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I Will Make You Fishers (of/for/on behalf of) People

Steve Beckham 4 Comments

Mark 1:14-20

Note: Yesterday I read a terrific reflection by Diana Butler Bass based on this same text. In that reflection she took the phrase that has typically been translated as “the kingdom of God” and retranslated it as “the commonwealth of God’s mercy and justice.”  This is, I think, by far the best shorthand understanding of what Jesus was describing and what the original Greek text was trying to convey with the phrase basilea tou theou.  So I appropriated it. After reading DBB’s reflection I went back into my own manuscript to change the kingdom of God to the commonwealth of God’s mercy and justice.  

(singing) “I will make you fishers of men, fishers of men, fishers of men.  I will make you fishers of men if you fol-low me.” 

How many of you learned that song in Sunday School oh so many years ago?  It was a good way to remember the story of Jesus calling Peter and Andrew and James and John who just dropped everything and went with Jesus when he invited them to follow him.  Our Sunday School teacher or pastor always made of point of reminding us that we are invited to follow Jesus, too.  

That song and the gospel text come with a promise—the promise that Jesus will make us “fishers of men” if we follow him.  Well, it used to say “men.”  Which was never really accurate since the Greek word in the Mark is anthropon, which really means humans.  Or humanity.  Basically all people in general.  But singing “I will make you fishers of all people in general” takes some of the bounce out of the music.

This happy little song reminded us in a very simple way that Jesus wants us to be “fishing” for people which we usually understood as a kind of recruitment evangelism.  The unstated understanding is that there is supposed to be something really magnetic—one might even say charismatic— about us as persons filled with the Spirit, as people who love Jesus, as people who find joy and comfort and strength and wholeness in our communities of faith— that we are imbued with a grace so graceful that it makes others want to jump into our boat and join the party.  In other words, Jesus was calling us to be the bait that would bring others into the nets of the church, or get them to jump into the boat with us, where they, too, might come to believe in Jesus and be saved.  

But what if we got it wrong?   Or maybe we didn’t get it wrong so much as we misplaced the emphasis.  Or maybe we just failed to fully understand what Jesus was asking of us.

Historically we—and by “we” I mean the Church—we have focused on believing in Jesus and on trying to convince others to believe in Jesus.  And that’s not a bad thing.  Far from it.  But “believe” is a tricky word for us in our time and in our culture.  For us, “believe” is often a head word.  We use it to describe what we think or, sometimes, what we feel.  On Sunday mornings we recite a Creed that restates the important things we believe about God.  But I think that for too much of our history our belief has stayed mostly in our heads.  And in our churches.  We crafted a whole religion around what we believe when what Jesus has been inviting us into is a whole new way of living—a whole new kind of life, a whole new way of being in the world, a whole new way of being human.  And being whole.

Did you notice in the beginning of today’s gospel what Jesus asks people to believe in, what he asks them and us to trust?

“Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’”  (Mark 1:14-15, NRSV)

That’s how the New Revised Standard Version translates it.  But I think Eugene Peterson’s translation in The Message better captures the power and urgency of what Jesus is saying:

Jesus went to Galilee preaching the Message of God: ‘Time’s up! God’s kingdom is here. Change your life and believe the Message.’”

Change your life and believe the message.  

Jesus calls us to believe that God’s realm, God’s commonwealth of justice and mercy, God’s ethics, God’s way of life… is here.  It’s do-able.  It is in reach.  And how do we get there?  We follow him.  Jesus will lead us into that way of living and being.  Our eyes and hearts and minds are opened to the kingdom of God not by believing certain things about Jesus,  but by following him.

There is only one time in all the Gospels where Jesus asks anyone to believe in him—and even that is open to interpretation and translation.

In John 14:1 after Jesus has told his disciples at the last supper “where I’m going you cannot follow” and Peter objects that he will follow him anywhere, Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God.  Believe also in me.”  But that could also be translated as “Trust God and trust me.”  In fact, Eugene Peterson in The Message Bible translates that passage as “Don’t let this throw you.  You trust God, don’t you?  Trust me.”

Now it’s true that Jesus does say a number of positive things in the gospels, particularly in John, about people who believe in him—or trust him—and the narrative of the Gospel of John talks a lot about believing in Jesus.  But when Jesus, himself, is proclaiming the good news, he is not out there announcing that people should believe in him.

One time in all the gospels he says, “Believe in me.”  Twenty-two times he says, “Follow me.”  Twenty-two times.  The fact is, it’s not until his disciples have been following him for quite a while that they begin to really believe in him as the Son of God, as the Messiah.  

We in the church have tried for so long to persuade people to believe in Jesus. Maybe we should focus more on inviting them to follow Jesus—with us, of course—and trust that belief will come in due time.

Follow me.  Live the way I live.  Learn to see the way I see and think the way I think. And love the way I love.

