"Going Fishing" 

7/16/00 - The Rev. Bruce Silver

SERMON

This morning's story has to do with fishing. And I can relate. Growing up, every year for our vacation, we went to the same spot. We would go up to Mammoth Mountain in the Sierras, right after school got out. We would take the boat and it would go on the top of the truck, and hook the trailer up. We would go up and we would stay at Lake Mary- one of the smaller lakes up there, and we would camp. A typical day went something like this: We would get up in the morning and we would go fishing. We would come back and we would have breakfast. We'd eat and then we would go out and we would fish. We'd fish some more until about lunchtime, when we would come in and eat lunch. We might take a break, take a nap, play a little game, and then we would, of course, go out and go fishing again. Till dinner time, when we ate dinner and then came back. After dinner, we would go out and we would fish till it was dark. Then when it was dark, we would come in and do our campfire. We would repeat this process day after day after day.

One year when we were up there, we were out in the boat, and my Dad had just given the "No Overhead Casting" lecture. Now I'm the oldest of three boys, so of course it wasn't me who broke this rule, but my baby brother. The words had no sooner finished of "No Overhead Casting" and why this was a bad idea when my baby brother Brad took his rod and wheeled back like this and cast, and my Dad's hat went with it. Just as an illustration of why there was "No Overhead Casting" and we had to hear the lecture all over again. He told Brad we'd be swimming in, next time he cast that way.

Another year, a couple of years later -- and I hope that I don't become this kind of father that doesn't realize that my children are big enough to win in athletic competitions - when my Dad said (I think in an effort to get back at my brother): "Let's have a race around Lake Mary; a running race. Loser has to clean fish for the whole week." Now we've got five people catching fish every day, which makes for a few fish that need to get cleaned. And we're also at 8900 feet. Well, my Dad had been jogging. He figured he was in good shape. My brother was about a freshman or sophomore in high school, was playing water polo and swimming for about four or five hours a day. But Dad figured, since he was running, he could beat him. Needless to say, Dad cleaned an awful lot of fish that week and Brad didn't.

So I can imagine why these disciples loved to go fishing. Not that they're any good at it, mind you. Think about all of the times that you've read about the disciples in the Bible - and they're fishing. They're never catching anything. And we'll get to that in a little bit.

But this story that we read today of these fishermen out on the water is interesting. And it's interesting that it came because if you still have your Bible open, this is what it says at the end of Chapter 20. It says:

"Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name."

That seems like a good place to end the book!

"Okay, we wrote this whole book. Here's everything. Great stories - and the reason is so that you'll believe Jesus is the Messiah. You believe that and you get eternal life."

End of the chapter, end of the book, done!

"Oh, but by the way, I've got one more great story I've got to share with you."

In fact, the Bible says that there is so much Jesus did that we didn't write down that there's not enough paper, there are not enough books in the world to contain it all. So I think they had to just give you the most important things that happened. So what I would like to share with you now is my interpretation of what may have happened on the shore that day.

Jesus had shown up a couple of times and we had just previously in Chapter 20 heard about Thomas getting to see Jesus and Jesus offering to let him put his hands in the holes and in the holes in his side. The disciples had been sitting around for a while and they said,

"Look, Jesus has shown up to other people, but he hasn't shown up to us for a while. What are we going to do?"

"I don't know, what do you want to do?"

"Well, let's go fishing!"

Who suggested that? You guys can't fish, you know. Get a clue!

"Well, let's go fishing!"

So then they go fishing at nighttime. Now, in my mind, as I read these Bible stories, I wonder- is there just like the boat rental place? An all night, all-you-can-rent boat place? So they go and they get in the boat.

But Peter says: "I'm going fishing, I don't care what you guys do." Being Peter, we get this picture of this big guy. Not many people really want to argue with Peter and nobody can really come up with a better idea, so "Okay, let's go rent a boat." Or maybe they borrow one and they go out.

So they're out there fishing all night and they're getting hot. I think Peter's big enough that he sort of is a bossy guy too. So he probably didn't do a whole lot of rowing anyway. You know I've got a little brother, so I know how that works. I've talked to Joshua about this. He thinks it's so funny that we didn't have remote controls in my day. My little brother was my remote control: "It's a commercial, so get up and change the channel." You know, he had to. Now he's bigger than me and we have a remote control and I'm very happy. But I've got a feeling the littlest guy was stuck rowing. They were only about 100 yards out anyway.

So they went out and they're fishing, all night long. And they're fishing, all night long. And they're not catching, all night long. And they get done and the sun starts to come up. As the sun starts to come up, they see a guy on the beach. Now, John makes a big deal about light and darkness-and they have spent all night in this darkness trying to catch fish. When the light comes, there's the Lord. My version says he calls out.

He says: "Children, have you no fish, you have no fish have you?"

What are these guys thinking? 'We fished all night.' 

"No, we don't have any fish, thank you very much."

