153 fish

There’s always something new to notice when you open Scripture and seek God’s Word.  Sometimes the Holy Spirit will point this out to you herself, and sometimes someone will help you notice. 

A couple months ago, some of our congregational council leaders and me attended a retreat for congregational leaders.  We gathered with leaders and pastors from several other ELCA congregations, and the main speaker was Pastor Sara Cutter, who works with the ELCA churchwide organization as Senior Director of Operations in Christian Community and Leadership.

So she was there to talk about the business of being a church, how to do the business things like accounting for offerings and how to pay the bills for operating a building and owning property and stuff like that.  In my experience, these kinds of lectures are the church-ified version of whatever business management tool or thought experiment is currently trending.  And I do think it’s important for a pastor to show up in solidarity with church leaders, but I didn’t really expect I was gonna learn anything, least of all learn something about Scripture. 

But Pastor Cutter, like a good pastor, rooted her business lecture in Scripture, and she used this story about the risen Jesus appearing to the disciples.  She pointed out that when Jesus is calling out to the disciples, he’s giving instructions about the nets.  And when the disciples follow Jesus’s instructions, they haul in more fish than the net can really carry and yet the nets did not break. 

She noticed that there’s a number of fish: 153.  And Biblical scholars don’t know the significance of this number; 153 is not a number that reappears frequently like 7, or 12, or 40.  Why 153, why is that important?  Pastor Cutter said the significance might not be the number itself but the fact that someone stood there and counted all those fish.  Who did that?  Maybe the treasurer? 

She said the nets are like the administrative tasks of a ministry or a congregation—it doesn’t look exciting to a lot of folks, but it’s necessary for the ministry to operate.  And some of you are thinking, yeah, I’d so much rather count fish than lead a Bible study or preach a sermon, and it’s a good thing you’re here!  We need you! 

I like preaching sermons but you don’t want me balancing the church’s checkbook.  I enjoy metaphors and stories, and accounting software does not appreciate a good metaphor. 

Pastor Cutter also brought up the spiritual gifts that are listed in the twelfth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans: there’s teaching, and stirring speech (or preaching), charity, leadership, helping others, inspired utterances (or prophecy), and equal to all of these spiritual gifts is administration. 

Turns out, everyone’s specific gifts are needed.  None are more important than another.  Everyone is invited to grow within their own journey of giftedness, but every gift is needed in the journey of discipleship, to follow the risen Christ.  I’m talking to you and you and you.  Every individual fish among the 153 was counted, and even if we don’t know why that number is important, someone’s gift of counting was acknowledged and became part of the story. 

Maybe you don’t see how your gift or your skills could benefit the church or Jesus, but the Holy Spirit knows.  Epidemiologists who study public health and patterns of disease probably never thought their work would be important in church life, but when that pandemic hit, whew, how lucky was this congregation to have people who knew how to interpret health data and make educated decisions about how to move through the pandemic?  This congregation had an entire ad hoc committee, which was named, optimistically, the Re-Opening Committee, and while they haven’t met for a couple of years, they never officially closed, either, because every time we tried to officially thank them and publicly bless their work, another wave of Covid would come along. 

In just the past couple of weeks, this church has needed people who have knowledge of computer networking, audio connections, how to address the electricity in the pipe organ (which still isn’t working) and repair the livestream equipment.  This church has needed people who could clean the building, repair broken things on the property, and plant trees in the yard. 

All of these gifts are needed, and whatever we are doing to support ministry is our gift and our sacrifice to God.  God’s gift to us is love and grace in Jesus Christ, and we get to proclaim “Christ has died.  Christ is risen.  Christ will come again.” 

Jesus says to his disciples, “Follow me,” but he also might just return the favor and follow you, showing up in your life as he showed up to Peter and the disciples in the boat, telling them to let down their nets one more time.  Or Jesus might show up speaking in a voice you can’t see, as Paul experienced. 

How might Jesus show up for you?  Pastor Cutter asked us to discuss this together during the retreat: if you had been there in the boat with Peter and the other disciples, how would you tell that story to other people who weren’t there?  During the discussion, one of our clever leaders mimed being on a phone call and said, “Uh, I gotta go.  My dead friend just showed up.” 

How will you report the good news? 

Amen. 

Pastor Cheryl