Luke 5:1- 11
February 8, 2004
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
Not long ago, I read in the paper about the first inflatable church. Made in England, the creator hopes that it will “pump new life into Christianity.” Did you see it on CNN? Once filled with air, it’s 47 feet long by 25 feet wide and 47 feet tall. This inflatable church has gray Gothic arches, an inflatable organ, a pop-up pulpit, an air-filled altar, some attractive stained glass windows and inflatable pews for 60 people. For $35,000, it all fits in on the back of a truck so that it can be hauled to different towns or open fields and set up for impromptu services in just under three hours. They tell worshipers to leave sharp objects at home. I think we have a solution to our space problems!
When we think about an inflatable church, we are reminded of how Jesus launched his ministry beside the lake of Gennesaret. He wasn’t interested in stacking stones to build a Gothic cathedral or laying clinger bricks to erect a Baptist church or nailing planks to assemble a country church. Instead, he looked for ways to take his message into the very heart of where people were living, playing and working, and he spoke from whatever platform he could find.
As it turned out, Jesus saw two boats at the shore of the lake, and so he hopped into Simon’s and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. With people pressing up against him so much, sitting in a boat just off the shore, he was able to teach the crowds. Jesus created a sanctuary on the lake near the beach. Jesus placed a pulpit in a boat so that the word could be heard.
Building to Journey
You know that I love this church and this building. And after the retrofit and renovation project that gutted the church down to its studs, you can’t help but to appreciate this place and respect its beauty. I would not want anything to happen to this sacred place. But sometimes I wonder how stuck we might be in associating church with this building.
We all have a natural human hunger for stability in our lives, so it makes sense that our church has a solid foundation with new steel posts firmly set in concrete pilings and a set of sturdy walls that at the bottom here can be as wide as 3 feet thick, plus an unchanging number in the phone book. I was looking at some old files and did you know that 362-4139 used to be DO2-4139 fifty years ago? Our address of 1 Waverly Place hasn’t changed since 1888 even after the earthquake knocked us off our feet.
Although we are firmly rooted here, our church needs to recover its tradition of going on a fishing trip. From the tent tabernacles in the wilderness found in the Old Testament to the Baptist chapel train cars that settled the western states to colporters who carried tracts over their shoulders and led worship services at gold mines to our joint worship services across the street at Four Seas Restaurant, the church thrives when it is on the move. When you go on a fishing trip, you go where the fish are.
The image of the inflatable church reminds us that God is on the move and tells us not to be sidetracked by our buildings. When Jesus got into one of the boats, he was showing us that it’s not necessary to only be in the synagogue to preach the word of God. It can be at the lake side, in an inflatable gothic church, at Four Seas, and in any other place that God is calling us to teach, preach, and serve.
The Lord is on the move…always on the move. The story of Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation is a journey. But if we only sit here, thinking that ministry as something that happens within these four walls, are we going to find ourselves left behind?
Last Sunday in my “State of the Church” report, I announced the development of a new 9:30 English worship. The people who will become a part of this service will need to see that God is not limited to these four walls. It may be at Four Seas or down in a basement space up the street from here. But wherever God’s people will worship, God will be there—like at the lake of Gennesaret when Jesus was in a boat.
Our mission is to go out, not just to get people to come in. We’re to meet people where they live and work and play. Jesus invites us to “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” We are to go out to unfamiliar waters and trust God that we will attract people to the word of God. Do we have the faith to journey with God into an uncertain future, knowing that God is always ahead of us, and that God is always on the move? Do we have the courage to drop our fishing nets into the deep waters of today’s world?
Going Fishing
For most of us we don’t know how to fish anymore. We get our seafood wrapped in cellophane on a Styrofoam tray. And according to the news this past week, at least we will soon have labels telling us where the seafood came from and whether it was caught in the wild or farmed. If you ask your dinner hosts where the delicious fish came from, they probably would say to you, “Costco!” The extent of our fishing skills is to choose between Safeway and Costco.
So if Jesus were to tell us to “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch,” we might not know what he means. The challenge we have today is that we don’t know how to fish anymore. The underlying problem is that we don’t know how to do our jobs as evangelists and teachers and encouragers and clarifiers and teachers of the Gospel anymore. We have been too used to a brick church building expecting people to come to us. Perhaps we need an inflatable raft from which to fish.
Sometimes we are not sure where the deep waters are and sometimes we are uncertain if there’s anything out there that is even worth catching. One of the points of this Scripture is that Jesus was redefining Peter and the other disciples’ jobs. They are no longer fishermen anymore. Now they are fishers of men and fishers of women.
Peter first complained and told Jesus that they have fished all night long and caught nothing. Peter said, “I fished these waters all night, and I don’t expect to catch anything now! I’ve lived this way all my life and I don’t expect to find anything new in these waters!” Then obeying Jesus’ directions, Peter let down the nets and they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. They hurriedly called out to the other boat that was still moored to the beach to come out to help. After pulling up their nets, both boats were so filled with fish that they were about to sink.
