Sermon for Year C, Easter 3: Fishing Lessons

Preached on Sunday, March 18, 2010 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found here.

My grandparents were known to me as Mama Collins, Daddy Collins, Mama Robbins… are you sensing the pattern here? By rights, my maternal grandfather should have been known to me as Daddy Robbins. But that was too much of a mouthful for my cousin Lynne. She could only manage, “Dada.” So, by the time I came along, my grandfather Robbins was known by all the family as Dada.

Dada was a carpenter. He could and did fix anything, and he had a plethora of tools in the utility shed that clung to the backside of my grandparent’s house. Second only to the number of woodworking tools in that little shed was the plenitude of fishing equipment.

Dada was an inveterate fisherman. He had rods and reels. He had lots of lures, and an endless supply of those round, red and white fishing floats or bobbers. He had little drawers full of different size hooks that we were forbidden to mess around with lest we hook our little fingers and wind up in need of a tetanus shot.

Dada had a flat bottomed fishing boat perfectly suited to the still waters of the lakes and creeks of the upper Mississippi Delta. Dada’s boat and trailer was parked in the backyard under a shade tree, always at the ready to be hitched to the back of his red Rambler station wagon for a trip to the lake.

My grandfather wasn’t just a fisherman. Like Jesus in our gospel reading today, he was quite the fish cook as well. Of course, where I come from when fish is cooked, it is fried – always. And Dada had a special attachment for the gas grill in the backyard just for frying fish. It had a single blue gas eye and a heavy, deep black kettle in which he dropped the battered and breaded chucks of catfish and crappie that he caught.

I don’t think Dada had any real fishing buddies. I don’t recall any. He usually liked to set off for the lake early in the morning all on his own. He’d return late in long, bright summer afternoons as the sun began to sink into the west – again, all on his own, with a squeaky Styrofoam cooler full of fish to clean and prepare for dinner. I think he liked the solitude of his fishing trips. He liked the quietness of a day on the lake with nothing to interrupt his solitary thoughts.

From time to time my grandmother would decide that it was selfish of him to take off all on his own for the day, and she would insist that Dada take my brother and me fishing with him. She may have just wanted to get us out of her hair for the day, or she may have sincerely wanted to foster closeness between grandfather and grandsons.

My brother was all for the idea; he loved to fish. He loved digging the worms we used for bait and storing them in a disused coffee can provided by my grandmother for just this task. He loved wrestling the perishing worms onto the hook with all the murderous sadism that little boys often harbor. He loved landing the scaly, sharp-finned crappie in the boat and wrestling the wriggly fish off their hooks. He’d then toss them into the cooler where he would watch them flip and flop until they flipped and flopped no more.

I, on the other hand, hated fishing. The whole undertaking seemed like a lot of tedious, and unseemly, work for scant little return. There was the long trip to the lake, then the long day in the boat, with the relentless sun beating down on the back of my neck, and beaming up into my eyes from the blinding bottom of the aluminum boat, beating down on the aluminum benches in the boat making them hot and uncomfortable.

There was always a puddle or two of brackish, stinky water swilling around in the bow of the boat that, should your tennis shoes become soaked in it, they would smell of that fishy water for days.

My brother was all concentrated attention on his red and white bobber as he anticipated the next nibble on his baited hook and the next catastrophic death of a fresh water crappie at his hands. But when I was supposed to be watching my bobber, my mind would wander– I’d look around the lake and watch for the rare cloud floating by. In my boredom, I would try to start a diverting conversation, by chattering about the book I was reading or what was going on in school. But my grandfather would always shush me. “Hush!” he’d say, “You’ll scare away the fish!”

I’m not sure if fish are so easy to scare -- as grandfathers are easy to irritate. I was bored and my grandfather was robbed of his peace and solitude. The only person in the boat having a good time was my brother.

No, Dada and I did not share a love of fishing, but we did share something. When my grandmother would holler from the back porch, “You are too going to take those boys fishing with you today!” the same look of disappointment would flash across our faces -- just as my brother would yelp for joy and grab a spoon and the coffee can and run off to dig for worms.

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I imagine that, in our gospel reading today, Simon Peter and the other disciples were disappointed by the prospect of their fishing trip too. After all, they’d left behind the fishing business and their other pursuits for a glorious undertaking, for an exciting and important mission. They were meant to have become fishers of men, but instead, the whole endeavor has come to nothing. Their teacher and leader has been tried and executed by the state, and they’ve had to flee for their lives. They find themselves once again, fishing for a living – and maybe every now and again, looking over their shoulders, wondering if arrest and execution might yet prove to be their lot as well.

And it doesn’t sound like the disciples were very good at fishing. They spend all night at it and catch nothing. And then something strange happens, something unexpected. They’ve given up the effort and are headed in to shore, when someone on the beach offers a bit of fishing advice. They follow these unsought instructions from a seeming stranger and cast their nets on the other side of the boat. And the results are miraculous. More fish than they can imagine, 153 big ones, fill the net to the breaking point. And this miraculous outcome, this unexpected change of fortune, causes them to come to a new understanding; causes them to see God at work in their lives.

There’s a wise adage that says, “If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’re going to get what you’ve always gotten.” In order for change to come into our lives, in order for grace to break in, we have to be willing to do something differently. We have to consider a new direction. We have to be willing to follow instructions. We have to be willing…

And sometimes those instructions can seem ridiculous. Do the fish know the difference between port and starboard? But Simon Peter and the disciples show themselves to be open and willing to try something new – and that makes all the difference.

And when those instructions, that divine guidance, comes to us, if it’s not seemingly ridiculous or asinine, it can be wholly contradictory, a complete reversal of all that we’ve thought and believed heretofore. Consider the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus; setting out to do what he is sure is God’s will. He’s on his way to persecute the Christians at Damascus just as he has done at Jerusalem. When a blinding light and a voice from heaven knocks him down and he finds that he is blinded. All that he knew, and that he had set out to do was now called in to serious question. He is literally stopped in his tracks. And one who was sure that he could clearly see what was God’s will, now can’t see a thing.

And then Ananias, a devout Christian of Damascus, and likely one of those Christians that Paul was going to persecute, has a vision, and in it Jesus tells him to go to the aid of Paul, the same Paul that was so noted for his persecution of the saints, to help him, to restore his sight, for Paul, of all people, has been chosen to be the instrument of God, the evangelist to the Gentiles.

Simon Peter and the disciples, Paul and Ananias all prove to be instruments of new and unexpected impetus within the divine will. They come to new understandings; their eyes are opened to new realities. They come to see in new ways, and they come to know God at work in their lives in ways in which they had not expected.

We often hear that as Christians we are to be strong and steadfast, that we are to be unwavering in our faith, that we should vanquish doubt and not let anything deter us from what we are sure is God’s will for us and for the world.

But Peter, Paul and Ananias show some different Christian virtues. They show themselves to be flexible, to be willing, to be accepting of the unexpected, they prove to be open to new revelations, willing to reconsider what they thought was true, what they believed to be set in stone. And as a result, God uses them to do entirely new things in the world.

Listen for the voice of God calling to you. It may come to you on the beach at dawn, asking you to try again, but this time, in a new way. It may come to you as you travel, on the subway or on the crosstown bus, telling you to stop what you’re doing and head in a new direction. It may come to you in a vision unbidden, one in which you see yourself coming to the aid of one you thought was your enemy. It may be shouted from the back porch, telling you that yes, you are too going to take those boys fishing today; yes, you are too going to make time for those you love, you are too going to move deeply into communion with all God’s children. It may even offer some fishing advice. +Amen.

© The Rev. Mark R. Collins