Fishers of Men
Lectionary Reflection for 3 Epiphany; Gospel Reading from Mark 1:14-20
And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. (Mark 1:17–18, ESV)
Like many of you who are Very Online, I have lately become obsessed with the sea shanty genre. I have The Wellerman all but memorized and have folk groups like The Decemberists and The Longest Johns dominating my playlists. I am eagerly awaiting the next EDM remix or trap treatment of one of these songs because EDM Shanty is a niche genre that simply must exist.
I have also found myself more and more drawn to hymnody that has the lyrical and musical characteristics of work-music. It has been pointed out a couple of times in the various “did you know” discussions of shanties that they actually may trace their origins to African slave work-songs and that there is a remarkable similarity between the sea shanty and Gospel music.
It would be almost too easy to take the above and say that of course that is why I feel drawn to write about what Jesus means when he tells S. Simon Peter and S. Andrew that he will make them “Fishers of men.” However, the reality is that relating the spread of the Gospel to earthly labor is a perennially appropriate topic. The experience of listening to shanties and exploring other work-music helps to put me in the mind of what a vocation of physical labor entails so that I can reflect on the work of the Gospel.
Sharing the Gospel is hard work both because the Gospel is counter-intuitive to our expectations of what salvation and good news should require and because the work of sharing it seems deceptively simple – on the surface, it seems to be as easy as merely proclaiming the good news.
I think this last is a part of why Jesus calls fishermen first and why he is specifically recorded as relating the work of discipleship to their own vocation. He does not, for example, tell Levi the tax collector that he will become a collector of souls. Jewish fishermen in the first century understood two important points – that their life depended on their work, and that the success of their work depended on the provision of God. You could toil all day long and get the nets in the water perfectly, but if the fish were not where your nets were, you would go home empty and unsatisfied.
For Jesus to tell Simon Peter and Andrew that they will become “fishers of men” communicates that they will similarly have to rely on God for the success of the work of discipleship. It strikes me here that I struggle with talking about “work” in any context tangential to the Gospel and therefore salvation – for I do not believe in a works-based righteousness.
And yet, discipleship is work. Jesus says in Matthew that his “yoke is easy” and his “burden is light.” An easy yoke is still a yoke, a light burden is still a burden. Even though it is not the work that is in and of itself salvific, work still occurs if I am to be saved. The work that does save me is done by Christ in his crucifixion; if I am his disciple, I participate in that work by following his commands – one of which is to go and make disciples of all nations.
The fact that so many of Jesus’ parables about the Kingdom have work metaphors (the Sower comes to mind for instance) tells me that the Gospel is vocational. It is a way of life, such that everything else in a Gospel-lived life is dependent on the precepts of the good news, shaped, conformed, and pruned in light of the Gospel. Just as our earthly lives depend in some way on the fruits of our manual labor, our Lives in Christ depend on the work of the Kingdom, and our participation in that work – not that our work or accomplishments save us, but our participation in Christ’s work is itself an act of faith in him which does save us.
Another thing to note from this is that Jesus’ first disciples were not among the religious leaders (he did have some from among the Pharisees, but they often came in secret), or from rhetoricians, or from any scholarly or learned vocation. The first disciples were who we would consider “blue collar” except that in our society even “blue collar” workers are literate and would be considerably better educated than Simon and Andrew.
What does all of this mean for us today? I think the chief message for us to remember today is that the Gospel is vocational. It is not enough to say “I believe.” “I believe” is a start, it is a down-payment on our part of the covenant. Gospel-living requires that there be something different about how we live our life from how we would live it if we were not believers. For work to have been done, there has to be a state where the lack of work results in consequence – it cannot be a neutral position.
Apart from right worship of God, the chief work that the Gospel calls us to participate over and over again in this life is mercy. The work of mercy ranges from something as simple as giving material goods to those in need to persistently ministering to those who show time and again that they cannot bear to listen to you. Mercy is benevolence to those who are undeserving either because of offense or because there is no rational benefit to the one being merciful. This work exemplifies what it is that we seek to live into when we say “I believe.” We are merciful because God has been merciful to us.
Regarding Gospel-living as a vocation and seeking to participate in the works of mercy are things that do not require great learning or even someone being set apart in the religious life. Regardless of our station or our education, all who claim Christ are invited into a mode of living patterned after his earthly life – one which was even less esteemed by the world than those of his disciples.
My prayer for this week is that we would all seek to live our Christian lives from the perspective of vocation rather than as mere detail. May we do the work that Our Lord has given us to do; not for our boasting, but for the glory of his kingdom. Amen.