Fishing for Good News

Sunday, February 9, 2025 – Isaiah 6:1-8 [9-13], Psalm 138, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Luke 5:1-11

I have to confess, I’ve never been very interested in fishing. As a child, my brother often took rod and reel and went with our Uncle Richie, who just passed away a couple of weeks ago, to see what they could catch.

I remember a story where Jeff was casting his line into the water, and his watch went flying off and sailed away. But I just never got into fishing. First, I used to get kind of squirmy around worms, and second, I never wanted to be involved in the whole fish-cleaning mess.

That did change for a day last October when I joined Jeff at a timeshare in Cabo San Lucas, and he wanted to go fishing. I agreed to join him. I thought I was prepared. I had my sunscreen, my hat, my fishing shirt, and my Dramamine. I even had the thingie you wear around your neck.

Believe it or not, I caught the first fish – a yellow fin tuna. Luckily, one of our two local crewmen coached my efforts to reel it in. He also cleaned the fish we caught, so all we had to do was take it to the hotel restaurant and they cooked it up.

That delicious evening meal made up for my being seasick the entire second half of the day. (I hadn’t actually taken the Dramamine because I didn’t want to be drowsy. Not the right choice!)

Fishing is not glamorous. But it plays a big part in many of our gospel stories. Why is that? Why did Jesus call fishermen? And what was happening at the Sea of Galilee that drew Jesus there in the first place?

When we read this gospel story today – as people a long distance in place and time from when they were written – it’s easy for us to just think of them as being about God’s abundance and about simple people being used by God for a great mission. We might only connect “catching people” to “saving souls for God.”

But when we know a little bit more about the historical context of the story, we can see a different picture emerging.

I’ve mentioned before that the area around the Sea of Galilee (also called Lake Gennesaret) was a hotbed of unrest under Roman occupation (something I learned from John Dominic Crossan). But things were made even worse there by Herod Antipas, the client King of Rome who governed the area. He was the son of Herod the Great who encountered the wise men on their way to the manger.

This offspring Herod had moved his headquarters from Sepphoris (a town about 4 miles from Nazareth) to his newly built seaside city of Tiberius, which he named after the emperor. Herod had also radically changed the region’s economics when he commercialized the fishing industry, levying huge taxes on local fishermen for required licenses, and taking the bulk of their catch from them to be salted and sent to wealthy Roman elites.

In other words, the local fishermen, who had been able to feed themselves and their families and earn a subsistence income for generations from their catch, were now in a much more desperate situation.

The whole area was being taxed to death and people were falling deeper and deeper into poverty. (read more about the fishing economy at the Sea of Galilee here)

This may be why the crowds pressed around Jesus, eager to hear his good news of a new order within the kingdom of God.

Shirin McArthur argues that Jesus and his father, Joseph, may also have been put out of work by Herod. When Herod’s court was in Sepphoris, local carpenters and stonemasons, including those from Nazareth, had plenty of work. It may very well be that Jesus was forced to leave his home because the work had dried up.

We might also ask why Simon, Andrew, James, and John were having no success in their fishing the day that Jesus arrived. Was it because they weren’t skilled at their work as some might suggest? I doubt it.

Maybe the more likely reason is that there weren’t any fish to be caught because so many had been sucked out of the waters by Herod’s commercial overfishing.

But then Jesus steps onto the shore and into Simon’s boat. He walks right into their world and changes everything.

He doesn’t offer a great class on the Torah at the local synagogue and hope they’ll attend. He doesn’t start a contemporary worship service at the Temple and advertise it on Facebook.

No, Jesus goes to the people. He goes into the community, to where the pain is, and he eases their suffering.

He feeds them. He heals them. He shows them a new economic vision where there is enough for everyone, and working people aren’t oppressed by tyrants. He tells them they’re loved and forgiven.

His impact is so profound and life-changing that these poor fishermen immediately drop their nets and follow him to fulfill his vision, which is also God’s vision.

That vision of the flourishing of all was not new to the Jewish people. When Jesus and Luke link fishing for fish and people with salvation and justiice, they’re drawing from a deep prophetic tradition in Israel. As Ched Myers writes,

“The most clearly anti-imperial version is found in Ezekiel’s rant against Pharaoh, denouncing the empire’s delusion that it ‘owns’ the Nile. God vows to yank the ‘dragon’ of Egypt right out of the River, ‘hook, line and sinker,’ along with all the fish that it claims exclusive rights to (Ez 29:3f).”
He also mentions a text from Habakkuk, that is linked to this lament of our fishermen and drained sea resources where “the enemy” takes all the fish and “exults” over it while “destroying nations.”

This may be why Jesus was able to enlist these fishermen in God’s mission. He didn’t have to scare them about “hell” or even to suggest that they lacked anything to follow him. He used no doctrine, no creeds. No altar guild or stewardship committee commitments.

He entered their suffering and showed them God’s abundance for them right then and there and a new way to live.

This is the gospel, the good news of Jesus the Christ. I wonder how we might bring that to the people of Bradenton.