Jesus began his public ministry around the Sea of Galilee. It is a large freshwater lake about seven miles wide and 13 miles long, fed by the Jordan River which flows in from the north end of the lake and out to the south. Picture this lake dotted with small villages connected to the fishing industry, the most important sector of the local economy. The major harbors in the first century – Bethsaida, Gadara and Capernaum – are prominently mentioned in the gospel traditions. In 14 C.E., Ceasar Augustus died and Tiberius became the Roman Emperor. To curry favor, Herod Antipas, the local governor of the Galilee region, built a new capital city called – Tiberias! – on the shores of the Sea of Galilee around the year 19. Name branding is a very old tradition!
It is not too far-fetched to imagine that Jesus left his
hometown of Nazareth, like many young men, to work on the construction of this
new city. As an itinerant laborer, Jesus
might have moved around the coast to different construction sites. This was a period of major Roman investment
in the Galilee, increasing urbanization and globalization. New roads, harbors, and fish processing sweat
shops were built as the local fishing industry was being restructured for
export. This local staple was now
primarily salted or made into a fish sauce and shipped to distant markets for the
consumption of urban elites around the empire.
As a result, local fishing families were marginalized and
impoverished by the cost of leases required to operate a fishing boat, increased
taxes on the harvesting and processing of fish, and new tolls levied on
transport to market. It was not an easy time to be a peasant fisherman in
Galilee. Such folks were experiencing severe downward
mobility during a period of increasing economic exploitation and inequality.[1]
Jesus was an eye-witness to this economic and social
dislocation. As he moved around the Galilee
seeking work, Jesus no doubt observed the condition of his people and listened
to their stories. He was also familiar
with the various Jewish resistance movements opposed to Rome, including that of
his cousin, John the Baptist. So, when John is arrested, Jesus finds himself in
the port city of Capernaum. It is not
surprising that Jesus began his community organizing efforts to resist Roman
occupation here. And it is not
surprising that a bunch of peasant fisherman, with nothing to lose and
everything to gain, responded enthusiastically to Jesus’ alternative social
vision.
Jesus’ social vision was rooted in the prophetic tradition
of Israel, which made an important distinction between the normalcy of violence
and exploitation in human kingdoms and the promise of justice and peace in
God’s kingdom. This tradition sought to
recover the liberating power and social egalitarianism of God’s covenant with
Israel, creating out of a former slave people a kingdom of priests to be a
light to the nations in the service of the renewal of God’s creation.
The center of Jesus’ message was simple: “The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good
news.”[2] Jesus was clear that God’s kingdom was not
only future event, but also present experience.
The good news has both a temporal and spatial reference: the time is
fulfilled (now) and the kingdom has come near (here). Two imperatives follow from this
reality: repent and believe.
Repentance or metanoia
literally means to transcend your mind – to move across it – or to move
from your small mind into a larger consciousness or awareness. Jesus is raising people’s consciousness,
inviting them to perceive how God already is present and at work in the
world. Belief here has the connotation
of trust: trust your perception, this
expanded consciousness, this awareness of God’s power and presence. Jesus is organizing a resistance movement, an
alternative culture (the culture of God), a pre-figurative community in which
the justice and peace for which we hope is being lived here and now.
Jesus is saying, “Wake up and trust God’s power at work in
you and among you here and now! Claim
the promise of an alternative culture of forgiveness, mercy, justice, and
peace.” The signs of the culture of God
are enacted in Jesus’ practice of free healing and open table fellowship. In the Jesus movement, anybody can be healed
and everybody gets what they need to eat, without exception. The Jesus movement is God’s nonviolent
revolution. It is energized by the power
of common people rather than brokered by elites, and it is offered by invitation
rather than imposed through force. It is a radical social vision that still
inspires, confounds, and challenges us. It
still evokes conflict and opposition.
From the very beginning, Jesus had no illusions about that. In
the prophetic tradition of Israel, “fishing for people” was not about
recruiting new members. When Jesus tells
his disciples, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people,” he is calling
them to the prophetic work of resisting oppression.[3] It was about putting leaders on the hook for
their corruption and exploitation of the poor.
