People in our family enjoy fishing. I have to wonder how many people, in the business of life, take time out of their schedule to go out to a river or a pond, attach a string to a pole, attach a hook to the string, attach bait to the hook, and then throw it all out into the water to catch a fish. When I think about it, contemporary America doesn't really give me that impression, especially now that I live in the city. But my family enjoys fishing, and I grew up with it so that now I have a few memories that most people don't have.
My father loves to fish. He loves the whole fishing season. Now please don't ask why; no one quite knows the reason. It could be that his head isn't put to much use. It could be, perhaps, that his shoes are too loose. But I think that the most likely reason, if you really dig, is that his heart is two sizes too big.
The great irony in this is that, by his own admission, he's not a good fisherman. He rarely ever catches fish. Still, he loads up his truck, finds a spot, and starts fishing anyway. He doesn't even know what to do with the fish once he catches them, and just lets them go. Yet if his actions weren't proof enough, you can tell how much he loves to fish when he opens his mouth and rambles on about subject matters that would classify him as a redneck if it wasn't for his clear "nerd talk." I believe the term for it is "Asperger's Syndrome."
Fishing with my father is an insufferable experience. He will talk on and on about things that interest him, and if you don't share that interest, too bad. I sometimes go fishing with him, but mainly out of my determination to have a relationship with my father. We all have to make sacrifices.
Yet, in spite of how boring fishing has become, I see why he loves it. I see why people in my family generally enjoy it. I hope to fish someday and enjoy it, too, and also be enjoyable while fishing. I hope to talk about things that matter, talk about life. The past, the present, the future. Eternity. That which we have faith in. That which we hope for. That which we love. And to top it all off, things that are absolutely meaningless. It seems to me that this is what fishing should be all about.
I was walking through town the other day, and I enjoyed the recent heat wave that rushed in out of nowhere. For years now, my regular attire consisted of fine dress clothes, but I wasn't always that way. I remember the summers where I only ever wore t-shirts, and I didn't care what I wore. I remember being a kid. I also wish I had enjoyed the moment.
Well, here was that moment. I thought, "You know, I want to enjoy this." So I did. I now have a very good memory of that Tuesday afternoon, for no reason whatsoever than that I decided that I wanted to embrace that moment. I loved it. I loved the sunshine, and the hills, and the backstreets and the obscure parts of town. I loved the silence of some neighborhoods, the robustness of others, and when I later told my mother about this over the phone, she didn't really quite understand why I loved it so much.
Now I want to enjoy it again, when I have time. Except this time I would love to enjoy it with the people that I love. Maybe longtime friends. Maybe new friends. I can see myself getting to know someone and spending a couple of days doing nothing but walking through town. It's nostalgic for me, and it hasn't even happened yet.
And then, what if I took them fishing? I didn't always find it boring, after all. And you know, I felt something warm make its way through me. That knot in my back that I've had this last week temporarily melted. It felt right. I want these moments to happen, those moments where you don't do anything but exist. "Six days," said God, "ye shall work and do all your labor. But on the seventh day, find rest."
Everything slows down. Time halts to a stop. The sunset glows with warmth and lazily overlooks its handiwork, knowing that it fueled a day of play and innocence.
These are the days of our lives.
Then Monday comes and we pick up our hammers, slam the iron over the anvil, and create sparks. For some, this is Hell. This is work. This is the hectic work that detracts from life.
This lazy pastime, fishing, was also the primary source of income of the apostles. It was work. It was hard, manual labor. It was hectic, full of worries about tomorrow. Yet it wasn't Hell. It was fishing. It was intimate.
When Jesus walked up to them, most of the apostles were fishing. It was what they had done for as long as they could remember. I don't think it was easy for them to give this up in order to follow him. As it turns out, they didn't quite have to. He helped them with their fishing, and I wonder what that must be like. To be on a boat with Jesus. To have Jesus there, physically right beside them, with calloused hands and suntanned back, casting out a net with you.
Or maybe a net isn't your thing. Maybe it's nursing. Maybe it's welding, or carpentry, or farming. Whatever it is, I can imagine Jesus being right there, working jut as hard as you.
"What are you doing?" you might wonder. "Aren't you the Lord of the Sabbath?"
"Yes, I am the Lord of the Sabbath," says He. "I am also the Lord of Creation, and in six days I created the Heavens and the Earth. I am here. I am working on Creation right now, with you. I want to be with you, sharing in what I created you for, right this very moment."
Rest is a good thing, but that's not the only time that we enjoy life. There's something very good about this hard work. God loves it so much that for every Sabbath, He made six workdays. When we think of people being at peace, we often imagine them resting, but I imagine a worker with seasoned shoulders lifting his tools of the trade high and leading the way for others with his industrious spirit.