And as we think about what Jesus is saying here about believing and following, it is important to remember that all this comes at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark. This is the gospel written with the Jewish uprising against the Roman Empire clearly in the background.  This is the gospel where Jesus is a nonviolent revolutionary who appropriates the empire’s language to announce his own Good News, his own declaration of victory.  This is where Jesus issues the invitation to enter into a new kind of kingdom. 

When Jesus proclaims that the kingdom of God is in reach, he is not speaking metaphorically.  He is calling for a spiritual transformation, but that is just the beginning because Jesus is also calling for social, political and economic transformation.  The commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy does not operate by the same rules as the empire.

Jesus calls out to these Galilean fishermen and says, “Follow me, and I will make you become (literally) fishers of people.”  The translation here is a little tricky because the preposition is implied.  It could be “I will make you become fishers ofpeople,” or “fishers for people,” or even “fishers on behalf of people.”  But any way you translate it, Jesus is issuing a not-so-subtle invitation to Peter and Andrew and James and John to throw off the yoke of Rome.

In The Galilean Fishing Economy and the Jesus Tradition, K.C. Hanson explained that Simon, Andrew, James and John were only semi-independent.  The Galilean fishing industry was very tightly controlled by the Roman Empire.  Caesar owned every body of water in the empire.  Fishing was state-regulated.  Fishermen had to pay a hefty fee to join a syndicate.  Most of what was caught in the Sea of Galilee was dried and exported at a regulated price and heavily taxed, and it was illegal to catch even one fish outside this system.

So how does it sound now… “Follow me and I will make you Fishers for people.”? Especially when you remember that this is in the context of Jesus proclaiming that the Basilea, the commonwealth of God’s mercy and justice is happening now? 

“I will make you Fishers for People.  For your fellow human beings.  Not just for the empire.  Not just for the elite, the wealthy, the powerful, the 1%. 

And of course Jesus uses a fishing metaphor to issue this commanding invitation because he’s talking to fishermen.  

If he was talking to the builders at Sephora what would he have said?  “Follow me and I will teach you to build for the people.”  What would he say to you?  To the artist, “Follow me and paint the vision of God’s realm.”  To the doctor and the nurse and the therapist, “Follow me and heal broken bodies and souls.”  To the educator, “Follow me and help awaken minds and hearts to the wonders of God’s creation and the beauty of what God is doing in the world.”  

Debie Thomas wrote, “To all of us: ‘Follow me and I will make you…” This is a promise to cultivate us, not to sever us from what we love.  It’s a promise rooted in gentleness and respect—not violence and coercion.  It’s a promise that when we dare to let go, the things we relinquish might be returned to us anew, enlivened in ways we couldn’t have imagined on our own.”

Follow me, said Jesus.

Follow me and I will make you the you that you were meant to be

for the good of all God’s people.

Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us that this is a miracle story.  These Galilean fishermen don’t drop everything and “immediately” follow Jesus because of their extraordinary courage.  They do it because of who it is that calls them.

Jesus makes it possible for them.  Jesus captivates them with his vision and his presence and his words…and the Holy Spirit.  In the same way Jesus can make it possible for us.

Last week we took time to remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, a man who clearly followed Jesus as he led and inspired others to keep reaching for that better reality called the kingdom of God—the commonwealth of God’s mercy and justice.  In a speech at Riverside Church in New York City, exactly one year before he was assassinated, he said this:

Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain . . .Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter — but beautiful — struggle for a new world.

Maybe it’s time to take it again from the top…

The Good News, the Triumphant Announcement of God:

The wait is over.  The moment is ripe… Time’s up!  The Reign, the Realm, the Kingdom of God, the Dominion of God—the commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy—is within reach.

So change your direction, change your mind, change your life…

And trust that good news.

Believe it.

A Song of Defiance

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Luke 1:46-56

Fortunate Son by Credence Clearwater Revival.  Blowin’ in the Wind by Bob Dylan.  The Times They Are a Changin’ also by Bob Dylan.  For What It’s Worth by Buffalo Springfield.  Ohio by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.  Get Up, Stand Up by Bob Marley and the Wailers.  Redemption Song, also by Bob Marley.  What’s Goin’ On by Marvin Gaye.  This Land is Your Land by Woody Guthrie.  Strange Fruit by Billie Holliday.  Brother Can You Spare a Dime? by Yip Harburg and Jay Gorney.   Imagine by John Lennon.  Born In The USA by Bruce Springsteen.  Talkin’ Bout a Revolution by Tracy Chapman.  A Change is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke.  Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell.  9 to 5 by Dolly Parton.  

What do these songs all have in common?  They’re all protest songs.  If you type “Protest Songs” into your search engine, you’ll find every one of these songs on at least one of the many lists that will pop up.  