Until I started reading the commentaries, I thought this is sort of common, that somebody would stand on the shore and be able to point out where there was a spot that would be a good spot to throw the net over. So this stranger, after calling all these grown men "children", says: "Why don't you throw it to the other side of the boat?" At which point, Peter says: "John, throw it to the other side of the boat." So he takes the net and they throw it over and now it catches all these fish.

And John - I guess he's the smart one because he's young and he's got to use his head to get his way out of things - leans over, looks and says: "Hey! That's the Lord!" At which point Peter acts just like we expect Peter to act. He had stripped down to his underpants to work, because he didn't want to get his clothes all fishy and sweaty. Now he throws his clothes back on and he jumps out of the boat. 

I think, and I was glad that the commentators thought a little bit of this too, that this is very similar to the story of Peter walking on the water with Jesus. I think that maybe after Peter walked around the boat a couple of times in that first story, Peter figures, "I did this once, I got this down! The Lord is here - I can walk on water. I know how to do this." So Peter steps over, figuring that he's just going to walk right in. Peter steps over - and sinks right down. Then he figures, "Well, I'm wet; I might as well just go in now." He swims in and leaves poor little John or whomever it is in the back of the boat to row in. He is so excited to see the Lord that he's got to get there first. He gets there and there's a fire started and they finally get the boat in with all the fish. Peter feels sort of bad, so he goes back and he picks up the fish and he brings them in.

They said there's 153 fish caught. I don't know about you but I wonder, why 153? That's sort of a weird number. Some commentator said that's because there were 153 languages spoken at that time. Each fish represents another language so the whole world is represented. I'm going: "You guys have way too much time on your hands! Who is doing this research?" All you've got to say is "A lot of fish were caught. It's a miracle! It's great" Let's leave it at that. For some reason, they like 153. And whose job is it to count the fish? "One fish, two fish . . . red fish, blue fish . . . " What did they do? How did they get that number? I don't know. But all these fish are there. Peter goes, gets them all and they put it on the fire.

Jesus breaks the bread. They have fish. Haven't we heard Jesus feed five thousand people? Now he's only got seven, so it's a little bit easier and they've got all these fish. But the disciples have got to be reminded of this miracle again. In a little bit, they're going to spend some time, Peter and Jesus alone. And they're going to have a little talk about some goof ups he's had in the past and what he can do to change that.

But I think from this story there are three very important lessons that can be learned. The first lesson is that the disciples like to do just what they always did and feel most comfortable with. I went "Wow, the disciples are not too different from me." And my guess is they're not too different from some of you also. We get used to things and we do it and we're not really sure why we do it, but we continue to do it.

We have a saying in our house- Josh is great for teaching me all sorts of lessons. One day he said,

"Dad, why do you say that?"

"I don't know."

And, this is the saying: "Where's Mom?" That's what he says; I don't say that, although sometimes I do. He'll say: "Where's Mom?" and my standard response is: "She ran away with a soldier."

You know, I have become my Dad. That's really scary. You say, "I'm not going to become my parent." And you do.

Joshua says, "Why do you say that?"
I say: "My Dad used to say that."
"Well, why did Grandpa say that?"
"I don't know. I guess his Dad used to say that."

The best I can come up with was probably sometime after World War I or World War II, that people actually ran away with a soldier and that saying just got perpetuated. Some day, Joshua will say it to his kids when they say: "Where's Mom?" He'll say, "I don't know, she must have ran away with a soldier." And it keeps going on and on.

In fact, the military was doing an efficiency study and they were trying to figure out why it was taking so long to shoot mortar rounds or cannon rounds. What was happening was they would get ready and the soldiers would turn around and they would stop and then they would turn back around and they would set it off. They could not figure out where this had come from. Till they found an old picture and realized this had been a cavalry unit. What had happened was they saw a picture and there was the guy holding a horse. They no longer had horses, but these guys still turned around and did it because they knew that you get ready, you turn around and then you can light it. These guys were still doing it.

We do that in our lives, don't we? I don't know why I do it- I just do it. Or you know those words that we sometimes hate to hear in church- why do we do it? We've always done it that way. How can we do it differently?

I think the next lesson is, besides these disciples getting sort of stuck in a rut, we can learn that we can only really catch when Jesus is part of it. Every time we see the disciples catching fish, they're not catching apart from Jesus. I think we have a tendency sometimes to believe that we've got it figured out. I know I do. "Okay God, I'll take it from here." I did that. Okay, next time.

We were doing an exercise with the Junior Highers about communication and about being God's family and working together. This exercise had us making cakes in small groups. Except for, nobody could talk to each other. Different students had different ingredients- somebody had a carton of eggs, somebody had the oil, and somebody had the cake mix, and one student had the instructions. This went fairly well. For some reason, we put Ron in charge of the instructions for his small group, and the two teaspoons of oil somehow got translated into two cups. So you can imagine this cake - you could wring the cake out. No prune juice for that group. We didn't make them all taste the cake.

