Net Worth, Part 1
Jesus, all through what we call the 13th chapter of Matthew, gives his followers a whole series of parables, such as “the sower who goes out to sow” and “the woman who puts the yeast into the flour.” All of these parables lay out in essence an important expression of what God is doing.
In each of these, God is the actor. And this is also true when we reach the parable in Matthew 13:47-50, the story of fishermen who lay out an enormously large net between boats and then pull the net to shore. It’s sort of an ancient version of “Deadliest Catch.”
And what happens, of course, is that this enormous net is absolutely indiscriminate about what gets in the net. It’s not just any kind of fish, but as the Greek indicates, any kind of sea creature that gets caught up in the net—it all ends up on the shore. And then the fisherman come and separate out what’s in essence, useful, marketable, what they can eat and sell, from what used to be called “trash fish,” useless, not good for much of anything.
In this story, as much as we’re so familiar with the idea of “I will make you fishers of men,” the fisherman is a symbol for God and what he is doing. God is the one throwing the dragnet into the sea, and his inexorable movement in history is moving toward a climax, where in the end, all is made right, every knee bows, every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord. Judgment is final; redemption is secure.
That’s what God is doing. The whole expression of these parables is not so much for us to say, “Well, I need to get busy putting yeast in flour” or “I need to be the one out there sowing seeds,” although you get that in other places in Scripture. No, as Jesus explains to His disciples, the sower of the seed actually is the Son of Man. God is the one who is pulling in his net.
So what’s the message for us? I find at least four:
- God’s Movement: God is drawing people to himself. This is his movement in history. In his own way, all through human events, this is what he is doing.
- Our Identity: If I’m not a fisherman, I must be the one in the net. This is a call to humility. Because what you do not expect is that once all the sea creatures get on the beach, one of the fish gets up on one fin, looks up at the fisherman, and says, “He should be over in the trash fish pile, not with us.” That only happens in cartoons. And it’s just as ridiculous for the fish to speak to the fisherman as it is for us to make final judgments about people’s eternal destination. It’s ridiculous.
- God’s Responsibility: Since we’re the ones in the net, we’re not the ones doing the separation. God is the one who organizes that, and we don’t get to be a part of it. In fact, we’re not equipped to be a part of it.
- Our Role: So does that mean we just sort of flow along with the current? Oh, no. The coda, the end, the sort of P.S. paragraph after this whole story of what God is doing has to do with our role in it.
At this point, the narrative switches. Jesus says, “Have you understood all of this?” And his disciples responded, “Yeah,” whether they did nor not. And then Jesus said, “therefore,” in essence, based on the flow of God in this story, “You are the fish in the net, you are the fruit of, in essence, God’s work.”
But here, he switches analogies, and he says, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Matt. 13: 52b-53).
We’ll explore more about our role in next week’s post.
What have you learned through the Parable of the Net? Share this blog and your response on Twitter. Please include my username, @revgregbrewer.
(This post is an adaption of Bishop Brewer’s sermon on August 3, 2017, in the Bishop’s Oratory of the Diocesan Office, Orlando.)
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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