Gone Fishin'

Our NT passage, this morning, always reminds me of my youth and fishing.  I used to love fishing.  From ten or eleven years on, my friend Ivor and I would fish for “Rudd” in an old quarry a few miles from where we lived.  From twelve on we went further afield to a lough in search of Pike.  At the age of fourteen, I became a Junior Member of the oldest angling club in Ireland, the Pickwick Club (1911) and managed to find a fly rod to go after trout in the rivers.  Four or so times a year, the club had an outing to rivers and loughs I would never have been able to go to on my own at that young age.  It was great fun and another friend Graham and I became fish crazy.  It if wasn’t fishing outdoors, we had tropical fish tanks in our respective houses.  I had three tanks, Graham and his Dad had a back shed devoted to it with about a dozen tanks with various fish in them.

Then there was Portavogie, the fishing village that my father had grown up in.  We visited family there most weeks and I always managed a couple of weeks with a cousin in the summer.  Several of us would spend summer days searching for spricks and eels among the rocks and pools left by the receding tides.  At times we would venture down to the harbour to watch the boats come in from a few days at sea.  My father had left that environment to go into the ministry but many of my grandfather’s generation were just ordinary folks, eking out a living from the sea.

Life was very ordinary in this village.  Work was very ordinary.  The people were very ordinary.  I don’t imagine that things would have been any less ordinary along the shores of Lake Galilee, 2,000 years ago when Peter and Andrew, and James and John eked out their own living on the water.  They would have been what the Pharisees would call, the ‘ammê ha’arets, the common people of the land.  They were not among the well-to-do or the well-educated.  They were not the religious.  When Jesus went looking for disciples, however, that’s who he went to, the ‘ammê ha’arets, to the common folk to carry his message to the world.  He looked at the two sets of brothers, casting their nets and said to them, “Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men,” as the familiar KJV has it, “fishers of people,” or, as the inclusive NRSV translates the Greek wording.  And we are told that immediately they left their nets and followed him.  I’m not sure why they did.  Did they have previous interaction with Jesus?  Or was Jesus’ presence so powerful that he had that effect on them.  We are not told.  But they went with him and over time, Jesus taught and empowered these ordinary human beings to do what he did, to invite people into the kingdom of Heaven.  Jesus, you see, was not a “lone-ranger”.  Even though he was the Son of God he did not go it alone.  He called on others, because twelve could be much more effective in spreading the good news than one.

And after Jesus’ ascension, these disciples went out into all the world filled with excitement and passion for the good news they had encountered first hand.  If Church history informs us correctly, some ministered in Judaea, some ministered to the north and west in modern Lebanon and Syria, in Turkey, the Adriatic, in Greece, in Italy, in France and Spain.  One, St. Thomas, is thought to have travelled eastward to India.  The region of Kerala in Southwest India traces its faith back to Thomas as the gospel message spread far and wide.  None of these disciples were “lone-rangers” either.  Disciples gathered around them, they taught them, and in turn they went out because the message could be preached more effectively and to a wider audience with “12x12” rather than 12.  God’s great news, the message of the kingdom and eternal life went forth and as more and more people became “fishers of people,” the Church, we are told in The Acts of the Apostles, grew day by day.

Here we are two millennia later and the Church has gone through great ebbs and flows throughout its history.  It has had great days and some that have not been so great.  Yet, when it has been on its game, when it is focussed and centred on God and his son, Jesus Christ, it has been a lifesaver to many.  Alas, now, for over the last half century, we have witnessed an uncanny decline in church attendance and individuals who call themselves Christian.  We built wonderful buildings for the throngs that attended in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s and then for some reason, things started collapsing.
The church I grew up in had a great youth group.  In the 1970s we would get 125 or so every week to our Saturday evening youth club.  20 years later, on a visit to that Church in N. Ireland, only two people from the youth club were still attending.

