Quit fishing in the aquarium

Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net hat was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and all collected all the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad one away. Matt. 13:47,48, NIV.

It can be dangerous to fish in the deep. Some mean storms roils up out there that can threaten your little skiff; raging waters that a sterile, tranquil, oxygenated aquarium never experiences. But such is the price of real fishing! And besides, what was that song we sang so loudly so long ago: “I will make you fishers of men…if you follow Me.”

It is because we want to be about our Fisherman Father’s business and follow Him that Jesus told us the fish story we see in today’s text. It’s not very long, this parable about fishers dropping their dragnet into the sea and hauling in every imaginable kind of fish in their catch. But it’s just long enough to remind us that a boat load of deep-water fish can be messy, slimy and stinky. Because the fish you catch out in the deep may not be at all like the fish we find in the aquarium of the church. You know, CLEAN fish (with fins and scales, á la Leviticus 11)- sweet little shore-hugging minnows like you and me. Let’s be honest If you take Jesus’ admonition seriously and throw your net out into the deep waters, you could end up with fish that are unclean. Because when you’re out “finding Nemo,” you may net more than a clown fish. Unclean, unkept fish with alcohol on the breath or at least in the back seat of their car-drunk as a fish.
You’ll catch fish with sexual dysfunctions, deviances, and even transmittable diseases. Some will be like the catch Jesus made at a well in Samaria and be on their fourth or fifth marriage. Other fish from the deep will be covered with glittering lures or alluring tattoos.

“Oh, don’t worry-as soon as we get ‘em into our aquarium, we’ll skin’em and scale ‘em and clean ‘em up just like us. And if we don’t like ‘em, we’ll loss ‘em out!” Jesus was afraid of that, which is why His parable punch line declares that the cleaning, sorting, and judging is done by the angels “at the end of the age” (verse 49). The angels will do the sorting-it is our mission to do the fishing. Why? Because fish are our Father’s business-clean and unclean. We do the deep-sea fishing-He does the in-house cleaning. If we get that straight, I have a feeling we’ll spend less time critiquing the fish in the aquarium and more time on the high seas fishing for the lost.