When I was growing up there were things I learned that became less and less mysterious the older I got. Some things became less mysterious, but they remained threatening. Some things that became more threatening became, at the same time, more interesting. And of course, some things that had seemed very beautiful and mysterious became more familiar and even ordinary.

It seems that in growing up we often lose the ability to sense the wonder of it all, the sense that we are living in an ultimately mysterious and magnificent world – a world that, because it was created by God ought to be inspiring us with awe and reverence every step of the way. And yet, if that were the case, most of us would be locked up and the key would be thrown away.

We can’t walk through life with our mouths hanging wide open all the time and hold down a job, can we? No. It seems that part of our survival instinct is to become immune to many of the realities that would otherwise render us incompetent and useless.

If we continued to find our feet and toes as fascinating as a baby does, we wouldn’t go far in life. If we continued to eat mashed potatoes and gravy and spaghetti with our hands, we’d probably spend most of our lives eating alone. People would no longer think it was cute. They’d think it was downright disgusting.

One of the things that I never understood, as I was growing up, was why more and more people were running – people who weren’t late for something, and who weren’t being chased. I thought it was just plain odd.

When I was a child, I ran a lot, without even thinking about it. Running was part of how things were done, but at some point it became something to do only when you had to – like in gym class, or when I was on the basketball team. Otherwise, I found that I would rather walk or take the car.

Something that remains strange and mysterious to me is the practice of fishing – fishing with the purpose of not taking home the fish. It’s called “catch and release.” Where I come from, you don’t catch fish simply to throw them back into the lake.

To catch a fish and throw it back in the water – well, it just seems cruel. If you aren’t going to take it home and eat it, why in the world would you want to catch it, torture it by poking holes in its lips, and then — throw it back in the water?

Wouldn’t that just create a lake full of fish with low self-esteem and bad attitudes? I mean, you get a bunch of holes in your lip and then you’re sent back to your friends and family — thinking, “How am I going to explain this to them? How am I going to tell them I didn’t get hired? What’s wrong with me? Aren’t I good enough to eat?

Maybe that’s why fish don’t have necks, so they can’t keep looking themselves over in shame and wonder? All your life you grow up thinking, “Some day I’m going to grow up and help feed a hungry family,” and then you get caught and nobody wants you.

They just throw you back into the lake.

Can you imagine, in the ancient world, a bunch of fishermen fixing their nets, taking their boats out into the Sea of Galilee, hauling the nets in, filled with fish, looking over the fish lovingly and with great admiration, and then, throwing them back in the water – going back home, and trying to explain THAT to their wives? I don’t think it would fly, do you?

Even harder to imagine would be a couple of fishermen just walking away from their nets and their father and their hired hands to follow a rabbi who said they were going to learn how to fish for people, or, more accurately, to become fishers of men. Strange? You bet! Mysterious? Absolutely? Compelling? Without a doubt.

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Jesus caught Himself a bunch of fish in today’s gospel and he meant business. He wasn’t into a “catch and release” sort of reality – or world. He spread His net and caught Himself some fishermen. He caught them off guard. The Master Fisherman Himself swept them up into the Kingdom of God, and there was no looking back. This fisherman, this Jesus, meant business.

He wasn’t on vacation.

He was on a mission – a mission to save the world.

When God calls – when Jesus catches you in His net – He’s not offering an invitation for a leisurely vacation. He’s not catching you in His net for the purpose of throwing you back out into the water. No.When Jesus catches you in His net it means that He wants to keep you.

It means that He wants to rescue you from a way of life that means certain death, and He’s come to bring you into a Kingdom that will last forever.

The devil, on the other hand, will play catch & release with you.

The devil will hook you and watch you squirm for air and laughingly toss you back into the darkness of your old world – full of holes – filled with shame & feeling like a loser.

Jesus will sweep you up into His net and give you a new life. He will take your old life, and give you a new one. He will take you from darkness into light. He will take you from the prison of your own sinfulness, and lead you, bit by bit, into freedom – into the freedom that belongs to the children of the Most High.

If the only part of the book of Jonah that we ever read was the part that we heard today, in our first lesson, however, we’d think of Jonah as a great man of God. And, in a sense, He was. Through Him, the Lord accomplished a great mission.

Through His unwilling prophet, the Lord converted a large and ancient city, a city full of the enemies of Jonah and God’s chosen people, the Israelites. But we know from the book of Jonah that Jonah did not want God to save the Ninevites.

