I learned in Sunday School to sing a little ditty, “I will make you fishers of men, fishers of men, fishers of men, if you’ll only follow me.” And I have to tell you the truth, it made me nervous. I learned the story early. Jesus was walking by the lake and he saw Peter and Andrew fishing. He called them to be his disciples by saying, “I will make you a fisher of men or I will teach you how to fish for people.”

Children are always literalist and I was not especially precocious and the literalist in me made me really nervous. I learned to fish with my father at a really young age and I knew that fishing was not a good thing for the fish!  The best that the fish could hope for was that a hook would be set in its mouth and that it would be yanked from its natural habitat and then, while gasping for the lack of water, the hook would be torn out it its mouth and it would be tossed back. It’s not a good experience for the fish and in my family, only the small got tossed back!

We all grow up and I discovered that Jesus was not a literalist. He used metaphors and parables and he knew that adults, on the whole, were capable of understanding his meaning. What he meant was simply this; that his disciples would have something so powerful and so attractive that people would be drawn to it – like moths to candles which, taken literally, is another bad image.

Corey has put together a video that talks about “the fisherman”, about the attractive power of Jesus and the Gospel. Let’s watch.

COREY’S VIDEO

In a sense, the story that we read this morning is about the Disciples’ first fishing trip. Jesus groups them up in teams of two and sends them into the nearby villages. At the end of the story we read this:

Slide 3

They went out and preached that people should repent.   They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them. .  (Mark 6:12-13 (NIV))

We all understand that Jesus lived in a time before our understanding of germs, bacteria, viruses, bio-chemical interactions and DNA. In that pre-scientific culture, illness and disorders were most often described in terms of demons and unclean spirits.

If this indeed was the Disciples’ first fishing trip, what did they have that was powerful enough and attractive enough to draw the people to them?  The scriptures tell us that they preached that people should repent and that they drove out demons and anointed people with oil and that many people were healed. Our tendency is to separate repentance and healing but I think that they belong together.

Slide 3a  Repent

Repent?  What could be attractive about the invitation to repent? Somebody here has heard some sermons that made Repentance sound like a demand to walk away from everything that is fun and take on a life of boredom and drudgery.

The word itself simply means to change one’s mind or to turn around. Repentance is a U-Turn of the spirit. And why would that be attractive?

There is a television show on that features a “Super Nanny.” It’s a kind of reality show in which the Nanny is invited into homes where the children have developed, sometimes at a very young age, into little monsters. The little brats that I saw are the best arguments I have ever seen for remaining childless. They have become three-year-old terrorists!

 The Nanny enters the home, watches the relationships and does an assessment. Then she works with the parents to create a different parental attitude and to shape different patterns of behavior. For those of us who were raised by good parents, what she says looks like common sense but for the parents who are being ruled by little demons and devils, the new attitude and the new strategies come as very good news. The parents change their behavior and sure enough, the little brats begin to act like decent children and pleasant company.

The Bible would call parents’ change of attitude and their change of behavior “repentance.” They did a U-Turn of the spirit. The parents repented of attitudes and behavior that was destructive of their family and adopted a way that created harmony and joy in the family.

Seen from that point of view, repentance looks like a really good thing. Repentance, rather than being a way of deprivation, becomes the way to joy and hope and salvation.

Slide 3B Healed

The story tells us that they cast out demons and that people were healed.  In a world of germ theory viruses and DNA research, this is hard to translate. But this I do know, attitude matters. The way that you think affects that way that you feel. There is no doubt in my mind about that.

As the disciples introduced people to a new attitude, to a new faith, to new possibilities offered by Jesus Christ, I find it easy to believe that for many, it changed the way that they felt physically and mentally. 

And I will confess to a non-scientific belief. I have seen prayers answered when nobody thought that they could be answered.  Why God does it sometimes and not all of the time, I do not know, but there are times when prayers are answered in mysterious ways.

So, the question is, what do we have to offer the people of Topeka that will attract them to repentance?  How shall we fish for people?

We have a way of life that generates love and hope in a world where loneliness and despair too often prevail.

Slide 4 What We Have to Offer

We offer the constant companionship of God.

·        We offer the wisdom of the Holy Spirit and the strength that comes from knowing that God lives within us and all around us.

·        We offer the forgiveness, the release from guilt and shame, that is given to us in Jesus Christ.

·        We give the hope of heaven rather than the despair of death.

·        We give a reason for living that is grounded in God’s mission in this world.

·        We offer a community of friends, sisters and brothers in Jesus Christ, who seek together to live out the values of Jesus Christ.

·        We offer a morality that generates joy and love and life; a genuine respect for yourself and for those who are around you.

·        We offer a view of the neighbor that generates community rather than isolation.

·        We give the Gospel of Jesus Christ and all of the joy that it produces.

·        In sum, we offer life, the fullness of life, now and forever more.

Repent and believe the Gospel.

Let’s go fishing.