The Third Sunday after the Epiphany
Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior
Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation,
that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous
works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for
ever and ever. Amen.
Jesus saw … James son of Zebedee and
his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets,
and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and
followed him.
Close your
eyes and pretend that I have a beard and a deep voice; listen to me as I
imagine the words of old Zebedee, sitting alone in that boat, almost buried in
a pile of discarded fishing nets.
“I’m going to
have to come in at some point, I guess, and try to get help pulling this old
boat over to the shore, but it’s like I’ve turned to stone. I can’t lift my
legs, and my arms just hang down like floppy nets on a hook. I know that people
must be staring as they walk by, wondering what I’m doing out here in shallow
water in a boat by myself. I know that Salome is going to get worried when I
don’t show up for dinner. But I just don’t know if I can go forward yet.
Blessed Lord God of the Universe … O why?
Why did both of my sons go away with that rabbi, that Jesus fellow? They didn’t
talk with me about their decision. They didn’t even look back. What if they
don’t come home? What if they get into trouble with the authorities? What if they
end up like that wandering Baptizer and are thrown into prison--or worse? I
don’t think that I could stand it, Lord God.
And their poor mother …. I couldn’t stand to see her bent with grief in the
shadow of a Roman cross, looking up in horror at their twisted bodies.[1]
No, Holy One! You couldn’t do that to us! I have been a good father, doing the
best I can for the both of them, teaching them my trade, teaching them to live
faithful and obedient lives. Please, the sons of Zebedee deserve better than the
shame of a cross!
“Honor your father and your mother,”
it says in the Words of the Covenant. How can my boys forget your Teaching? How
can they forget me, and their mother? They are good sons. They have to come
back—If I wait here just a bit longer, they will come back. They’ll be laughing
about the joke that they played on their old abba, and they’ll pick up the nets again, and everything will be
alright, just like it was before.
Were things really alright before,
though? Things haven’t felt alright in a long time. Maybe I don’t blame my boys
for wanting to find a new life. Fishing is such brutally hard work: Year after
year, rowing this boat out onto the lake, tossing the nets out into the water
and pulling them in, tossing them out and pulling them in, over and over, day
after day, breaking your back in the hot sun or the cold wind or the dismal
mists. And then there’s the net-mending. That’s just as bad. These big nets are
always getting snagged and torn on things. So we keep tying the smelly old
ropes back together. Such boring work. So tedious. It’s like life, though,
isn’t it? Making, marring, and mending: over and over again.[2]
Just like Creation.
Sons, you can’t escape the rhythm of
creation! You don’t have to leave to find God! God is right here with us. But
what happens when it’s so dark that you can’t see God’s face? The world’s a
dark place these days, I’ll have to admit—much worse than it was when I was
their age. Just look at these empty nets: even the fishing isn’t good anymore.
Oh, we try to blame the weather; the authorities try to pretend that we are
just imagining it. But I know what I see. The fish really are disappearing, and
it’s getting harder to pretend. We’re ruining your Creation, God, and it’s all
because of Rome, of course! Those bloody Romans gobble up our fish faster than
we can haul them to shore. They say that in Rome, everybody wants their salted
fish from the Galilee.[3]
But what will happen when the fish are gone? The Romans won’t care … they’ll
just go to some other poor place and eat up all their fish, too. Lord of the
Seas, what will we fishermen do then? What will Galileans eat?
It’s not like we’re being paid right,
either. Maybe it’d be worth sucking up all the fish from the sea if I were
making a fortune at it! My grandfather was able to buy the rights to this boat
with the money that he saved up. But me? I haven’t seen savings for years. With
just two sons, I have to hire extra guys to manage the heavy nets, and boy,
that eats up almost all my profits. There should be ten of us out here working
together, yet we have to do the work with only five or six pairs of arms and
legs. Father, if you had given me more sons, maybe James and John would have
stuck around! Maybe I worked them too hard?
It’s those dirty collaborators, of course,
Jews who join the Roman system for their own benefit. They’re the ones who
manage the fishing cooperatives that we have to join in order to survive. They’re
the ones who are making all the money! And the number one traitor of all is
that nasty, power-hungry, puppet king, Herod. And he calls himself a Jew! He uses
what should be our due to keep his power, to pay tribute to Caesar. [4]
Herod and the Romans have the power. They make all of the decisions and take all
of the cash. Me and my sons, we’re nothing. And we’re stuck being nothing, too.
There’s nothing we can do about Rome, or about Herod, or about the fish prices,
or about the empty nets. Sometimes I feel like we’re the ones caught in those
nets. It’s like somebody has thrown huge nets over our beautiful Galilee, and
we’re flopping around in one miserable pile, waiting to be hauled onto the boat
and pickled.
Maybe my sons are right? Maybe it is
too late to mend our nets. Maybe we just need to get up and throw them into the
sea in order to be free. I know that you will save us, Holy God. The Prophet
Isaiah even wrote about us, right? I heard it read just recently, and I
remember. The land of Zebulon and Naphtali, that’s us. There’s something about the yoke of our
burden being removed and the oppressor’s rod being broken. There’s something
about foreign army boots no longer tramping across our land. Maybe there’s
something about the nets of oppression being lifted, too? I long for that day,
Lord God. It’s way past time.
Maybe my sons are right? I’ve heard
that this Jesus fellow is a miracle-worker who speaks with real authority. One of the hired hands told me just the other
day that he has cured the sick and even driven out demons. I know that people
are curious, following him all around from town to town. Right before my sons left,
I heard Jesus offer to make us “fishers of people.” Ha, I wonder if we’ll start
salting and shipping off human beings for Rome’s dinner plates once the fish
are gone?! What does a fisher of people do, anyway? What kind of work is that? Oh,
it can’t be a real job. It can’t put food on the plate, anyway, that’s for
sure. But maybe it just means healing people? Freeing people from demons, like
that Jesus does? Gathering people up in your net, God, rather in than Rome’s? I’d
go for that—if I could stay here with my boat, that is.
Maybe my sons will learn something from
this Jesus and then come home to me. Maybe they’ll do a miracle that will put fish
back into the lake? Maybe they’ll be leaders and teachers in the community when
they come back, full of fancy words like Jesus? Yes, you’ll send my sons back
to me, won’t you, God? You can’t expect a father to give up his sons, now, can
you? After all, you didn’t make Abraham sacrifice his son. You stepped in and
stopped him. Maybe this is just a test for me. Yes, a test! Maybe I should go
see what this Jesus is all about. Maybe I’m not too old to learn to fish for
people, too? No, you wouldn’t expect a
father to give up his sons. Not even You, Most Holy God, would give up a son, not
even to save the whole world, now, would you?
[1]
Tradition has it that Salome, mother of James and John, was one of the women
who witnessed Jesus’ death on the Cross.
[2]
Words used by Johanna van-Wijk Bos to describe the pattern of Genesis in class
at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, 2005.
[3]
Don C. Richter, Mission Trips that Matter
(Nashville: Upper Room Books, 2008), 99.
[4]
K.C. Hanson, “The Galilean Fishing Economy and the Jesus Tradition,” found at
http://www.khanson.com/ARTICLES/fishing.html
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