The last issue of the Observer contained an article on the state of Canadian society.  The title of the article was, “Welcome to Secular Canada.”  Apparently, now, a survey shows that only 7% of Canadians term themselves “devout.”  David Wilson writes, “Shuttered churches, empty pews and defunct Sunday Schools now proclaim a new, secular reality.  Congregations wonder what the future holds – or even if there is a future.  The institutional church is hobbled by structures and processes that made sense when the sky seemed the limit but today cost too much money and stifle creativity.”  Lately, I’ve been thinking of the church and am tempted to view it much like I viewed that haunting scene at the beginning of the James Bond film, Skyfall.  Bond has been shot and falls into a river.  The voice of Adele rings out, “This is the end, hold your breath and count to ten …”

Significantly, our denomination is going through a comprehensive review in an attempt to turn things around.  They are asking, “Who we are?” as The United Church of Canada.  “How we do things?  And, “How can we continue to live faithfully in changing times?”  A Committee of the General Council has been looking for feedback in how we might re-envision responsibility for church property, look again at oversight over communities of faith, oversight over ministers, and the role of Connectionalism.  The study document is entitled, “Fishing on the Other Side, Seeking the wisdom of Presbyteries, Districts, and Synod.”  There’s that word again, “fishing,”  “Fishing on the Other Side.”  But as I read it, I pondered and thought, I wondered if changes to our governance and administration are really going to fix the Church?  I wondered if the real problem is that we’ve become a Church that no longer “fishes?”  We are no longer “fishers of people.”  When have we last heard a voice encouraging us about the wonder of Christian faith and exhorting us to become “fishers of people?”  I’m not sure we’d do that, we are good Canadians, we do not talk about religion or politics.  We are postmodern and tolerant, we frown on sharing our faith for it may imply that we are better and another’s worldview is inferior.  We’ve rid ourselves of the enthusiasts and evangelicals years ago because, well, “they’re enthusiastic,” and that’s hardly Canadian.  But here we sit … and I hear Adele singing, “This is the end.”

But does it have to be the end?  Do toleration and respect have to mean, for instance, that no one view is any better than another?  I would posit some views are actually better than others!  Does being Canadian have to mean that we can’t be enthusiastic about some things?  I’ll come back to that.

I want us this morning to reimagine the Church.  One of my colleagues was telling me about a book by Simon Sinek entitled, Start with Why.  Sinek suggests that organizations when they examine themselves usually begin with “what they do” and move quickly onto, “how they do it.”  Occasionally, they get around to asking, “Why?”  But Sinek suggests that the great movements in history start with the question, “Why?”  Sinek’s thought causes us to ask, “Why the Church?”  “Why does the Church exist?”

One United Church started to look at a similar question recently at a Board retreat asking, “What do we offer as a Church that is different than any other institution?”  Many answers were offered.  Fellowship, a sense of community, music, children’s and youth activities, but as they thought about them, they found that other clubs could offer a sense of community.  Some youth organizations could do things better than they could and there were some choirs or other musical opportunities in the city that were superior.  As they continued to ponder, it occurred to them that what makes the Church, the Church, is not these things, but it is its relationship to God.  What makes the Church unique, what gives it staying power, is the focus on God and what God is doing.

So, why does the Church exist?  It is to glorify God and continue the Christian story – the story that human beings turned away from the God who had created them.  It’s a story of a broken relationship between God and human beings.  It’s the story of God restoring that relationship and through his son.  It’s about Jesus dying for our sins, Jesus pointing the way to a glorious future by rising from the dead, Jesus inviting people into God’s kingdom, and Jesus telling his followers to go out and invite others, “Go into all the world and make disciples.”   “Go out and fish for people,” he said.  That’s the “why” this thing we call the church exists.  It is the community of God’s kingdom on earth interacting with God and telling others about the good news of eternal life.  And if the Church of today is ever going to turn the corner, it needs to get back to some of the basics and go fishing.

How will we do that in the 21st century?  Perhaps the first thing we need is a bit more passion about our faith.  I think that Canadians can be an enthusiastic and passionate people.  I see great excitement in Canadians when Eugenie Bouchard reaches a Wimbledon final.  Americans noted the passion of Torontonians as the Raptors played in this year’s NBA playoffs.  And then there’s hockey.  Never mind 1972, who could say that we were not excited as the Canadian ladies took gold in the final few minutes of the Olympic Ice Hockey final.  I just loved the advice given to the men before their final, “Go out and play like the girls!”  Canadians can get excited, they can be enthusiastic!  Why not about a faith that is good news.  Perhaps we need to recover the fact that good news is “good” news?  The resurrection instilled something in the lives of the disciples and those who followed Jesus.  Christianity didn’t take off in the first century because they found a community in which people were nice to each other.  It took off because of an event, because people witnessed a risen Christ.  If we could recover a sense of that reality and the power of it, we may recover the passion again.

