s reign, God’s power, is near - so why don’t you repent, step down from your own throne that you’ve grown to love, and remember who is actually in control of everything.
I want to talk about repentance for a moment, because it stirs up a lot of feelings in me when I hear the word, and I imagine it might do the same for you. When I hear “repentance” I tend to think of picket signs on the side of the road that say, either implicitly or explicitly, that God hates me because I’m a sinner, that the end of the world is near, and that I’m somehow responsible for saving myself in light of that. “Repent and believe…or else!” This is how these words of Jesus’ are often interpreted. But this is not a good representation of the grace that is repentance.
One way that I think about repentance is through the act of falling asleep. Imagine with me. You’re lying in bed, and you need to fall asleep, but you are combing through your to-do list for tomorrow, or rehashing those items from your to-do list today that you didn’t get to, or you’re replaying things you said and did that you wish you hadn’t said or did and all of it is keeping you very much awake. And then, through no help of your own brain, you eventually (hopefully) drift off to sleep. When you wake up, you don’t really know how it happened, but somehow your body took over and everything that was plaguing you became nothing more than a distant memory, and you finally got that rest that you needed.
Repentance is similar. It is that moment when all of the many things that plague you, all of the ways that you are reminded that you don’t measure up to the standards that you have set in your own mind, all of the memories of the days’ failures fall to the wayside, and you become aware of the person you really are, which is a human being who is desperately tired and in need of rest. Repentance is simply the admission of our human nature. It is a blessed giving up. It is the body taking over, shutting down all of your protesting, all of your feeble attempts at being the perfect human being you wish you could be, and resting at last.
We are currently in the season of Epiphany in the church calendar, and in our women’s bible study on Thursday mornings we have just begun reading Fleming Rutledge’s new book on the subject. We talked a couple of weeks ago about the definition of the word “epiphany” as an “aha” moment, an instance of clarity, or a new moment of suddenly thinking differently about something. An epiphany is an out-of-body kind of experience, when wisdom or clarity or peace descends into your day, into your life, and somehow changes you. Usually an epiphany happens to me in very strange and unexpected moments, like when I’m driving in my car in a kind of hypnotic state because I’ve driven that way every single day, and suddenly the most random insight about my relationship with my mother comes to me completely out of the blue. That’s an epiphany. It’s a gift, a random thought that changes me, coming from outside of myself.
In the season of Epiphany, we read stories of those “aha” moments when different people come to see that Jesus is the son of God. The fishermen in this Gospel story have an epiphany of their own - an out-of-body experience that changes everything. One day, they’re working as fishermen, and the next Jesus comes to them and tells them to drop their nets and follow him. They’ve had some kind of epiphany that has led them to immediately, the text says, leave their families and sources of income and welfare and futures as far as they know it, and follow this strange Rabbi instead. This epiphany is a moment of faith, it happens to these fishermen. It is a gift of grace, through and through.
The fishermen (who will become Jesus’ disciples) are told that instead of fishing for fish, soon they will instead be fishing for people. And often we think of that as a beautiful metaphor for discipleship, that the disciples, like us, ought to go out and bring people, of our own strength and fishing prowess, into the presence of Jesus.
And listen, I’m not a fisherwomen myself, but one thing I know about fishing is that unless you catch and release them, fish tend to die when you go fishing. Right? So when Jesus talks about fishing for people, he is not only talking about rescuing them, bringing them new life, he is also talking about death. Repentance, like fishing, is a kind of death. It is a letting go. It is the admittance of one’s weakness, whether one wants to admit it or not. It is a helplessness - there is nothing more helpless than a fish on a line, or a person who is fast asleep. Jesus, here, in his poetic way, is giving us a picture of repentance, of being human, of our helplessness and our need for the reign of God.
In 1961, The Twilight Zone aired an episode called “A Game of Pool”, in which a billiards champion has beaten everyone in the sport, everyone except the legendary Fats Brown, who is dead. The man is absolutely possessed by his need to beat even Fats Brown, whose record is unmatched. No matter how many people the man beats in the sport, he cannot beat the late, great Fats Brown, who died before his time. After wishing that he could have the chance to play him and finally prove that he is a better pool player than Fats Brown - who comes to him in that pool hall, but the legendary dead Fats Brown himself. So he agrees to play the man, but ominously warns him that winning might cost him something in return.
After a harrowing game, the man actually manages to beat Fats Brown, and he finally becomes the best pool player to exist. Now his picture can be framed on the walls of that pool hall. But Fats Brown reacts with tears of joy. Why? Why is the pool legend so joyous in the face of his defeat? We soon discover that now that Fats Brown is no longer the reigning champion, he is finally free from playing pool with all the people in the world who find themselves wishing that they could have the chance to prove that they are better than Fats Brown. There’s a new champion in town who must now prove his superiority over and over again, even in his eventual death. The episode ends with Rod Sterling’s voice: “Being the best at anything means always needing to prove it. But Fats Brown has now gone fishing.”
Fats Brown has gone fishing - he no longer has anything to prove, so now he can just enjoy his life, or rather, his death. Just like Fats Brown, the disciples in this story have gone fishing - they have nothing to prove, only a life ahead of following Jesus, the great fisher of men. And you, too, have nothing to prove. The Christian life is one big “Gone Fishing” sign.
Fishing, like repentance, is a kind of death. It is helplessness of the greatest kind, resting in the arms of the one who loves us. And what comes after death in the story of Jesus? Life. Resurrection. Waking up the next morning, after having been released from the worries of the day before, feeling rested at last. Rescue. That’s what comes after death. A new life that you can enjoy, because you have been graciously allowed to let go of both your failures and your triumphs, living under God’s reign, and not your own. Amen.
