The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



The Third Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, January 22, 2012, Church of the Epiphany Lebanon

“As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets” (Mk 1:18).

This is a story of call, from the early days of Jesus’ ministry, as he’s beginning his work after his baptism in the Jordan. Jesus is choosing and gathering his disciples and he starts with two pairs of brothers: Andrew and Simon, James and John. He’s forming a community by calling the twelve, a community of disciples which will eventually become the Church. They’re going to share his ministry, learning from him the lessons they need to know in order to follow him. Jesus tells them that if they follow him he will make them “fishers of men” (Mk 1:17). The joke’s on them, because they’re already fishermen. In our Gospel today we see them at work, casting and mending their nets, practicing their craft along the Sea of Galilee.

“Fishing” is metaphor for the apostolic work of those who are chosen and sent (the meaning of apostle, after all). I guess we know what the casting is about in the metaphor: going out on the deep water and letting down the net so that people can be gathered into the community of faith. It’s the “harvest” of faith with an additional element that goes beyond the fields of Jesus’ parable that yield fruit in thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold. Additional in that the sea is dangerous, and venturing out on the water (as we see from Jesus’ own ministry) is intrinsically risky. Not only may your harvest fail, which any farmer knows, but you yourself may fail in the deepest and most profound sense of losing your life. Simon and Andrew and James and John know this because they’re already fishermen; they know what they’re getting into and they accept the call in spite of it all.

Not only do we see them casting nets but also mending them, and this leads us in another direction in terms of the metaphor. The word for “mending” is also used elsewhere in the New Testament to describe the “perfecting” of the Church, its “building up;” as in Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians: “The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…” (Eph. 4:11-12). If the casting of nets is risky and rewarding work, dangerous and challenging, then mending the nets is painstaking and laborious, maybe even tedious and tiresome work, but the necessary prelude to the big catch.

I suppose that most of the time we think of call in terms of the flashy work of casting the nets and hauling them in. Casting may be risky but its closer in time to the big payoff when we haul the nets in and its absolutely clear that the work was worth it. Mending the nets is “spadework,” the backbreaking work that’s not flashy at all because the connection between the detail work of stitching and the huge haul of fish is not obvious at all. Yet the call of the disciples was as much about this difficult work of stitching the Church together, of “building up the Body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12), as it was about casting the nets.

Think about the work of “stitching” that goes on regularly at the Church of the Epiphany. There’s the blessed work of making the coffee on Sunday, and cutting the grass; the preparing of sermons and pastoral care; the kind word of inquiry at coffee hour and the daily work of prayer. Not too flashy, but it’s work that requires each of us. If we drop a stitch some of the fish may not be caught up in the net, and our life as a community will be diminished as a result

Note however that in our Gospel there’s no strict sequence between casting and mending, even though it seems that logically speaking a practical fisherman would make sure the nets were mended before he let them down for the catch. But in the Gospel we see Simon and Andrew working the nets before we see James and John mending them. The two activities are going on at the same time. In other words, the apostles can’t wait to get the Church “right” before they sail into the deep water to let down the nets; they can’t afford to wait to make the Church perfect before the its members move out in mission. If they wait they’ll never get around to fishing for people. The best stitched net will never actually catch anything until you actually get out in the deep water and start casting.

So where does that leave us at the Church of the Epiphany? Well, we’ve got some casting to do, but also some mending. We need to stitch our community of faith together at the same time that we seek to share the Good News of Jesus’ death and resurrection with the community at large. We need to be formed in the Christian faith, built up into Christian maturity, while extending our own faith to others. You know about the plane that folks built while they were flying it? Well that’s what we’re about. Some of the work of being a Christian community, of being Jesus’ disciples, will be risky and some of it will be tiresome and all of it will be demanding, but there’s a huge catch in store. Not only life with Christ for us, life in Christ, but life for others as well.

It’s all coming together in our celebration of confirmation. Welcome to the work of casting and mending! You can start anywhere. There’s plenty to do. The good news is that we’ll be working alongside Christ, and he’ll be making us fishers of men.


- The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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