Think about it, in 50 years most of us in this place or listening in on the radio will not be here.   We’ll be looking up at the daisies, as they say.  Is there more to life than this?  Have we any hope?  I don’t see any, other than I am quite assured that Jesus was raised from the dead, and the same God who raised and transformed Jesus says he will do that for us.  That is good news.  That is fantastic stuff.  That’s something worth talking about … which is essentially what Jesus meant when he talking about fishing for people.  The resurrection transformed the disciples and it can transform us.
The second thing we need is authenticity.  The postmodern, secular world that we are now a part of doesn’t want pat answers and dogmatism, it doesn’t want to see people saying one thing and doing another, it doesn’t want to hear us unless we live what we speak.  It will only listen if we are honest and admit that we do not know everything.  This generation will only listen to us if we are open to them, their ideas, yet have our own inner core and deep assurance that motivates our very being.

I have a friend named Mark, whom I studied with in a Religious Studies programme.  Religious Studies programmes are not like theological colleges.  They are a Social Science approach to religion.  You don’t have to believe anything to take courses there.  Well Mark wasn’t religious but he was taking a course in theology for fun.  As we got to know one another, from time to time, over lunch he would ask me about this and that aspect of theology.  Some of his questions, I could answer, some I couldn’t and would have to admit, “Mark, there is not real answer for that question.”  Over the course of a year, we had many lunches together.  Sometimes we spoke of the weather, sometimes of sports, sometimes of the theological themes that he was reading about.  At the end of the school year, we all went our separate ways and it was perhaps two years later, I was speaking on the phone with his wife, Pat, who had also done graduate work with me.  One of the things she said to me was, “You made Mark a Christian.”  “What?” I said, “I did?”  “All those lunch discussions,” she said, “He’s become an Anglican and an elder at that.”  I sort of shook my head.  I didn’t feel that I had done anything.  I hadn’t been proselytising.  I was just being real with Mark, sharing what I knew and what I felt as a Christian.  And maybe that’s what it takes.  It’s not about being preachy.  It’s about being authentic and real with your faith when opportunities arise.

So, this “Fishing” that Jesus speaks of takes place when we have an inner passion about the good news and when we are real and authentic.  But there’s one more thing I wish to share with you – sometimes it’s about just being willing to get out there and throw out a line.  I’ve told this story during an announcement time before, but when I was doing doctoral work at McMaster University, we lived in Ancaster between two lovely sets of neighbours.  Judy and Tony had three children about the same ages as mine.  They attended a Presbyterian Church nearby and while I would say that Judy had no incredible faith, she knew a good thing when she saw it and told everyone who had children about the marvellous Sunday School at Chedoke Presbyterian.  Eventually we went to Chedoke and got quite involved for a couple of years.  One of the things, I learned as I got to know people there was that at least half a dozen families said that they wound up in Chedoke because Judy had spoken to them around the school sandbox.  It was incredible and I learned that “fishing” may just involve an invitation.  It may be just saying, “Why don’t you come to Church,” or, “There’s a great children’s programme there,” and then letting the sermons and the youth programme or children’s programme do the rest.
Recently a polling agency took a survey of people who didn’t go to church.  Do you know what the primary reason was as to why people had never gone to church?  “No one ever asked me,” was the primary response.  Intriguing!  They didn’t say that they didn’t come because they have misgivings about a couple of things in the Apostles’ Creed.  They didn’t say that the reason they didn’t come was because they had some hermeneutical disagreements with the Church’s interpretation of Scripture.  The prime reason is, “No one ever asked me.”  Fishing may be just throwing out a line and issuing an invitation.

If the Church is going to get back on it’s feet again.  It is up to us.  We can’t just keep doing the same old thing and, in many places, the Church has forgotten why it exists.  For a host of reasons, many sectors of the Church have forgotten one of Jesus’ key exhortations - to get out there and “fish.”  But if we can just rediscover the reality of what God was doing in Christ, if we can think again about Jesus’ call to “go into all the world and make disciples,” if we can set aside our hang-ups and be real with people about our faith and life, maybe if we can just throw out a line, just give an invitation to church, things will turn around.  It’s up to us, each one of us.  Jesus did amazing things and he says to us, “Come follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.”  … Let’s go fishing.