this week's passages: isaiah 61:1-8, luke 5:1-11
The familiarity of this story is comforting. It is favorite of Scripture, often taught in Sunday school for its fun and interactive images of fish. But, as I read it this week, I was struck in new ways by the words of the text.
In many translations, Jesus says to the trembling Simon Peter, "Do not be afraid, from now on you will be catching people." They leave a full catch of fish, they leave their families and their businesses, they leave what defines them, and they follow this strange call of Jesus to "catch people."
This is a beautiful passage that reveals the nature of discipleship, but it is also a passage that can be twisted to oppress, to subjugate, to force others to submit to our religious will under the guise of making disciples, of saving people, the guise of catching people for Christ.
None of us can live without our history. This month we celebrate Black History Month or African American history month, depending on who you talk to and what you read. We take time to celebrate the the remarkable history of a people that have changed this country. But, I believe that we should also take time to remember the history of subjugation of people of African descent in this country, and use these moments to continue to fight against racial oppression.
As a white woman from the middle of the country, I grew up knowing some of this history, and being ashamed of the likely role of my ancestors played in enslaving people. This history was embedded in our communities, as we lived along the very river that marked freedom for many hundreds and thousands over people over many decades. In my aunt's house outside of Cincinnati, as I put my head into a hollowed out wall that protected people seeking freedom along the underground railroad, I felt torn apart. I know that it is likely that parts of my family supported and engaged in slavery, and that parts of my family opposed and fought against slavery. History is muddy. But it is a part of who we are. We cannot leave our history.
The history of slavery is the history of this country. The history of Africans brought here on slave ships is the history of this country. The history of black people of all kinds of stories, backgrounds, and origins, is the history of this country. History is muddy. But it is a part of who we are. We cannot leave our history.
So what does it mean to catch people? In our shared history, when have we caught people? When have we made disciples? When has catching people involved our need to control others? When has it involved our willingness to freely engage with others, learn from others, through Christ?
Reading this story this week, at the beginning of Black history month, as a white young woman, I was deeply bothered. The first thing that came to mind, upon reading "Do not be afraid, from now on you will be catching people" was the pursuit and capture of Kunta Kinte, in Alex Haley's novel Roots. He describes the capture and kidnap of the young man in all of its terror. Each of the 12 million souls trafficked across the Atlantic from Africa to places all over the Western Hemisphere were caught. Caught. They were were people who were caught. Many of them were forced to change their beliefs, to change their religion. Disciples were being made, people were being caught, but not in the way that Jesus called us to.
When we share our faith, when we engage with other people, we have a choice. We choose to be open to the other person and risk being changed. Or, we choose to defend our sense of self, controlling, oppressing, and subjugating the other person, asking or forcing them to become like us if they want to be in relationship with us.
Jesus calls us to be open. Often we choose not to be. Each time we have chosen not to be, whether as a society, or as an individual, is becomes a part of our history. Those times that white people have chosen to control and subjugate others are a part of my history. The suffering that resulted is a part of my history. I cannot change that.
But, I can choose how to engage my history. I can choose how my history will shape me, and how it will lead me into the future. All of us make that choice, and as a part of all kinds of communities, we make those choices together.
Twice in this story, Simon Peter was tempted to be limited by his history, to be bound by his history. He was tempted to believe that the story could never change. First, when Jesus tells him to let down the nets, he talks back. "But, we have been working, really really hard to no avail. We work and we work and work and we work, and we see no fruits of our labor. We have worked all night and caught nothing." He was almost trapped by his own lack of imagination. He was almost trapped by his history.
But Jesus transformed the story, and the nets were full of fish.
Why be proven wrong once, when you can be proven wrong twice? Simon Peter bows to the Christ, recognizing his Savior. But rather than see the way he can change to follow his Savior, he only see his own inadequacy. "I cannot be a part of your story. I am not faithful enough. I am not good enough. I am trapped by who I have been. I will never change." Again, he was almost trapped by history.
But again, Jesus transformed the story. And they gave up everything and followed him.
Jesus was not done with Peter. Again and again, Peter messed up as a disciple. He was far from perfect. Again and again, he was tempted to be trapped by his own history. But, again and again, he was transformed in Christ, perpetually becoming a disciple.
We can choose to be open or we can choose control. We choose how we relate to our history.
Faith Ringgold chooses to be open, and in the process, she transforms history and uses to be inspire change.
Faith Ringgold was born in Harlem in 1930 to a mother who was a fashion designer. Her life was always infused with creativity, color, fabric and stories, but it was not until after she became a mother and taught art that she truly transformed into the artist many of us know today. She is most well known for her story quilts, that combine a love of history, a love of story, a love of color and a love of painting.
