Living the Word: from now through Easter (April 20), we follow Jesus’ ministry in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus shows us a loving God in his teachings, healings, and relationships with people pushed to the margins. His commitment to love leads him to Jerusalem and the cross.
My preaching professor prided himself on assigning us scripture texts that had “a stone in the road,” meaning a theological idea that might be hard to handle in our modern context. He advised that we had to figure out whether to climb it, go around it or blast right through it. One of those passages was this week’s reading from Luke 5:1-11 (click here to check it out).
It’s just a normal day on the shores of the lake, when Jesus’ encounters some unsuccessful fishermen, who have fished all night with no luck. His presence magically brings about a ridiculous catch, which he quickly turns into a metaphor, with both a promise and a challenge: from now on you will be fishing for people.
Most modern, progressive-leaning church people I’ve known are pretty uncomfortable with this idea. We don’t want to be seen as “those kinds of Christians,” who are convinced that their way of believing is the best way and see it as their faithful duty to proselytize and win people over.
On Sunday, I want us to look deeply once again into this story to understand its core meaning. As we asked last week, what is the Good News (Greek: evangelion) and how are we called, compelled, required to be, do and share it? What’s our modern equivalent of “fishing for people” and how do we do it most faithfully? And why?
Come Sunday and we’ll ask these questions together.
In faith,
Kent
Photo from knowhisways.com
