3 Epiphany B
January 25, 2015
Jonah 3:1-5, 10 Psalm 62:6-14
There is some irony in putting together the prophet Jonah reading with
the Gospel words of Jesus, "I will make you fish for people."
Jonah was the prophet who experienced the reverse; he was one who was open
game for the big fish. The big fish
swallowed the runaway prophet Jonah. The
big fish is the Leviathan of the Bible and Leviathan became a symbol for the
state in swallowing up the identity of individual people.
When the Gospels record Jesus as telling some fishermen, "Follow me
and I will make you fish for people" the fishing metaphor for evangelism
was born.
Any metaphor has it expressive limitations and negative implication if
one takes a metaphor too literally.
The goal of the local Galilean fishermen was to use their nets to catch
as many fish as they could. And to be
fishermen, they had to know something about the lake where they fished and the
times, seasons and places in the lake where the fish were most likely to
be. They had to remember where they had
good luck in finding schools of fish.
They probably had to keep some of their fishing habits secret because
they had competitors. And they probably
had to get up really early to beat their competitors to the best fishing places
in the lake. Fishing was their
livelihood and so they needed to be successful at fishing to put food on their
tables.
A crassly literal correspondence between commercial fishing and
Christian evangelism is unseemly even though Jesus said to the fishermen,
“Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” If evangelism is about my own ministerial
success more than it is about a concern for the well-being of other people then
evangelism is reduced to but a "commercial" venture. One can see how churches in the past have
used evangelism as a Leviathan for swallowing people and consolidating them
into their empire churches. In the
feudal times, only the lord of the manor had to be converted and all of the
people of his estate were baptized. This fish net approach to mass evangelism
may seem to be preferred by many but does it really honor the individual
personhood of one who is born in the image of God with freedom of choice?
In my earlier life I was exposed to evangelical and missionary
communities where it often people seemed to be in competition to convert souls
to Christ for their particular brand of Christian theology. Christian communities in their efforts to
grow can reduce evangelism to something like a Henry Ford assembly line
technique. America is known for its
famous mass media evangelism. Think of
the string of popular evangelists in the American: George Whitefield, D.L. Moody, Billy Sunday, Aimee
Simple McPherson, Katherine Kuhlmann, Oral Roberts, and the most famous of all,
Billy Graham. The sheer effect of a
large crowd creates the effervescent net to bring hundreds of souls into the
fold of Christ in one great "fishing" occasion. And now we have an entire array of every kind
of tele-evangelist doing this "net" style fishing for converts to
Christ as well as regular financial supporters of their ministries. Sinclair
Lewis, an American novelist wrote about such evangelists in his novel, Elmer
Gantry who was a satirical caricaturization of the commercial motives of some
of these Gospel fishermen and women.
We, in the historical, catholic church tradition have mostly relied upon
the form of evangelism called infant baptism whereby a person is passively
assimilated into the church to begin to undergo the continuous work of growing
to become more Christian. We in the
catholic tradition have been a part of colonial and gunboat evangelism as a
powerful presence in the colonial situations often resulted in "forced
conversions" of indigenous people.
Was the winsomeness of the message at the forefront or was it the
superiority of industrial and technological cultures? Some of mass media preachers have arisen as
a protest against automatic assimilation into the church and so they wanted to
do their Christian fishing with adults only, they in turn have become
expressions of "mob" religious experience.
How do we turn to this kind of metaphorical fishing in the words of
Jesus and not fall into a crass commercialization of the evangelical
enterprise? Do we want people to join us
so we can feel good and more secure about our own way of life? Do we feel like our own faith decision are
authenticated and validated because other people choose a similar path? Does the sheer quantity of people who agree
with me, make my way of life necessarily better or superior to the life styles
of others?
Evangelism can be translated or reduced to something like the classic
book on sales presentation by Dale Carnegie:
How to Win friends and Influence People.
Any body in sales has probably encounter the techniques found in this
classic books which incorporates some very wise tips on human nature and how to
behave with other people if one wants to persuade and make a sale.
So is Christian evangelism the same thing as sales?
Christians evangelism shares some of the human dynamics of the sales
event without being the equivalent of sales.
In sales, one has to convince that another person has the need for the
product that one is trying to sell. One
is presenting oneself as a "user friendly" person who is a reputable
person to recommend a product or service.
In Christianity we don't really have a product; we only have states of
transformation in understanding who we are and why we are here. The truth is that many people are stuck in
states of dysfunction and alienation from good self-image and successful
integration into significant community life.
Christian fishing is learning how to let people know that their lives
can be continuously transformed by understanding good news. When Jesus told his
followers that they would be fishing for people, he was not implying that we
have to use net techniques to trap large groups of people to embrace our
message. He was simply saying: "You
learned the fishing trade; now I want to teach you the people business." To befriend people means that they become
better people after meeting us. How do
people become better after befriending behaviors? Befriending behaviors means we share with
people the good news of our lives; we share with them the very best of our own
experience not as a way for them to copy us but as a way to give them the
occasion for further insights and meanings in their own lives. Befriending behaviors means teaching,
comforting, caring, healing, giving, supporting, and sometimes a tough message
of intervention and interdiction. The
evangelism of words needs the fore-play of the evangelism of the witness of the
deeds of one's life. Our body language
deeds speak louder than our words and when our lives are evidence of love and
care in action, we earn the permission to tell people how we have come to live
in the way that we have. Befriending
does not mean we have to be perfect before we share with other people, in fact,
being honest about our own imperfection and practicing a life of one having
been forgiven is important for people to know and share.
In our
climate today, we need to find a way to share our good news and learn how we
can have a mission as "people" persons here at St. John the Divine. On the personal level, what we seek to do is
find out how each of us can become those who know how to befriend people in a
way that lets them know that we honor the image of God upon their lives. For us to learn how to fish for people, it
involves the exercise of our baptismal gifts.
Our gifts are found as we learn how to transform the energies and
desires of our lives into winsome charisma.
We need to discover our charisma.
Charisma is the ability to exude an energy around our being to create an
atmosphere where people find a comfortable space to be themselves more truly.
Let us embrace the charisma of our lives as we seek to be people
persons, not because we want people to agree with us, but so that we give
people the occasion to encounter the sublime presence of God in Christ. Amen.
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