Fish Tales

Sunday, Jan 22 2012

Speakers: Rev. Laura Loving

Scripture: Jonah 3:1-5, 10, Mark 1:14-20

I. The dictionary definition of a fish story is: noun Informal .an exaggerated or incredible story: It was just another one of his fish stories. 1810-20, Americanism

Today in our scripture lessons, we have two different fish stories, one about the reluctant prophet Jonah, whose disdain for the Lord’s task sends him overboard and into the belly of a big fish. The other, a story of a traveling rabbi who stops on the shore and says to a couple of brothers who are working on their fishing nets, “Follow me” and they drop their nets and follow him.

 II. What do our scripture lessons and the funny fish tales people tell about the ‘ONE THAT GOT AWAY’ have in common?

a. They both point out human limitations.

b. They both hint at misguided expectations.

c. They both deal contain necessary exaggerations in order for us to see ourselves in the mirror of the story.

Whether we look at the shocking immediacy with which Peter and Andrew drop their nets and follow Jesus, or the reluctance of Jonah to follow the Lord’s commands, our Scriptural fish tales reflect back to us inherent risks of following the call of faith. And the funny fish stories that people tell have hidden in the humor the inherent self-doubt or misguided expectations embedded in the human experience. 

Consider this fishing story:

Alex had a terrible day fishing on the lake, sitting in the blazing sun all day without catching a single fish, casting again and again to no avail.  On his way home, he stopped at the fish shop, looked over the fresh fish of the day, and ordered four rainbow trout.  He told the fishmonger, 'Pick four big ones out and throw them at me, will you?'

'Why do you want me to throw them at you?' asked the salesman. 

‘So that I am able to tell my wife, in all honesty, that I caught them.'

'Okay, but I suggest that you take the salmon.'

 ‘Why's that?’ 

  'Because your wife stopped in earlier today and said that if you came by, I should tell you to take salmon.  She'd like salmon for supper tonight', replied the fishmonger with a grin.

 III. Part of humor is that mis-direction, the unexpected twist in the journey. In Jonah’s journey, we see the reluctant prophet headed in the opposite direction of God’s call: he takes off for Tarshish rather than fulfilling God’s call of repentance to his enemy, Nineveh. There are other elements of limitations, misguided expectations and exaggeration in the Jonah tale, too. The hyperbole and symbolism of the big fish are matched by others in the story to emphasize the hugeness of God’s compassion.

What’s exaggerated in the Jonah story?

Three days across Nineveh

The King of Nineveh

The animals repent

The Humor and irony—reinforce the contrast between God’s expectations and Jonah’s. Sometimes our tunnel vision about what we think or expect gets in the way of our ability to follow or to follow through with our mission.

 IV.

There’s another fish tale about a woman who is determined to learn how to ice fish. She studies up on this cultural phenomenon of the North country, and then proceeds to try it herself, expecting that if she does as instructed, she’ll get a good catch of fish.

 She gathers the necessary equipment together—saw, stool, thermos, hook line and sinker and she ventures out onto the ice. After positioning her comfy stool, she proceeds to make a circular cut in the ice.(sound effects)

Suddenly, from up above, a voice booms: 'There are no fish under the ice.'

Startled, the novice ice fisher picks up her stool and moves farther down the ice, pouring herself a large coffee, (she’d read that having a thermos of something hot was part of the ice fishing  culture)and starts to saw yet another hole. (sound effects)

Again, from the heavens, the voice bellows:  'There are no fish under the ice.'

Making a mental check: (Did I do the right thing? Bring the right stuff?), she trudges way down to the opposite end of the ice, sets up her fishing stool, and begins to cut another hole in the ice.

The voice rings out once more, 'There are no fish under the ice.'

The would-be fisher stops dead in her tracks, looks upwards and yells, 'Is that you, Lord?'

And the voice replies, 'No, this is the Ice-Rink Manager.'

 What she expected blinded her to the surroundings in which she was trying to fish!

 What Jonah expected, that Nineveh did not deserve to be saved, blinded him to the wideness of God’s mercy that in fact saves everyone, even the “enemy”!

 The call that goes out to us is way more expansive and inclusive than we can imagine and will pull the blinders off of our limited capacity to forgive, to reach out and to follow.

 V. In the Gospel lesson today, Jesus sees the fishers and says: I will make you fishers of people. They think, “Good, we can use our skills to become evangelists. “ He thinks: You’ll have to put down everything you know for this ministry, the result of which will be nets teeming with all kinds of people, even the kinds you despise. As Peter and Andrew, two brothers who immediately follow Jesus, take off to fish for people, I wonder if they have any idea what will really be expected of them. There’s a more modern spin on this story from the biography of Clarence Jordan, twentieth century theologian, social activist and spinner of his own tales about the cost of discipleship.

 VI. Like fish stories, this tale has been around for a while and you may have heard it. But it speaks to our understanding of the hyperbolic call of faith today. It reminds us of the risk and the choice we face when Jesus says, “follow me.”

