There’s more to fishing than catching fish.

Mark 1.14-20 | Angela Tilby - Holy Communion, Sunday 7 November 2021, 8am.

‘There is more to fishing than catching fish. To catch a creature as fickle as a trout, you must think like a trout – you must notice things: the movement of the water and its patterns, the rocks, the seaweed, the quiver of tiny scattering fish that betrays the bigger predator beneath them’.

That was written about an Australian writer and fishermen, Robert Hughes, who died in 2014.

Jesus’s first disciples fished not with a line but with nets, and not for single trout but for dozens at a time from the rich supply of freshwater fish from the Sea of Galilee. The way Mark tells the story makes Jesus’s call dramatic and spontaneous. But it is difficult not to believe that Jesus must have watched Simon and Andrew and James and John going about their business, for days weeks, months even: noticing things about them: ‘To catch a creature as fickle as a trout you must think like a trout’. And perhaps for Jesus, to catch these men, he had to watch and wait before landing them. Because Jesus was not just trying to create a fan base, a gang, of the ‘hooked.’ He was trying to bring in something new: a way of thinking and speaking and challenging and loving which would, in time, turn the world upside down. ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men…’

Was Jesus being highly selective, quietly matching Simon and Andrew and James and John, to a set of specifications, a particular blend of character, competence and chemistry that he needed for his mission? I don’t think so. Perhaps Jesus didn’t mind very much who they were, just as when you go fishing you don’t mind very much which trout jerks the end of your line as long as one does. It is all in the timing. So you are watching for the moment, for the tug on the line, the opportunity to speak those life-changing words, ‘Follow me’.

We are told that they did follow. They left their nets and followed him. They left their family businesses to become apprentices in a whole new trade, fishing for salvation.

Why did they go? There was nothing apparently missing from their lives. They would have had their fair share of satisfaction, stress, exhaustion. But when Jesus calls them to follow they simply did. Straightway. Immediately.

I sometimes think we are rather unimaginative about what brings satisfaction to human beings. We live much of our lives on tramlines: school, exams, qualifications, job, finding a partner, mortgage, (if we’re lucky), children, more responsibility, retirement, illness, death. Satisfaction for most of us comes first from our relationships and then having and acquiring things that entitle us to respect and self respect. But you can fall off the spiral of personal progress at any time, into sickness, hardship, bereavement. The last two years have challenged us. The spiral is not as secure as we thought. And because our souls are restless

and often dissatisfied we have become very touchy, very sensitive. Every criticism is an insult, every insult requires groveling apologies.

Even the Church seems caught up in protecting itself, its reputation, its public voice. And while it does speaks out, sometimes effectively, about injustice and poverty and climate change it doesn’t so often encourage us down here on the ground simply to become better people: more loving, more resilient, more truthful.

The Gospel does not call us to self-love or self-satisfaction. Fulfillment is never guaranteed. Think of Jesus at the lakeside, watching, waiting, noticing the men on the boat, the rocks and the seaweed, the quiver of the tiny fish and the great predator underneath them.

Christ calls us from the lakeside knowing that we are more than the sum of our achievements and much than the trail of our failures. Perhaps you are too busy to hear him. Or just too happy and content with what you’ve got. Or too sad or too angry to respond. Or perhaps you do want to respond, but are not sure how to. You sense that he has been around you for years, decades, even before birth.

I often watch the fishermen here who come to Hotwalls and sit for hours with a rod and a line, quite content in a state which is somewhere between dreaming and alertness. Fishing is like what the traditions of faith call contemplation. An attentiveness that is expansive and timeless. That is the loving gaze in which Christ holds us.

Our life is our mission field, our mission field is that lake, that place of mystery and depth and potential. If Christ calls you he calls you to be like him, a stranger in this world on the shore of Galilee, waiting and watching, loving and hoping, secure in the immensity of God’s riches and in the dignity of your own person, called to be a fisher of men, with your nets or your rod and line, or just your bucket and shrimp net, all angled by God to reveal the kingdom. There is a place for overt evangelism. But in a loud and noisy world and a sometimes shouty church this is about becoming the kind of person whose very life proclaims the kingdom of God. There is no other call so urgent, and yet the one who calls is infinitely patient, waiting and watching for you. Here in the Eucharist, here in the broken bread, held out, just for you, and you and you and you. ‘The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe in the Gospel’. There is more to fishing than catching fish.