It was about holding elites accountable to the common good and
responsible for the common wealth.
Jesus knew his Bible.
Jeremiah envisioned God sending for many fisherman in order to catch the
wayward people of Israel, specifically those who have polluted the land with
idolatry.[4] Amos targets the elite classes of Israel,
warning that God will haul them away to judgment like so many fish on a hook:
“The time is surely coming upon you [who oppress the poor and crush the needy]
when they shall take you away with hooks, even the last of you with fishhooks.”[5] Ezekiel denounces Pharaoh in an anti-imperial
diatribe. God vows to yank the “dragon”
of Egypt right out of the Nile River along with all the fish to which it claims
exclusive rights.[6]
You get the picture? For Peter, Andrew, James and John, this
was a call to put down their nets and follow Jesus into conflict with the unjust
powers of this world. In their day, it
was the forces of Roman imperialism and globalization that were driving the
rural poor in a race to the bottom. The
disciples were not sent out two by two to invite people to accept Jesus so they
could save their souls and go to heaven when they die. Jesus sent his disciples out two by two to
organize communities so that God’s will would be done on earth as it is
promised; that each would get the bread they need for today, forgive the burden
of crushing debt, and be delivered from evil.
That was the prayer that Jesus taught and lived. We have forgotten that the Lord’s Prayer sets
forth a radical social vision.[7]
What does this mean for us 21st Century people,
mostly affluent folks living in one of the most expensive cities in the world, the
Tiberias of the Bay Area? How do we
respond to Jesus’ invitation to follow him and fish for people? I suggest four commitments that we might make
together, inspired by another prophetic Jewish leader – Rabbi Sharon Brous – in
her powerful TED Talk entitled, Its time
to reclaim religion.[8]
The first commitment is to be willing to wake-up! This is the heart of Jesus’ call to repent, to
allow our consciousness to be awakened and expanded by encountering reality as
it is. Religion should not be a way to
escape from reality, a palliative to keep us numb, quiescent, and acquiescent. Like
Jesus wandering around the Sea of Galilee, we must recognize how people are
living and listen to their stories. Our
ministry is not inside of these walls.
It is out there! What do we see?
It isn’t always easy to be awake. It can feel overwhelming, tempting us to numb
out or find ways to distract ourselves. As
followers of Jesus, we must be willing to be uncomfortable and make others
uncomfortable, to fish for people even if we find ourselves on the hook. Social change only happens when we are awake
enough to move from apathy to anguish to action.
The second commitment is to have hope. Hope is the capacity to see and trust creative
possibilities that the powers that be would rather we ignore. I saw hope this
fall at a Faith in Action gathering at a black Baptist Church in Indianapolis,
in what has become one of the ten most violent cities in America. They had the police chief on the hook at
this meeting, and they were reeling him into an agreement to promote best
practices for violence reduction and community policing. The Chief joined the congregation singing, "I
need you. You need me. I love you. I need you to survive." This is what religion is about – providing
hope that our dreams for a better world can be realized.
The third commitment is to claim our
power. Rabbi Brous recalls “a
rabbinic tradition that we are to walk around with two slips of paper in our
pockets. One says, ‘I am but dust and ashes.’ It's not all about me. I can't
control everything, and I cannot do this on my own. The other slip of paper
says, ‘For my sake the world was created.’ Which is to say it's true that I
can't do everything, but I can surely do something. I can forgive. I can love.
I can show up. I can protest. I can be a part of this conversation.” We can take responsibility for doing our
part.
The fourth commitment is to community. We can do our part, but we can’t do it
all. We need each other. Jesus created
an alternative community, one that transcended social divisions and ethnic
nationalism to include Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female in a
discipleship of equals. We need to
continually expand our sense of community to include more of God’s people.
This is what it means to repent and
believe the good news, to follow Jesus and fish for people: Wake-up, choose hope, claim your power,
prioritize community. The culture of God
is here and now. We are God’s nonviolent
revolution.
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