When Peter saw what happened, he was ashamed for his lack of faith and told Jesus that he was unworthy. But Jesus responded to Peter, to James and John, sons of Zebedee, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” With this one fishing lesson, Jesus redefined their jobs. They are to catch people now.
Fishing Lesson
Today I want to give you a fishing lesson. That’s kind of funny coming from someone who buys sushi wrapped in cellophane from Mollie Stones.
I want to teach you the difference between fly-fishing and net fishing. Fly-fishing is very specific. Just the right fly must be selected from hundreds of flies to catch a particular fish. Net fishing, on the other hand, as practiced by Peter, James and John, is a messy business. You don’t know where the school of fish might be; they are always moving about. Along with the desirable fish caught in your net are also catfish and eels which were considered unclean.
Jesus taught his disciples net fishing. If you don’t believe it, look in the pews around you. Some of you are “flying fish,” flashy performers who show God’s glory for all to see. Others are “eels,” who dart through a few times a year, afraid to stay too long. Others are “gentle dolphins,” playful companions. There are “turtles” that are shy and slow, but determined. A few of us are “sharks,” swimming around and scaring the others. The kind of fishing Jesus wants us to do is net fishing because we would catch a wondrous diversity of people.
Most of us want to fly-fish because we want to target a certain kind of people to come to our church. Many congregations are eager to catch young couples with children or young upwardly mobile professionals. When we fly-fish, we may overlook single parents, wise elders, widows, grandparents, those alienated from church.
The Scriptures said that the “crowd of people was pressing in on him to hear the word of God.” Why were so many people pressing up on Jesus? What were they pressing for? When Jesus quoted from Isaiah 61 in the synagogue, he announced that he has come to bring good news to the poor; proclaim release to the captives; recovery of sight to the blind, and let the oppressed go free. The people pressing up on Jesus were “hard-pressed” about life.
The people were struggling for recognition. They were pressing for attention, nurture, understanding, advocacy, and outright relief from the oppressive debilitating conditions in which they lived. These may not be the kinds of people we want for our church. We are not usually out there fishing for these folks. They make more demands on us than they are able to contribute.
But Jesus calls us to do impossible things every day. Jesus’ approach to “people catching” has nothing to say about how to lure or hook “the big fish” to our church. Rather, he calls us to press forward and let ourselves be pressed in meeting people at their point of need. He wants us to let down our nets into the deep waters of life and catch everybody we can get.
Jesus got into the boat. To catch people and to be serious about evangelism, there is no substitute for meeting people where they live and climbing inside their boats. The reason why people came to Jesus was because he went to them. He wasn’t afraid to be close or be seen with anyone.
Fishing from an Inflatable Raft
Now we don’t actually have to worship each week in a big inflatable church to testify that we are on a fishing trip with God. We don’t really need to learn to fish from an inflatable raft to catch people. After all, polyvinyl pews can pop, air-filled arches can sag, and just having space for 60 people is nothing close to what we need.
But there’s a tremendous lesson that we can learn from learning how to fish from an inflatable raft. We can see that the church is on the move with God. We can be a church that refuses to be stuck in one location and sidetracked by worries about whether there’re bricks and mortar.
Our focus should be on an inflatable raft that we can deflate and inflate wherever God is calling us to serve. We can put our inflatable raft into the deep waters of life and begin net fishing to catch people who are hard-pressed and want us to catch them. We can also go out net fishing and catch those people who want to swim away and in the grace and love of God, they too are added to the wondrous diversity of God’s people we see in the pews.
And when it comes right down to it, we can identify with the inflatable rafts; can’t we? We are not just the fishers of people in the raft but we are the inflatable rafts themselves. We come to God often feeling deflated by the frustrations of the week and maybe even punctured by sharp words and destructive, damaging actions.
As we worship God together, we find ourselves being repaired, patched-up and re-inflated, filled once again with the powerful and inspiring wind-breath-Spirit of God. Like the first apostles, we may toil all night by ourselves and catch nothing, but when we open our hearts to Jesus we find that our nets are filled with God’s blessings—so full that our lives are overflowing with blessings to share with others.
So here we go, floating out into the world in our inflated rafts as a sign of God’s love for all people. “Do not be afraid,” Jesus said, “from now on you will be catching people.” The best way to attract people to God is to be flexible in every situation and full of the Spirit and to draw people to see that Jesus loves them by the way you love them.
There is a person in a mental hospital that was just sick and tired of hearing her pastor tell her how much God loves her. She heard him say this again and again, and she didn’t believe it. Finally, she said to the pastor, “Please, stop telling me how much God loves me. First, you love me. Then I’ll know that God loves me.”
The mission of the church is to meet people where they are and show them the irresistible love of God. We are to catch people from different backgrounds and needs and invite them to be a part of the church. And after we have seen what the Lord has done, we too can leave everything that we have depended on and follow Christ Jesus.
Jesus said, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”
Let us pray.
Lord God, we pray that you would teach us how to catch people for Christ by being opened and flexible with our understanding of what the church is today. Show us how to love all of your children with the same love and grace that we have received in Christ, our Savior and Redeemer. In the name of Jesus who preached from a boat, we pray. Amen.