One of my favorite group of memories from my childhood are memories of fishing with my dad. We lived in Brooklyn, and my dad kept an old cabin cruiser at a slip in Sheepshead bay. Most weekends when it was warm enough, you could find him out at the boatyard lovingly working on the boat. Summer weekend were for fishing. Many times it was just the two of us, but once in a while, my mom would decide to go too. One of those sunny days I remember most, consisted of the usual stop at the bait shop if my dad hadn’t cultivated enough worms in the compost patch he had for such a purpose.

My dad loved fishing, and he was quite good at it, and it he took it pretty seriously… so, imagine the following scene….

We are out in the water somewhere. My dad has baited my hook for me, he has done whatever he needed to do for his poles. He asked my mom what she needed. She said she didn’t need anything, and proceeds to take this aluminum foil wrapped package of leftovers from the refrigerator out. This thing had hotdogs, chicken, sausage… you name it, inside. She threw some of it overboard, and the baited her hook with some. Then she happily sat in her fishing chair and waited. My dad told her she was crazy, and that fish wouldn’t be attracted to that mess. But my friends, they were attracted… and my mom caught more fish than my dad that day… by a lot. My poor dad. He worked so hard, and here comes my mother, just haphazardly throwing stuff around, no plan, no nothing, but perhaps sheer luck.

The church is often like that, I find. Many wonderful things happen by sheer dumb luck. When we get to the growing parables later in the year, I will likely say, more than once, that God is a lousy farmer, with all that crazy scattering of seed; turns out, he is also by all likelihood, the same kind of fisherman. God is the same kind of fisherman that my mom was; just throw out what you’ve got, and see what and who comes your way; and on a good day, you will be quite surprised…

I am sure that when the disciples first heard Jesus say to them that they would be fishers of people, they really didn’t know what he was talking about. How could they? They were still discovering who Jesus was and what being his disciple meant. They probably had no idea just how much their lives would change, or how much would be asked of them.

The invitation to follow Jesus and to be fishers of people is given to you and I today. As I said to the vestry before I came to be your priest, bringing people into the church is the community’s responsibility. And, let me be clear that I am not a numbers driven person, but I am, a “bring people to Christ” driven person, as we all should be. Jesus isn’t a secret. What you and I gain from being in a community such as St. Michael’s might very well be a secret. There is a lot of press given to certain kinds of Christianity, the kind that many of us ran from just as soon as we figured out that we could. We are not perfect people either; and like any community, we no doubt have things we don’t agree about; we have those things that if we spoke about them to each other, we would end up yelling and finger pointing, as is common in much of the discourse around us…

HOWEVER… we go about the business of community very differently here. There is not ONE person in this congregation that I spoke to in my first few weeks that didn’t say, “St. Michael’s is my home”. One person said that St. Michael’s was the last church they were going to try… another said, it was the first church they tried when they moved to town… everyone said they found something here that they hadn’t found before… love, acceptance, community, and most importantly, people find Jesus here. They come here to worship and to be fed. No matter our differences as individuals, we come to the altar rail as one community to be fed by and to connect to God in the life of Jesus in the great Thanksgiving. We come and we offer ourselves; everything about us, to God… we are all equal at this table; all equally broken, all equally sinful, all equally beloved, all equally forgiven. We have something here that others are looking for, even if they don’t yet know it. That my friends, is where the fishing comes in. Episcopalians have never been known to just put their faith out there and talk about Jesus, or communion, or any of that. And, that’s ok, at least to a point. I didn’t get to the church directly either; it was a combination of attending AA meetings in an Episcopal church where some of the members attended, and hearing about the church in a college class of all things; then I became curious. I found AA through the witness of others; a witness that was lifegiving and life changing; I am forever grateful to those people early on who shared with me how they found sobriety and God when I was struggling. They weren’t perfect people either; but they freely gave what they had to give, and somehow, it attracted me as is has countless others over the years. It was the same with the church; and when I walked through the doors of that first church, I knew somehow what you know about this place; that I was home…

Why do you follow Jesus? What do you find when you follow him? How has following changed your life? These are the questions we should talk about as a community and also talk about with others… we need to keep inviting others, not because of the numbers that go in the church registry, but because as disciples we are called to be fishermen for the kingdom, even if those we talk to don’t wind up here. What’s important is that they discover who Jesus is. We don’t even need to invite them to church on Sunday… we can invite them to help with ministry; that’s what’s attractive to people, is participating in something that helps change lives; and eventually, Jesus will show up.

So be the kind of fisherman my mom was. Throw what you’ve got out there. Invite people into the ministries you participate in. Invite them to Mardi gras, to the lenten programs… let them get a taste of what it means to be part of a community such as this where love is the operating principle. Each of us is charged with proclaiming the gospel. Each of us has had their lives changed by Jesus. The kingdom of God has come near. May the Holy Spirit give us whatever it is we need to be bearers of the kingdom others.