You might be surprised that some of these are regarded as protest songs.  9 to 5, for instance, has such an energetic, positive-sounding melody that it’s easy to just bop along to the music.  Yet because of the way its lyrics addresses the inequities of the workplace, it has become a kind of worker’s anthem, especially for women.  

If you don’t know the context, Blowin’ in the Wind sounds like just an innocuous 1960s folk song.  “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?” sounds like a universal philosophical question until you remember that when Dylan wrote this song, African-American men were marching in the streets carrying signs that said “I Am A Man” to assert their identity and humanity in a segregated and racist culture that discounted and diminished  them by calling them “boy.”  Suddenly that philosophical question has sharp edges.

Many people have a fondness for This Land is Your Land as an almost patriotic song, a piece of classic Americana.  They forget that Woody Guthrie, who wrote that song, was regarded as a radical leftist and blacklisted by the infamous House Committee on Un-American Activities.  One of the verses of that beloved song that gets overlooked and is almost never actually sung is about poverty and hunger:  In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people/ By the relief office I seen my people/ As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking/ Is this land made for you and me?

Some protest songs try to awaken awareness.  Some name and describe social situations and injustices.  Some are simply songs of lament for the way things are.  Some remind us of the ways we are failing to live up to our ideals.  And some invite us to imagine how things could be better. 

All of these protest songs moved people to one degree or another and made them think.  But none of them hold a candle to the Magnificat by Mary, Mother of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke.

This song that Mary sings in chapter one of Luke is a radical protest song.  In an Advent sermon in 1933, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings.…This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind.”

Archbishop Oscar Romero prayed the words of Mary’s song every day.  He drew inspiration from her song to continue preaching for justice and economic opportunity for the poor of El Salvador.  He heard Mary singing as one of the poor and, in a country where only 14 families controlled all the wealth, he proclaimed, “You have to be poor to really know the power of the good news.”

Poor and oppressed people throughout the world have been uplifted and empowered by Mary’s song, so much so that oppressive governments have banned it at various times.  In India, during the time of British rule, singing of the Magnificat in church was prohibited for fear it would encourage rebellion.  In Guatemala in the 1980s, the Magnificat became a favorite song among the impoverished masses, inspiring them to believe that God was on their side and change was possible, so the Guatemalan government banned any public singing or recitation of Mary’s song.  In Argentina, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo whose children had been disappeared during the Dirty War, placed the words of the Magnificat on posters throughout the capital.  In response, the military junta banned any public display, recitation, or performance of the Magnificat.  They saw how it gave the people courage and reminded them that God was on their side.

The poor and oppressed identify with Mary.  They don’t just see her as “holy Mary, Mother of God,” they see her as one of their own, a peasant girl, in difficult circumstances, but defiant and empowered.   Carolyn Sharp of Yale Divinity put it this way: “Don’t envision Mary as a radiant woman peacefully composing the Magnificat.  Instead, see her as a girl who sings defiantly to her God through her tears, fists clenched against an unknown future.”  Dr. Sharp goes on to say that if we can see her this way, “Mary’s courageous song of praise [becomes] a radical resource for those seeking to honor the holy amid the suffering and conflicts of life.”

God has shown the strength of God’s own arm;

and has scattered the arrogant in the intent of their hearts.

God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;

God has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.

Mary’s song makes it clear that God is initiating a new social order, that the world is about to turn.  Her song announces that Christ’s coming is a world-transforming event.  Her song proclaims that Christ is coming to challenge the structures of sin and death, evil and oppression.  

Her song echoes the song of Isaiah 61 which her son, Jesus, will someday read in the synagogue to initiate his ministry:

The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,

                  because the Holy One has anointed me;

         God has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,

                  to bind up the brokenhearted,

         to proclaim liberty to the captives,

                  and release to the prisoners;

         to proclaim the year of the God’s favor,

                  and the day of vengeance of our God;

                  to comfort all who mourn;

         to provide for those who mourn in Zion—

                  to give them a garland instead of ashes,

         the oil of gladness instead of mourning,

                  the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.

Mary’s song resonates with the songs of God’s liberation throughout the ages.  In Exodus 15, Miriam sings of God’s mighty acts in saving the people from Pharoah’s pursuing army.  In 1 Samuel 2, Hannah prophesies about God turning the tables on behalf of the poor when she sings, “Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry are fat with spoil.”  

Mary’s song rings with the prophetic reminder that God is at work in every age to rebalance the scales.  She reminds us that God will not allow oppression, injustice, negligence and inequity to go on forever.  The reign of God has been announced.  The vision proclaimed and described.  In a world where things have not been operating according to God’s plan, Mary has told us that change is underway and invited us to be on the right side of it.  And just so we know which side that is, she has given us a song.

*Image by Linda Donlin