Palestinian Fishermen TodayA man wanted to start a new company, so he began poring over C.V after C.V. He selected ten people with great qualifications, hired them, and put them to work.
He could tell pretty quickly, however, that his company wasn't going to succeed. Two of the people he hired were always arguing about the right way to market their product. Three others spent all their time devising strategies but had no idea how to implement their plans. The others bickered with one another over product placement, accounting techniques, and goals and objectives. The man fired all of his employees and decided to start over. He asked himself the question, “What have I done wrong?” Perhaps he should have taken his example from Jesus.
When Jesus began recruiting disciples, he looked in rather unlikely places. Instead of in the synagogues, he looked in boats along the seashore. Instead of in the inner court of the temple, he recruited from the tax collector's booth in the outer courtyard. Instead of in the cultural centre it was of Judaism, the city of Jerusalem, he looked in the backwoods province of Galilee, derided as "Galilee of the Gentiles" by many of his contemporaries. The ragtag group of fisherman, tax collectors, political zealots, and others became a team of committed followers. Sure, they were sceptical at first. No one leaves a reliable job to pursue the poorly defined scheme of a wild-eyed madman.
Most of us enjoy stories about naïve amateurs who make bizarre mistakes. We chuckle knowingly over the man who complained about the performance of his new powerboat, only to have the marina staff discover that he’d launched the boat without taking it off the trailer, or the woman who mistook the CD-ROM drive on her computer for a retractable cup holder. We may laugh but the truth is that we have all been in similar situations – even in some eyes Jesus.
The Galilean fishermen, hard at work on their nets, may have recalled stories like that when the teacher from Nazareth asked to use one of their boats as a podium. A bit later they had proof of his ignorance when he told them to cast their nets in the deep during broad daylight. Perhaps then folks joked, "Those that can, do; those that can’t, teach."
Though the men never knew for sure if the huge catch of fish that resulted was a miracle of God or just dumb luck, it altered the course of their lives. Soon they became the amateurs and rookies. "Catching people," that’s how Jesus described their new vocation. They had no training for this new line of work. Indeed, in his other volume, Luke described two of them, Peter and John, as "uneducated and ordinary men"
But they soon learned that Jesus was more than he seemed at the outset. He spoke about forgiveness and acceptance to tax collectors, he answered the questions of sceptics, and he directed fisherman so that they could make a great catch of fish. Having won them over, he promised them greater accomplishments. When we encounter Jesus in our own lives, maybe we sometimes wonder why we were chosen. Surely there are others who could do the job better than I can. Certainly there are more persuasive speakers or or smarter people! But Jesus didn't look for followers among the socially elite, because his ministry was primarily among the common people. Jesus' success as a recruiter is exemplified by the fact that today, two thousand years later, the spiritual descendants of those twelve have grown into a huge multitude, two billion strong by some counts.
All this is well and good, but it’s all in the past – let us bring it up to-date. We can do that by simply asking ourselves the question – “Why did Jesus choose me?” Think for a moment – was it because you had a special talent, a brilliant C.V. that would make you one of the ‘high fliers’ in the business of ‘catching people.’ If Jesus stood here right now and said “Follow me,” would you make excuses that you were not the right person for the job?
The success of a movement that will turn the world upside down by means of a message, a "gospel," would seem to require orators and wordsmiths, not a bunch of unlearned people.
The secret lies in the net with which Jesus’ "fishers of people" will make their catch. It must be made partly of words. After all, the apostles and prophets did an awful lot of talking, and they left among their notes the principle that "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." Moreover, they came to believe that God provided the words to say, and those words had remarkable power.
Nevertheless, how many people either then or now become followers of Christ solely through hearing or seeing words? Important as words are, the net that God hauls through this world, using former fishermen’s hands, has other knots and strands as well.
In the early 13th century there was a young man, the son of a merchant, who liked nothing better than going out with his friends and spending his father’s money. As his father was a cloth merchant he always had the finest of clothes. Like many young people he had no time for education and, to all accounts, was a little naïve. The only thing he could dream about was going to war and winning his spurs as a knight. With that in mind he bought a suit of expensive armour, way above his station in life.
Well he got his way and one day went off to war. However, things did not go to plan and he ended up captured and imprisoned for two years. This did not damp his ardour and he could not wait for the next occasion.
During his wait he spent his time walking around. Not far away there was an old church in much need of repair. He entered and started to pray. On the wall of the church there was a crucifix and it seems that the Christ was staring at him. He heard the words “Francis, build my church which you see in ruins.” Now what Jesus meant by the church was not the building but the organisation which was at that time becoming very decadent and corrupt. But I have said, Francis was very naïve and so set about on his own to collect stones to repair the church single handed.
Finally, have experienced the love of God towards him, Francis found he had changed. Shortly after he was walking past a leper colony. Lepers were the one thing that Francis hated, normally he would go miles out of his way to avoid them, but this day he seemed strangely drawn. As he got nearer one of the lepers met him and, instead of running away, Francis walked up and kissed him. Interestingly, Francis claimed that this was the moment of his conversion and not the incident before the cross. God’s love had entered Francis just as he was with all his faults an failings, and now it had been passed on to others.
The net that caught Francis was made of words, all right. Francis had attended church and knew some of the scriptures, but it was the love of God and the spirit of Christ that wove the words together and gave them strength proved the effective agents in this story.
That same net has hauled us, too, into the boat that Peter and the others learned to sail after that great catch in Galilee. Now our lives become part of the way God draws all humankind into the loving embrace that waits patiently while the boats work their way toward shore.
Finally, no night is completely lost that finds us hauled up on shore, face to face with the Amateur who once borrowed Peter’s boat to use as a pulpit, the one who has no day job, really, except to love us. And we have no other job than to love others in return, for that we need no qualifications.
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Over the past four years I have been working with disaffected young people here in inner city Liverpool. Every Monday morning I feel as if I am stepping into a totally different world from the one I inhabit at home or church. Their world is one of drugs and violence. Most have been in trouble with the law, some on numerous occasions.
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