But we get like that don't we? We get to "I just know how to do it!" We just do it on our own. "That's okay, God - I'll take it from there." But we don't really produce the results. Until we see the full instructions, and we get it right and we work together. That's the part of allowing Jesus into that. When he says: "Throw that net over there!" and you go, "I've been fishing all night, but whatever you say; you've got a better view. We'll do it that way and we'll see what happens." And the results are miraculous.

I think the third lesson that we can learn is sometimes when we see Jesus, we've just got to jump. You've got to do like Peter. He hiked up his robe and jumped on over. Even though he may have thought he could walk, he could hardly wait to get into the presence of the Lord. He couldn't wait for the guys anymore. He thought he could go the fastest route. He's just going to walk across that water and get in or swim in or whatever it took. He was going to get there.

Now I understand this a little bit. Now I wouldn't repeat this in the same circumstances, though I might try this again. A couple of years ago, we were at a church camp down on South Padre Island, Texas. We were there with a bunch of other churches. Every night at the end of the talks, our small group would go down to the Dairy Queen and get our blizzards. It is so hot and humid there in that area in South Padre Island. You don't need a shower - just step outside for five minutes. The windows had water on them all day and it was sunny. I just went: "Wow, this is way too humid. Got to have our ice cream." So we would go down and we would debrief for the day. We would sit and we would talk about all that we had heard. How does this make sense? Does it make sense? Can we apply this to our lives?

Right next door to Dairy Queen was the highest bungee jumping place in all of Texas. Which I guess says something for Texas, if that's the highest place in all of Texas. On one of the last nights, one of my students said: "Bruce, can I bungee jump?" I said: "Not if I have to sign anything, you can't. Let's check with your Mom." So we checked. Mom said; "Okay." They had a 75 foot crane that you could go off of. You sort of walk up these steps the 75 feet. They also had a 150 foot basket thing that took you up to the top.

I sat there and I said: "You know, if I don't do this, I'm going to regret it." I have wanted to bungee jump for a really long time. I didn't call home. I should have. Christi wanted a videotape after we got back. So I got in line. I was going to do it. Like Peter, if you're going to do something, you've got to do it right. So I got the shirt, I got the videotape package. I went out there and I was going to go from my ankles, cause if you bungee jump, you've really got to go by your ankles. I looked at the bags and it was okay to do a freefall from 150 feet. I figured, well, I'm hopefully not going to freefall; it's going to catch me before I get there. But even if I hit the bag that'll be okay. I watch A&E and those stunt man shows. I think I can hit it right. I watched them very carefully as they hooked me up and tripled-safety-ed me. And having rock-climbed before a bit, I paid extra attention and felt pretty good about it.

My turn came and I sort of gotta walk funny as you get over to the basket. They put you in this little basket and they take this little chain. I don't know why they have this chain at all. But they take this little chain and they put it on. You're in a basket not a whole lot bigger than this, with another person, and you go up. It goes really fast. At first I was shocked by how fast it went and then I realized why. You don't want to spend a lot of time going: "We're getting farther from the ground." Because all of a sudden you're 150 feet off the ground and you're looking down and going "Yes, my mind knows it was rated a 150 foot freefall , but that looks really small now." So the guy reaches over and takes the chain off the front. He says: "Okay, now step out on the platform." The platform is this little piece of metal that they've welded on. I 'm looking at the welds real carefully. It's got two feet painted on it. He says: "Now stand out on that." Yea, okay. I can see on the video there's these little bars on the side. I'm stepping out and I'm trying to hold on - I don't want to fall off before I'm ready. Right then I'm thinking, "Why was I doing this?"

So I get out and I'm holding on. He says: "I'm going to count backwards and when I get to zero, you jump." Okay. He says: "Three, two, one, jump!" With every ounce of stupidity that I had, I had to push myself off. I knew had I not gone when he got to zero, probably two things would have happened. The first was I definitely was going to need to change my clothes when I got down and the second was I probably wasn't going to come down because I was just too scared of the whole thing. So when he got to zero, I pushed off with every ounce that I had. You're body is just saying: "Don't do this!" My mind knows logically it's all hooked up right, there's an airbag. But your body just says: "No, you are not supposed to do this to your body." So as you're freefalling down, it's coming up and you're bouncing. Everything worked out just fine. I can remember bouncing, just thinking: "This is the greatest thing in the world." Not that I was quite ready to go do it again just right after I got done. But I felt like I could run a marathon. I had all the adrenalin - your body just lets it loose cause it goes, "I'm going to die. I don't care whether you have this cord. You're going to die!" I hate to run - but I could run a marathon. This is wonderful.

You know when we see Jesus, being in his presence, I got a feeling, gives us that feeling- that exhilaration that I had, post jump. That we need to sometimes, when we see him, just go: "There's the Lord, I'm going for it!", and go. That somehow things work out in the midst of that. 

So my challenge for you all, and to me, is to think in your lives and in the church's life, what is it that we do or that we've done so much that we think we no longer need Jesus to be a part of it. These fishermen thought they knew how to fish. Only by having Jesus as part of that were they able to catch. To you and to me - are we willing to jump when we see Jesus? I really look forward to the years ahead as we all go fishing with Jesus together.
 

amen