What kind of associations does the idea of fishing raise for you? \u00a0Leisure time? \u00a0Quiet? \u00a0Peace? \u00a0Stillness? \u00a0(Hopefully not a few beers.)<\/p>\n
That’s not the kind of fishing that Simon and Andrew did. \u00a0(James and John, I’m not so sure about. \u00a0They had a boat. \u00a0And servants. \u00a0But I’m sure they worked hard, too.) \u00a0Simon and Andrew have one or more nets. \u00a0Each one is about 10-15 feet across. \u00a0The edges are weighted down with stones. \u00a0They stand in the water and hurl the nets. \u00a0The stones make it fall quickly, hopefully with fish in it. \u00a0A rope cinches the net, trapping the fish inside. \u00a0A big haul is a mixed blessing: \u00a0lots of fish, but lots of weight to lug back in. \u00a0The process is repeated after the net is emptied. \u00a0It is repeated all night long.<\/p>\n
Mark 1:16-17 not only mentions the casting of the net, but repeats the idea that they were fishers. \u00a0Jesus invites them to become fishers of men. \u00a0There are a lot of symbolic meanings that might be at work here, but I want to look at something else: \u00a0Jesus is calling them to hard labor. \u00a0Whereas almost without exception, students chose their own rabbis\/teachers, Jesus chose them. \u00a0Whereas other students would have studied and learned, sedentary, Jesus is calling them to hard physical labor, at least metaphorically, but also, as it turns out, literally, as they actually follow him from town to town, grabbing raw grain on the way.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When we think about being disciples of Christ, we can’t think about 20th century American recreational fishing. \u00a0We are instead called to stand in the water, hurl the heavy net, tug it back, again, again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What kind of associations does the idea of fishing raise for you? \u00a0Leisure time? \u00a0Quiet? \u00a0Peace? \u00a0Stillness? \u00a0(Hopefully not a few beers.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27205"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27213,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27205\/revisions\/27213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}