Memories of childhood sometimes come back to us
at the oddest moments. Reading this passage in Matthew’s gospel the other day,
where Jesus speaks about the kingdom of God and the fishermen with their nets,
I suddenly remembered as a little boy standing on the shore of the river Dee,
with my grandfather, watching three or four men fishing for salmon with a boat,
and nets. It was early on a quiet summer’s evening, in the light of the evening
sun. The fishermen pushed the boat out into the water, and rowed about thirty
yards out into the river. Then from the
back of the boat they payed out a great net into the waters of the river. The
net had floats on it, every five or six feet. The men in the boat kept rowing making
a full circle in the river, rowing back to the shore and closing the net. They
pulled it up on the shore. And it was empty !
This is the way, though,
they fished for salmon in the river.
Jesus speaks of the kingdom that God as like
the work that fishermen do. Only, the fishermen in the parable of Jesus are
from
This,
says Jesus, is like the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is like that
net.
Reading these words in Matthew’s gospel, some
have found them difficult, especially these days.
In the parable of Jesus: when the net is drawn
in, and up and out of the water and onto the shore, the fishermen sort out the
fish, the good are separated from the bad,
some fish are kept, some fish thrown back
this, says Jesus, is like the day of judgment, when
it comes
These verses cause some people a lot of
difficulty. Why ?
because these days it is important to be
inclusive, to include everybody in,
rather than separating people
out..............
However, if we look closely, we find that Jesus
is saying something quite distinctive here. In likening the kingdom of God to a
net thrown out into the waters, Jesus is not only saying something true about
the rule, the realm, the kingdom that God is building - Jesus, in speaking
about the net, is speaking about His life, His ministry, His purpose, and the
purpose of His Father in heaven.
What do we mean by this ?
Well, to explain, let’s look at the book of
Psalms for a moment. Psalm 1, the opening Psalm right at the
beginning of the book of Psalms. This is the doorway, the gateway to the
book of Psalms and it is put there to introduce us to one of the great themes
of the book of Psalms
That is, the difference, the distance, between
the righteous and the unrighteous. In Psalm 1, the opening Psalm of the whole
book we are introduced right away to the difference, the contrast,the distance between the righteous and the unrighteous. The
righteous man, we read, will neither walk, or even
stand with the unrighteousness. And sitting with an unrighteous person is out
of the question. The righteous will have nothing to do with sinners,
in fact sinners are excluded from the company of the righteous altogether.
We read something very similar in the book of
Isaiah, chapter 26:
the path of the righteous is level... but the
wicked, do not learn righteousness, even in a land of uprightness they go on
doing evil.........
the difference, the contrast, the distance between
the righteous and the unrighteous.
And down through history
the difference, the contrast, the distance between
the righteous and the unrighteous has often been insisted upon.
Some Jewish believers in
one the one hand there were those who “walked
according to the perfection of holiness” and on the other there were “those who
have families and live in camps”. There’s the distance between the righteous
and all the rest again.
A thousand years or more later, The
Cathars, who were heretics in
and then there was another group, called ‘all the
rest ‘.
The distance between the righteous
and the unrighteous once again.
Yet, if we look closely at Jesus’ parable of
the net, we find that is saying something quite distinctive here. In likening
the
He is also speaking about His life, His
ministry,
His purpose, and the
purpose of His Father in heaven.
Once again, what do we mean by this ?
Well, so far we’ve been talking about a contrast
often made,
down through the centuries, and still today
between the righteous and the unrighteous.
But in the parable Jesus tells that all are
caught up in the net,
righteous and unrighteous alike
William Barclay tells us that in the
So what Jesus is declaring is that
God’s kingdom
as it grows, includes all kinds of
men and women, those who think they are righteous and those who know they are unrighteous .
In God’s kingdom all are welcome, all are
included
both the righteous and the unrighteous
and we can leave to the living God to decide at
the end who has been faithful........
And this is just exactly what we see in the
loving ministry of Jesus
We see Him eating with "sinners",
men and women who are not religious, we see him eating with tax collectors,
the lowest of the low, and even including one as a disciple. In fact, the
teachers of the law, who always insisted on the difference between the
righteous and the unrighteous, ask the disciples "Why does Jesus eat with
tax collectors and `sinners'?"
All the way through the
gospels – we see Jesus in the company of sinners, those who never bother with
the law, those outside of religious life - Zacchaeus, the woman at the well,
Mary Magdalene. So, in the gospels, what
has happened to that distance between the righteous and the unrighteous
? Why does Jesus, the Lord
Jesus, associate with sinners, outcasts, those who have no part in
Why is Jesus, the Holy One, the
perfectly righteous,
associating
with such people, when many thought He should be keeping His distance ? It is
because, as Paul declares in the letter to the Romans,
in
the light of God, in the light of the glory of God
all
are sinners, all have sinned. There are not two groups in the world,
the
wonderfully righteous, and then all the rest. There are only sinners. Now
that’s a stunning message !
In the light of God, in the
light of the glory of God
all
of us are sinners, all of us have sinned.
So, why does Jesus, the Holy
One, the Only perfectly righteous One,
associate
with sinners, associate with us ?
When He might have kept His distance ?
He associates with sinners, and with us,
because, sent by our loving Father in heaven. He has come into the world for
sinners, for the outcast, for those far from God..............
God was, says Paul, not keeping His distance, from the world,
but reconciling the world to Himself in Jesus Christ,
not counting the sins of men and women against them...........
This is what we see in the
gospel of Matthew, here is Jesus, in the midst of the
outcasts, and the sinners......... Here
is Jesus among the outcasts, among the friendless, the sinners, as the teachers
of the law call them......... Here is Jesus, the Righteous One, present among
them,
Jesus, not far away, distanced. Here He is in
the midst of the outcasts, and the sinners.........
Though we are sinners, God has
acted decisively to do something about our situation. Through Jesus, the New
Testament declares,
through Jesus’s sacrifice on the Cross, our sins are taken away
once and for all. He has taken our sin upon Himself.
Christ died for sins, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.......... says Peter.
Amazing love !
This is a true saying, writes Paul in 1 Timothy
1 to be completely accepted and believed,
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,
so, the doors of the kingdom are wide open to all who may come.......
And though at the end of all the ages, as Jesus says in the parable,
God Himself, who knows all things, will do the sorting.........
We need not be afraid of being excluded............. or separated or
distanced, says Paul, for neither the
present, nor the future, nor any powers will be able
to separate us from the love of God that is ours in Christ Jesus our Lord.
AMEN