Hopeful Fishermen, Obedient and BraveRead Time 9 min

Fishermen are naturally hopeful human beings. They cast their nets and lines into an apparent abyss in hopes of bringing to light things presently unseen. And they do so again and again, often despite appearances and after repeated failure.

It makes sense, then, that Jesus would turn to fishermen to begin his great rescue mission. (cf. Matthew 4:18-22) He needed people of hope and of great resilience to “cast out into the deep” (Luke 5:4) with him, despite all odds and with probable and repeated apparent failure.

What he did not need were people like those the prophet Isaiah names just before his great oracle of the hope that will dawn upon Israel in a child who will be called “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, [and] Prince of Peace.” (cf. Isaiah 9:2, 6 ESV) Those people, he says, “will pass through the land, greatly distressed and hungry. And when they are hungry, they will be enraged and will speak contemptuously against their king and their God, and turn their faces upward. And they will look to the earth, but behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish. And they will be thrust into thick darkness.” (Isaiah 8:21-22 ESV)

Distress, hunger (spiritual hunger? inflation-induced hunger?), indignance, contempt for leaders, contempt even for God, and in the end turning up our noses to it all. The struggle is real. And not all limited to obscure regions of ancient Israel. The people back then were driven to consult mediums and wizards and even the dead, causing Isaiah to ask rhetorically, “Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?” (Isaiah 8:19 ESV) Spend just a few months in pastoral ministry in any parish today and you’ll soon know that these too are present-day temptations in the face of the seemingly pervasive gloom served up by the world around us.

Seven hundred years after Isaiah, there was every reason still to be wrapped up in gloom. The king had arrested Jesus’ cousin John the Baptist for preaching Isaian themes in the wilderness – repentance and hope; and the people were hungry, “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matthew 9:36) So Jesus goes to the very region Isaiah had spoken of — “the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali” (Isaiah 9:1; cf. Matthew 4:15 ESV) — to call a handful of hopeful fishermen to put out their nets for a catch.

That region had been singled out by Isaiah because it was where northern Israel would first be degraded by the Assyrian empire — ripped from their homes and forcefully re-populated and replaced by foreign nations, with their foreign gods. The remnant of Israel that remained in the north had struggled ever since — their ten tribes proclaimed “lost.”

But in days to come, anguish would take wing upon the seaward road of this region. (cf. Isaiah 9:1; Matthew 4:15 ESV) Where there had been “distress and darkness, the gloøm of anguish, [and] thick darkness,” (notice the “gloom” surrounded by “darkness” on every side) now, “no gløom for her who was in anguish!” (Isaiah 8:22–9:1 ESV) The sacred author even reverses “gloom’s” middle letter in the Hebrew, perhaps to underline the totality of reversal that would come, down to the last letter, jot and tittle. On that day it will be proclaimed, “The people who walked in darkness” — by Jesus’ day they’d apparently come to “sit” in it — “have seen a great light.” (Isaiah 9:2; cf. Matthew 4:16 ESV) “Upon those dwelling in a land of death-shadow, light has dawned!” (Isaiah 9:3; Matthew 4:16; my translation)

It is striking that when the Prince of Peace who is Light from Light arrives on the seaward road to inaugurate this new dawn, the first two brothers he calls to his mission of hope-filled, light-bearing repentance and healing are from a family that gave their first son a Hebrew name (“Simon,” meaning “he has heard or obeyed”) and their second son a Greek name (“Andrew,” meaning “manly or brave”). Their epithets are surely pertinent to the task ahead of them, but their linguistic mix speaks to the up-ended cultural milieux in which they were raised. They are products of their day, not men of perfect pedigree. And the Lord plans to bring healing through them.

We too are products of our day, surrounded by foreign gods, tempted to lose hope, to gripe about our leaders, to turn up our noses, “harassed and helpless,” but called by name nonetheless to adopt an angler’s heart, to put out into the deep, again and again, as fishers of men, and sons and daughters of light.