She knows her history. She engages her history. And then, she re-frames her history to challenge us all to see differently and to be changed.
The transatlantic slave trade is one of the darkest and most horrifying moments in our history, when the cruelty of mankind seemed at its height. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, 12 million people arrived in the Western Hemisphere from Africa, through capture and trade on the shores of the continent. Millions more were captured but died in the bowels of ships along the way. Low estimates place the number of deaths around 8 million. Many fear it could have been twice that. This epidemic of depravity was supported and blessed by religious leaders under the guise of catching people for Christ.
Faith
Ringgold transforms this history in "We Came to America." She shows
the panicking, struggling and dying Africans thrown into the Ocean from
a burning slave ship. But, she also paints the Statue of Liberty as a
Black woman. This transformation calls our attention, no matter what
our race, to the suffering that built this country. She shows us who
the true tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free
really were. Those masses included every soul that died in a slave
ship somewhere in the Atlantic, and every soul dehumanized by being
"owned" by another. She chooses not to be bound by history, but to unpack it, and to transform it so that we can transformed.
As an African American woman artist, Faith was often an outsider. Though she was born in the city that became the center of the art world by the middle of the 20th century, she was not reflected in that art world. But, she was influenced by black aesthetics and European modernism. She was influenced by amazing black women who changed our world, and by a mentally ill artist who loved to paint in Arles. Still, she worked on the margins of the art world, largely due to history.
She knew this. So she painted a new history. This story quilt is part of a series that tells the of a fictional artist, not unlike herself, who comes from America to France to engage in the artistic ferment at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. But this quilt is a fantasy beyond that. She brings together eight extraordinary women-Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Madame CJ Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Mary McLeod Bethune, Ida Wells, Fanny Lou Hamer, Ella Baker and Rosa Parks. They quilt alongside the creativity of Van Gogh, weaving together their vision of the world. She writes a history where it is possible to be a black woman who is a famous artist, to be a black woman that changes the world, and to be a black woman that is friends with Van Gogh. Faith changes the story to change her future, and the future of women of color. By transforming history, she writes a new future.
God wants us to be able to change our story. To not be trapped by our history, whether is a history of our people being oppressed, or our people oppressing, but to be transformed through Christ into new possibilities. This does not mean we abandon our history. It simply means we change our relationship to it. We unpack it.
The God we know is the God of Isaiah, who is a God of Justice, who proclaims jubilee, freedom from oppression, good news to the poor, who binds up the brokenhearted and comforts those who mourn. This is a God of change, of transformation, of endless possibility.
Simon Peter gave everything up to follow this God as he experienced him in Jesus. Even though he was prone to making mistakes, and he was prone to be trapped by his history, he chose to believe that his story could be changed, just as we see in Faith Ringgold's artwork. God wants us to choose to risk. To be open to being changed by others, rather than needing to capture and control them. God wants us to be open to our history, to be transformed by it rather than controlled by it.
This congregation has a history together. Each and every relationship formed wtihint the walls of this churh has a history, but all of those histories link together to form the history of this community, that reaches back to 120 years ago, when fourteen people had enough faith to charter a congregation. It is full of amazing and unlikely stories, of God using people in surprising ways to building a community. That history is embedded in our life together. The bell we ring to begin worship, that bell was made possible by the effort of two young girls--Ann Morrison and Myrtle Seammon--who collected money in what was a small farming community at the time. Before there was even a congregation, the history of God working in the world gave them the faith to see the future and work towards it.
History is muddy. But, it is a part of who we are. We cannot leave out history.
But we cannot be trapped by it either. God calls us to go and make disciples, or as this morning's passage puts it, to catch people. There is great hope for growth in this church. At the same time, many folks feel like Simon Peter, having worked and worked and worked without seeing fruit, and it is hard to keep going. But, if we are not trapped by our history but are transformed by it through Christ, we don't know what possibilities await.
We have to be open. We have to risk. We have to choose to follow Jesus, inviting people in, not to make them like us, not to assimilate them into our community, but to learn from them and love them, open to what they have to offer. Jesus calls us to mutuality, and it is that kind of catching people that will make our nets full at the end of the day. Our ancestors in this faith community followed that call, believed in possibility when their was not evidence to support the future they imagined. Will we?
There are hard choices with hard times ahead. In the difficult moments, we are never alone. We know that the Holy Spirit is among us, and we know that Christ is leading us. The question we must ask ourselves is...we will be like Simon Peter and his friend? Will we choose to risk, to leave everything and follow Jesus?
Let us pray.
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