Wednesday

Paying Rent on a Fishing Boat


In Luke, chapter five, Jesus borrows Peter’s boat, pushes out from shore, and teaches the crowd.

But after he was through teaching, an interesting thing happened: it’s as if Jesus performs a miracle in order to pay Pete for the use of his boat: 

4 When He had stopped speaking, He said to Simon, “Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” 5 But Simon answered and said to Him, “Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net.” 6 And when they had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their net was breaking. 7 So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink

There are several lessons that could be, and no doubt have been, taught from this passage, about obedience, about team ministry, about trials in God’s blessings. But the one that stuck out to me today was this:

Jesus is not afraid of making his kids wealthy.

For some years, I lived in a fishing community in the Northwest. I was surprised to learn that some of the local commercial fishing boats would consider the night’s fishing profitable if they caught eight or ten salmon. They could sell the fish for enough to pay the costs of running the boat for the night, the wear and tear on their equipment, and still make themselves a paycheck.

But here, Jesus gives them so many fish that it swamps two commercial fishing boats. Admittedly they built fishing boats differently in the first century than in the twenty-first century, but it’s very clear that this one catch was way more than the optimistic boat-builders had planned for.

A catch like that could provide enough money to live off of for several months, maybe longer, while the fishermen spent their time hanging around Jesus and learning from him. For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that this one catch was six months’ worth of income for their families: for us, that’s a lot of money, maybe tens of thousands of dollars.

There are a couple of interesting observations about the process which Jesus used to pay rent on Pete’s boat:

  • Peter never offered to rent his boat to Jesus. He never offered Jesus use of the boat. Jesus intrudes: he just stepped into the boat of the fisherman who had failed at his work all night, and asked to be pushed out from the shore. Jesus intrudes on Peter’s failure and expects Peter to comply with his request. I don’t think it’s too much to infer that Jesus just might break in on our own lives, even in the “ungodly” place of self-pity, and use us.

  • “Being used by God” sometimes looks like it did for Peter: sitting on your sore backside, wishing you were doing something else, while he’s talking to other people about things you don’t really understand.

  • Then Jesus told (he didn’t ask) Peter to do something foolish: to waste some more time and energy on something that hasn’t worked, to invest some more in the place of Pete’s failure. Worse: Pete is a professional fisherman, and he knows that this is the wrong time to catch fish (that’s why he’d been out all night: night is better fishing time on that lake), and this preacher-guy is trying to tell him how to do his job.

  • Jesus didn’t just write Pete a check or a bag of silver coins for the use of the boat. He badgered Pete into working some more, and then he blessed the work that Pete did. Jesus used the vehicle of Pete’s own hard work (harder than he expected it to be: that was a lot of fish!) to drop twenty thousand bucks (or however much) into Pete’s checking account. While it’s not the only way Jesus does things, it’s a common one (Matthew 17:27)

  • It was when Peter put the net down at Jesus’ direction that the freaky harvest came in. It happened again, almost the same way, after Jesus had raised from the dead, in John 21.

  • But Jesus wasn’t afraid to drop a large chunk of wealth into the hands of an untrained fisherman. He didn’t give Peter a six-week lesson on How to Handle Money, or remind him about the importance of tithing if you expect God to bless you. He just blessed his socks off; and nearly sank his boat.

  • Peter recognized the presence of God in the sudden appearance of slippery, flopping wealth sinking his boat and his partner’s! His response: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” Jesus uses that moment of spiritual openness to give Peter a new job: “From now on you will catch men.”

By way of application, I find myself reflecting on these action points:

  1. It’s probably good to let Jesus intrude on my day-to-day trudging. Maybe even invite him in.

  1. I probably need to re-evaluate what it means to be “used by God,” so that there’s a whole lot less confusion. Sitting on my butt, if he’s asked me to sit, can be frightfully profitable ministry, though it doesn’t look so impressive on the resume or the Facebook page.

  1. I need to guard against resentment: fancy expectations (see #2 above), intrusions on my life (#1 above) and failures.

  1. If I’m asking God for money, perhaps I should ask him to bless my job. That seems to be something he does pretty well.

  1. And I remind myself: when I experience that transition from discouragement to fruitfulness, don’t be surprised if you get a new assignment from Heaven during that season.





Thursday

Fishing Lessons



There’s an old saying:

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.

That’s actually a good saying. Roughly translated, it means, “It’s better to teach people how to overcome their trials than to simply meet their immediate needs.” The Book talks about “equipping the saints for works of ministry,” being the primary work of church leaders, not ministering to the saints’ needs.

(A smart aleck has pointed out that if you only teach him to fish, he may starve to death before he gets good enough at fishing to feed himself: I applaud the desire to not ignore the short-term need, but let’s not get off-track here.)

May I speak bluntly? This is a problem with the way we do church in the western world. We feed people regularly, and we put comparatively little effort into teaching people to feed themselves; we minister to people by teaching them, comforting them, counseling them, involving them in programs, but seldom requiring that they stand under their own strength, or fight their own battles for themselves. By default, we are teaching them to depend on us for their daily fish, for their daily bread.

There are two errors in this: those who keep handing out fish every time they’re together with other believers, and those who keep accepting and eating those fish, every time they’re together. Both are in error.

This has been pointed out about the Sunday Morning congregations: since these are very often led by pastors and teachers, whose gift it is to pastor and to teach, very much of those gatherings are about being pastored and being taught.

(In deference to the aforementioned smart aleck: there are some circumstances where young or wounded believers cannot take care of their own needs or feed themselves. Let’s acknowledge that they exist, and not get off track: those people are few and far between in a healthy community.)

But this is the 21st Century! This is the age of Social Media! Indeed. And since the weakness is in people, when people migrate from the Sunday gathering to the online gathering (including blogs, including Facebook), they bring their weakness with them.

It is just as easy on Facebook as it is in the hard pew on Sunday morning, to sit still and let others feed us day after day, week after week, year after year. “Another fish, please!” It's just as easy to always be the one asking for prayer, always be the one who needs the encouragement of the worship or the sermon or the other people's posts to keep me going until next week.

And frankly, it’s just as easy on Facebook as it is in the pulpit on Sunday morning, to keep feeding the folks around us, to keep digesting the Word, to keep listening to the Spirit, and keep spoon-feeding it to the folks nearby. “Here ya go. Put that fishing pole down, and have another fish!”

Now, neither in the Sunday church, nor on social media, is it safe to assume that everyone who consumes is incapable of feeding themselves. And neither in Sunday church, nor in social media, is it safe to assume that everyone who teaches, everyone who encourages, everyone who runs a program, is only handing out fish, rather than teaching the hungry man to fish.

Part of this malfunction is the tendency for human beings to follow other human beings. As we make disciples, it’s imperative that we teach people to follow Jesus, not to follow ourselves. And of course, it’s critical that we follow Jesus, not human leaders, as we grow.

A brief side note: this was God’s plan all the time. Exodus 19:5 was just before the covenant on Sinai, where God proposed this covenant first: “Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant (stay in relationship with me), then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people.” It’s been his plan from the beginning that we follow his voice, that we honor our covenant relationship with him, NOT that we follow laws and priests, which were only instituted because God’s people rejected this covenant (in Exodus 20:19) and asked for a priesthood.

For me, the real issue is this: how am I doing? How am I doing at feeding myself? How am I doing at being an equipper of saints, rather than a distributor of fish?

I invite you, dear reader, to take a few minutes to do a bit of self evaluation: How are you doing at feeding yourself? How are you doing at making disciples and equipping saints?