“Fishing for People” Colchester Federated Church, January 21, 2024, Third Sunday after Epiphany (Mark 1:14-20)

During the Season of Epiphany, we hear stories about Jesus calling his first disciples.  The Gospel of Mark is notorious for quick storytelling without a whole lot of detail.  As far as the Synoptic Gospels go, Matthew and Luke are perhaps better understood as color commentators of Jesus’ life whereas Mark is more like a play-by-play commentator.  In Mark’s Gospel, we move rapidly from one story to the next.  This is an especially action-packed book of the Bible.  The Gospel according to Mark certainly lacks some of the long philosophical dialogues we hear in John’s Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”[1]  Mark might have rolled his eyes at all that poetry, urging John to get going with telling the story already.

Lest you think this is an exaggeration, New Testament professor Mark Allan Powell relates that the Gospel of Mark is told with “an unusual sense of urgency.”  The word “immediately (Greek euthys)” appears 42 times in Mark’s Gospel (11 times in the first chapter alone)!  That Greek word euthys only appears one time in the entirety of the (longer) Gospel of Luke![2]  Please keep this in mind as we will be hearing stories from the Gospel according to Mark in this new Lectionary year.  Mark writes about Jesus’ life and ministry with this unusual sense of urgency.

Mark is on a mission.  We can see this already in Chapter 1 with Jesus announcing, “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!”[3]  What a way to begin—with Jesus saying that now is the time!  Moving right along, Jesus’ first public act of his ministry is to call four fisherfolk to follow him—Simon (Peter), Andrew, James, and John.  Jesus says, “Come, follow me . . . and I’ll show you how to fish for people.”[4]  How do they respond?  Immediately Peter and Andrew leave their nets and follow Jesus.  Immediately James and John leave their dad Zebedee in the boat with the hired workers and follow Jesus.  Apparently, there is no time to waste!

Fishing for people.  That is what Jesus tells these first followers that he will show them how to do.  I’ve often wondered about the immediacy of this story and how the scene unfolded.  There’s so much of Jesus’ early life that we don’t fully understand.  Even as Mark’s Gospel begins, it’s hard to know exactly how this all would have played out.  Did Jesus show up at the Sea of Galilee one day, see Peter and Andrew throwing their nets into the sea and call these fisherfolk to come follow him as complete strangers to one another?  Were they acquaintances or maybe even friends?  Jesus goes a little farther down the shore and sees James and John with their father Zebedee in the family boat.  Did Zebedee understand why his sons needed to leave him behind because he knew that the time had come for them to follow Jesus and start fishing for people?  Was this expected because Zebedee knew Jesus, or completely out of left field because who is this guy?

To help us better understand the story, we can turn to archaeology believe it or not.  There’s a fascinating book called Jesus & His World: An Archaeological and Cultural Dictionary by John J. Rosseau and Rami Arav.  The authors relate that in Jesus’ time, the Sea of Galilee was the most important economic center in this geographic area.  The region was rich in fishing and agriculture.  Fishing itself was a prosperous occupation, as families or groups of people owned boats and even employed hired fisherfolk to help with the family business.  The Gospel of Mark shows that Zebedee had his own boat with hired hands to help him fish these waters.  Zebedee’s sons James and John were repairing fishing nets when Jesus came calling. 

Rosseau and Arav believe (based on textual and archaeological data) that Jesus was “a fisherman or artisan who became an itinerant healer, exorcist, and preacher.  His strongest followers were fishers; he was not afraid to sail across the lake; he did not fear storms on the water as a peasant might have . . . Jesus perhaps worked at boat building or repairs.”[5]  The authors go on to say that if Jesus built or repaired boats, maybe he went fishing with his friends Peter, Andrew, James, and John, “For it is unthinkable that he [Jesus] appeared suddenly with no prior contact in their lives and asked them immediately to leave their families and work.  The Gospel narratives mentioning sudden storms on the Sea of Galilee or an unexpected good harvest of fish are told by someone familiar with the lake.”[6]

Let’s pause for a moment.  The first time I read that Jesus was perhaps a fisherman or someone who repaired and built boats for fisherfolk—it blew my mind!  Because it’s a theory about Jesus’ life before his itinerant teaching and preaching and healing that does make sense.  There’s debate about Jesus’ occupation before he began his ministry to show people this new way of loving God, loving their neighbors, and loving themselves.  In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is referred to as “the carpenter’s son” when Jesus taught in his hometown synagogue.[7]  Later in Mark’s Gospel, the hometown crowd asks, “Where’s this wisdom he’s been given?  What about the powerful acts accomplished through him?  Isn’t this the carpenter?”[8]  The problem being that there wasn’t a lot of wood in this region.  There’s still not forests in this part of the world like there are here in Connecticut.

Some scholars theorize that Jesus had a practiced skill of some kind.  Theories range from Jesus being a peasant and day laborer performing odd jobs to being a carpenter to being a stone builder.  For what it’s worth, this week I looked back at notes from visiting Bethlehem.  Our tour guide Elias related that Joseph was a stone builder—a tekton.  We learned that people often lived in caves with their animals.  The better translation of Jesus’ birth narrative (according to Elias) is that there was no place for the holy family in the Upper Room.  Mary gave birth to Jesus in the deepest part of a cave where animals would have been present, a place of safety. 

As Jesus came of age in this region of the world at this time, was he a day laborer, a carpenter, a stone builder, an artisan, fisherman, or boat builder?  How did the work that Jesus was trained to do (most likely by Joseph) shape Jesus for the work that was to come?

All of this to say, here we are on the Third Sunday after Epiphany contemplating the Gospel story of Jesus calling his first disciples.  This could be the story of Jesus calling complete strangers to help him fish for people.  It could be the story of Jesus calling his friends—friends he’s gone fishing with before, friends whose boat he has repaired.  It is hard to know for certain.  And my secret goal in this sermon is complicating this familiar story enough for all of us to get good and comfortable with mystery.  Imagine that there’s a snow globe I have tried to shake up this morning. 

Sometimes there aren’t easy answers in life.  There are some things that it is next to impossible to know for sure.  That’s where faith comes in.

Maybe, one bright and sunny day, Jesus walked alongside the Sea of Galilee.  Jesus looks ahead to see his friends Peter and Andrew throwing their fishing nets into the glistening sea.  Just another day of fishing.  Jesus sees his friends James and John repairing fishing nets in their father’s boat.  And it was time, time for Jesus to stop repairing boats and start repairing lives.  Listen:

“Now is the time! 
Here comes God’s kingdom! 
Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news! 
Come, follow me, and I’ll show you how to fish for people.” 

Immediately, they followed him. 

Will we? 

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

[1] John 1:1, NRSV.
[2] Mark Allan Powell, Fortress Introduction to The Gospels, pgs. 40-41.
[3] Mark 1:15, CEB.
[4] Mark 1:17, CEB.
[5] “Sea of Galilee (Yam Kinneret)” in John J. Rosseau and Rami Arav, Jesus & His World: An Archaeological and Cultural Dictionary, pg. 248.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Matthew 13:55, CEB.
[8] Mark 6:2-3, CEB.

Photo by Rev. Lauren Ostrout.