He hated them and he hated the fact that God wanted him, Jonah, to deliver a message of repentance, to them. On the one hand, repentance would have been fine because it would mean that the Ninevites would no longer be a threat to the Israelites.

But when the Word of God comes to warn a people of their need to repent, it also means that God is giving them the opportunity to be saved – to experience His forgiveness, His grace and His mercy. That’s the part, I believe, that Jonah couldn’t stand to think about.

We know that Jonah tried to escape God’s net, but it didn’t do him any good. God was and is the Master Fisherman. God used a whale for His bait & He caught the angry little prophet and used him to accomplish His purpose.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, when Jesus goes fishing, He’s not interested in catch and release. If He catches you, He wants you to be a child of God. He wants you to be a disciple, one of His followers. When Jesus goes fishing He intends to expand the Kingdom of God on earth, and He wants you to be one of His  ambassadors — one of His fishermen.

He doesn’t want to create people who fish for people only on weekends. He doesn’t want a Kingdom full of fishermen who play catch and release, and pick and choose, among all those who are dying to hear the Word of God.

Our calling is to cast out the net and bring it in and let God do the sorting, the picking and the choosing. We don’t have the freedom to decide who deserves to hear the Word of God and who doesn’t. We don’t have the leisure to say, “He’s no good. She’s no good. Throw ‘em back in.”

The Bible tells us, in Matthew 22, that those who were considered worthy to attend the wedding banquet for his son turned the King down. We are told, “The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.’”

The time for picking and choosing is over. Now is the time for inviting everyone we find – the good and the bad – the likeable and the unlikable – those who smell good and those who smell bad – republicans and democrats – those are popular and those who are without friends – the rich and the poor – those who are educated and those who are uneducated – the unemployed and the under-employed – everyone – we are called, no, commanded, to invite everyone to the banquet – to throw our nets and haul them all in.

It’s a matter of life and death – eternal life & eternal death.

When God goes fishing He uses bait that might be a whole lot larger than you. He might use a situation that looks like a whale of a problem, a problem that looks like something huge, dark and dangerous – and yet, with God in our lives we have nothing to fear except ourselves, and our own lack of trust.

The world might ask, “What’s in your wallet?” The Lord appears to be asking, “What’s in your whale?” Wherever you are in your own life – wherever you go in life – whatever situations you find yourselves in – the Lord is there – just as He was there for Jonah – right there in the depths of that big old whale.

Brothers & sisters, if you call upon the name of the Lord, and put your trust in him, even a whale of a problem can be used, by God, to deliver you from sin, death, and the power of the devil. And when that has happened, the Lord calls us, just like He called His early disciples to follow Him and to go fishing, with him, for others – to help others “get caught” just as someone helped us “get caught.”

The Reverend Dr. Gary Nicolosi  has written the following reflection. He says, “I recently read an article about some pelicans in California. If you’ve ever seen pelicans in action, you know they’re great fishermen, or fisher-birds, I guess. These pelicans were hanging out near a fleet of fishing boats. The fishermen on the boats would pull into the little harbor, and clean the fish right on the spot, throwing the heads and the rest into the water.

The pelicans picked up on this, and began eating the leftovers without having to go out fishing. And if you’re a pelican, that’s good eating. So for weeks, they just sat by the harbor and waited for the fishing boats to come in.

After a while, the fishermen found out they could sell the fish waste, and so they stopped chucking it into the water. The pelicans were caught unprepared. They continued to sit and wait for the fishing boats to come in and throw free food in the water. And they grew thinner and thinner and seemed able to do nothing about their situation.

Wildlife officials came to check out what was going on, and concluded that the pelicans had forgotten how to fish. So what they did was to bring pelicans in from another area to join the flock and teach the starving birds how to fish again.”

Brothers and sisters, I pray that when we go to worship the Lord, when we go to church, we are not just going as one might go to a restaurant – to be waited on, and to be fed. I pray that when we go, or when we come to church, we are coming to be fed – but also to learn, once again, or for the first time, how to go fishing.

I pray that we will learn to think of the church as both a spiritual restaurant and a bait and tackle shop. We come to be fed, yes, but we also come to load up with some bait and tackle.

If we’ve become like those starving pelicans, let us confess this to the Lord, and make a change in our lives. If we’ve brought ourselves, through our sins, to a place like Jonah did – if we find that we’re sitting in a deep and dark place, a place that stinks like the belly of a whale might stink, then it’s time to confess our sins to the Lord so that He can gather us up into His net and lead us into the kind of life that He intends for us, as His children, to live.

Copyright for this sermon 2006, Curtis Tilleraas. Used by permission.