Thoughts on fishing for men

So often our idea of fishing for men involves the entrapment of lures. The kind of fishing the disciples were used to was the harvesting of a ripe sea.

Fishing is essentially pulling the fish out of the water and killing them. Fishing for men involves throwing them into water and killing them.

I know my thoughts here have little to do with what the disciples heard from Jesus, but my own concepts need to be challenged sometimes. The fishing for men is like a mixing of metaphors anyway with this week's emphasis on light. I so like the imagery of gazing at the Lord, my light and my salvation, that I'll probably focus on that this week.

Then again, I betray my aversion to my evangelical roots of lures and worms. I like to focus on growth in intimacy… the effect the light has on a soul. But still there is the ripe sea teaming with those who walk in darkness.

Lord I pray that the light in my soul will shine, and I will not keep it bottled in a selfish desire to keep you to myself. Remind me that in spreading the light, my intimacy with you does not decrease, but rather I learn to find you in greater measure.

the Great Light! (Epiphany A3)

"The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light." The Gospel gives the fulfillment of the prophecy. Even the place-the repopulated people near Galilee have seen the great light in Jesus and his ministry.

David declares the Lord is my light! With beauty and longing he says

"One thing I ask of the LORD ,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to seek him in his temple."

Paul is harder to figure out in the lectionary context. After talking about the baptism of the Lord and the aftermath, "he says I am glad that I didn't baptize" and "the Lord didn't call me to baptize." Eugene Peterson put it, the lord "didn't call me to gather a following for myself." That seems true to the meaning Paul was getting at. He apparently saw salvation effected through the gospel, not baptism. The message he preached was not one of logic and rhetoric, not one of sound philosophy, but a ridiculous truth that salvation comes through the torture and death of the savior.

Here is where we come back to the light of Christ. The wisdom of the world makes sense with all its logic and rhetoric, Socratic method and Platonic depth, but the wisdom that is out of this world must be experienced, must be gazed at, must light up our whole being brining to wholeness in its wake.