“I will make you fishers of men…” (Mark 1:16) more to it than what meets the eye

Mark 1:14-20 NARRATOR: Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying,

JESUS: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

NARRATOR: As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea-- for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them,

JESUS: "Follow me and I will make you fish for people."

NARRATOR: And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

“Fish for people?” A bucolic image, harmless and even humorous. 

The audience for Mark’s Gospel, as for Jesus’ teaching, was steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures. Their associations with images like this were not necessarily the same as ours. They would, most likely, be familiar with Old Testament passages such as the following…

JEREMIAH 16:16-18

 I am now sending for many fishermen, says the Lord, and they shall catch them; and afterwards I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks.

For my eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from my presence, nor is their iniquity concealed from my sight. And I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations.

EZEKIEL 29:2-7

Pharaoh king of Egypt,
the great dragon sprawling
   in the midst of its channels,
saying, ‘My Nile is my own;
   I made it for myself.’

I will put hooks in your jaws,
   and make the fish of your channels stick to your scales.
I will draw you up from your channels,
   with all the fish of your channels
   sticking to your scales.

I will fling you into the wilderness,
   you and all the fish of your channels;
you shall fall in the open field,
   and not be gathered and buried.
To the animals of the earth and to the birds of the air
   I have given you as food.

Habakkuk 1:15-17

You have made people like the fish of the sea,
   like crawling things that have no ruler.
The enemy brings all of them up with a hook;
   he drags them out with his net,
he gathers them in his seine;
   so he rejoices and exults.
Therefore he sacrifices to his net
   and makes offerings to his seine;
for by them his portion is lavish,
   and his food is rich.
Is he then to keep on emptying his net,
   and destroying nations without mercy?

Amos 4:2

The Lord God has sworn by his holiness:
   The time is surely coming upon you,
when they shall take you away with hooks,
   even the last of you with fish-h

Ezekiel 38:1-10

 Thus says the Lord God: I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal; I will turn you round and put hooks into your jaws, and I will lead you out with all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed in full armour, a great company, all of them with shield and buckler, wielding swords.

1.      THESE PASSAGES HAVE TO DO WITH ISRAEL’S failure to fulfill its vocation, and its betrayal of the mission entrusted to it by God. The “fishermen” are divinely appointed instruments of God’s purposes in the world.

2.      2. God’s judgments are very harsh in these passages, using the image of a fishhook to symbolize how God holds people accountable and directs their ways.

3.      Pharaohs and invading kings are both the instruments of God’s will and proud usurpers who will be overthrown eventually themselves. The same goes for the false prophets and rulers of Israel.

4.      These passages also contain expressions of hope and trust in Israel’s future, despite the catastrophic ordeal of the present.

5.      5. WHEN JESUS INVOKED FISHING LANGUAGE, and called members of the low-status fishing community as his first disciples, he was associating his movement with the prophetic tradition of “judgment by fishhook.” He was calling disciples who would accompany him into the collapsing world order of Imperial Rome. Instead of Pharaoh, the mythical adversary of “Gog”, and the corrupt political leadership of  Israel, Jesus and the Early Church faced the power and glory of Rome. The disciples were to “fish for people” by calling them into a new, inclusive, and transcendent community defined by peace, forgiveness, and love.

6.      As often is the case, Jesus (and the Gospel) makes use of Old Testament images and traditions, but reinterprets them in a radical new way.