In the 1940’s, Clarence Jordan(Pronounced Jerdan) followed the call to discipleship by founding the Koinonia Farm near Americus, Georgia. He envisioned an interracial community, a precursor to the integration pushed for by the civil rights movement. Although Jerdan himself came from the right side of the tracks, he was messing with folks considered to be from the wrong side of the tracks.  Following his faith meant that people accused him of being Communist, a social pariah, an agitator and a meance to Southern c=society.

To say that the Koinonia Farm was unpopular is an understatement.

This Eden-like experiment of equality, communal work and integration was a threat to the status quo, to the shared beliefs of its neighbors, and to the family loyalty that Jerdan had come to expect.

The story goes that Clarence asked his brother Robert, a lawyer and aspiring legislator, to legally represent the Farm. Vendors wouldn’t deal with Koinonia and the farm needed some legal leverage.  Although it was illegal to refuse to deliver gas, nobody would deliver LP gas to the Koinonia farm. Clarence thought Robert solve the problem with a phone call. However, Robert responded to Clarence’s request, saying:

“Clarence, I can’t do that. You know my political aspirations. Why, if I represented you, I might lose my job, my house, everything I’ve got.”

“We might lose everything too, Bob.”

“It’s different for you.”

“Why is it different? I remember, it seems to me, that you and I joined the church on the same Sunday, as boys. I expect when we came forward the preacher asked me about the same question he did you. He asked me, ‘Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’

What did you say?”

“I follow Jesus, Clarence, up to a point.”

“Could that point by any chance be—the cross?”

“That’s right. I follow him to the cross, but not on the cross. I’m not getting myself crucified.”

“Then I don’t believe you’re a disciple. You’re an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple of his. I think you ought to go back to the church you belong to, and tell them you’re an admirer, not a disciple.”

“Well now, if everyone who felt like I do did that, we wouldn’t have a church, would we?”

“The question,” Clarence said, “ is, ‘Do you have a church?”

(adapted from The Cotton Patch Evidence, Dallas Lee)

Imagine this dialogue happening, not between two brothers in the segregated state of Georgia in mid 20^th century, but between Peter and Andrew:

“Well, he said he would make us fish for people!!!”

“Yes, but the kind of people wasn’t specified in the deal when I dropped my nets and followed him”

“Well, we both took the same risk when we went after him”

“Yes, that’s true, but I cannot stand by him all the way to the cross”—and the cock crowed the third time.

Clarence Jerdan wrote:“Jesus found himself in trouble because He took the idea of mercy seriously. He traded with the idea that the necessity for compassion overrode the protocol considerations that were of paramount importance to the religious establishment.

 “Is it proper to eat with sinners?  Is it proper to heal on the Sabbath? For Jesus, mercy always took precedence over any human concept of propriety “(Clarence Jordan 130).

 I’d follow Jesus, Clarence, up to a point…

Follower or admirer?

“I do not know him” and the cock crows again.

 Follower or admirer? Human limitations, misguided expectations, and the exaggeration that brings home the message: This call to discipleship is serious stuff, even if it shares the characteristics of humor.

 Jonah protests and pouts because God wants to be merciful to nasty ol’ Nineveh. The disciples drop their nets and later drop their jaws as Jesus reaches out to the least, the last, the lost and the “losers”. Followers or admirers?

 Well, I may be on a bit of a fishing expedition here, but I think the same question could be asked of us: Admirers or folllowers? How far will we go? Will we flee to our metaphorical Tarshish or drop our nets and follow?

 Will you choose to ignore your BFF who gets bumped from the cafeteria table by the mean girls or will you stand up for her?  Will you identify yourself as a Christian in a getting- to- know- you session, or continue to masquerade as just an admirer of Christianity? Will we speak with the prophet’s voice, giving voice to the least and the lost..or will we remain silent? There’s nothing really funny about this challenge, but I feel as if the mirror is being held up to us today, both in scripture and in humor, to show us our limitations and to reflect on the wideness of God’s mercy.

So our challenge today: Let’s practice that wideness of God’s mercy for Nineveh and OUR “enemies” our “Others, all whom we’re called to reach out to, to forgive, to fish for and to eat at table with in this wide, wide world.

 As the late Archbishop Romero wrote: Following Jesus’ action, [the] Church goes close to the world of the poor, the ones who are suffering the inhuman violation of their dignity, a dignity made sacred not only by the incarnation, but in God’s very act of creation when the human being was made in the image of God. It goes to the outcast, the Samaritans, the lepers, the prostitutes, and the tax collectors, and from there it searches for the truth of how God is acting in history to redeem this situation and to liberate [people]. (Archbishop Romero and His Commitment to the Church Margaret Swedish, Religious Task Force on Central America and Mexico.)

Those of us who follow Jesus, those who act with God’s wide kind of compassion, need courage, but fortunately:

 In a broken and fearful world ?the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in Church and culture, ?to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.

So let’s go fishing, with the call of God ringing in our ears, the example of Jesus leading us to the edges and the Spirit en-couraging us on into the wide, wide world. Amen.