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| You're a writer after my own heart, John Hooyer. THIS BLOG HAS BEEN APPROVED BY COMRADE STALIN! |
It is important to keep in mind that while good work is peaceful, work is not peace itself. Work can be a sign that someone isn't overly caught up in religious Christianity and simply lives a life of faith, but hard work can and has — on very explicit terms — become a religion.
When traditional religion was outlawed in Russia, the Communist Party was ushered in to replace it. In other words, Communism and communistic values became the new religion. If you had asked Stalin if that was a fair description, I wouldn't be surprised if he agreed with that wording. "Yes, Communism is our new religion." Communism valued hard work. They treated it like the ultimate spirituality, as the ultimate expression of a human's humanity. With the hammer and the sickle, they glorified the worker. Was there anything more noble and sweet? Perhaps one: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. The Communist Motherland was the ultimate cause, and hard work was the ultimate means to that cause.
History has another example in a Chinese rebellion. Not so long after China adopted Communism, there was a rebellion among working class citizens who wanted to abolish all intellectual trades. To them, there was nothing more noble than manual labor. Everything else was a lie. The writers, legislators, lawyers, judges, and so forth had no purpose.
This reminds me of the natural backlash that we might have against religious Christianity. When we find that overseas evangelism and Bible study group leaderships aren't our things, it only takes one swing of the pendulum to say that "True Christians would be a hard and humble worker like me!" In other words, we make a religion out of previously non-religious activities.
What is the difference between the spirituality of work as I see it and the spirituality of work as Stalin would see it?
The answer, you know, is Grace. Grace that we might work not in order to earn anything, but out of a natural expression of our identities. Grace we might not have to worry about success or failure. Grace that we might be Christians on all seven days of the week.
Stalin saw work as something glorified, a necessary spiritual means to a spiritual end. He saw work as producing spiritual fulfillment.
Whereas I guess I just sort of get nostalgic when I work. Nostalgic for the past, yes, but I'm also reminded of that restful Tuesday evening where I walked through town and felt glad for my present. So in a way, I'm caught up on the Nostalgic Now, and I let my work be a part of that. I see how all of the past and the future come together to create these short moments. I see how I've been made to live in the present, and how the only sane reaction is to love it.
My identity is not in the present, though. The present is merely the point where our time touches Eternity, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis.
I believe that we humans are all homesick for our proper place in Eternity. We're homesick for the relationship between us and God that we lost when Adam and Eve sinned.
That relationship has been restored, though. And because of that, even though we don't fully live in eternity yet, we have blessings in the present. We can live in the now and feel nostalgic for something other than the past for once. We always long for something, but now we can direct our longing to something we already have. The Present. The Nostalgic Now.
This restores us in all things, our work as well as our rest.
As opposed to Stalin's worker. Yes, the Communist will find something redeeming in his work. He will put some identity in it, some faith in it. And you know what, it's founded in truth. There's genuinely something good about work, since it's what we're made for. Yet, they can't access their spirituality without that work. When they rest, it's in order to appreciate the handiwork of their labor.
For me, when I work it's to appreciate the handiwork of my rest. And yes, that works the same in reverse. Each is the fruit of the other. Each is also independently its own thing with no need to be defined by the other.
Most importantly, both "work" and "rest" can describe the state of fishing.
In order to truly fish, someone must know something. He must know himself, for sure. Fishing builds that sort of internal relationship. He also needs to know the Fisher. The One who invented fishing, the One who spoke it into existence. True fishing involves a relationship. It involves Jesus.
I find it interesting that Jesus' inner three disciples were all fishermen before He met them. Then, after they walked with him and had their world turned inside out, filled to the point of overflowing with revelations that changed absolutely everything to the point where they simply couldn't live the same way, brought to tears by a physical encounter with the Risen Lord, they returned to fishing.
It really almost seems anti-climactic, and yet that's how John ends his gospel. You could say that it's a literary device to emphasize the importance of being fishers of men, but even if he hadn't emphasized it, that doesn't change the fact that the disciples returned to fishing.
You know what I think? I think that it must have been one very special pastime. And they evidently weren't doing it because they were looking for Jesus, either.
As flawed and as broken as he was, in spite of how much he had denied Jesus, and also in spite of how much he was about to inadequately confess his love for Jesus very soon, I think I saw something that only Grace could give. In spite of how big his world had become, Peter had returned to fishing. He found himself now a little more content with the relationship he had with the sea, a little more at peace with his work. The sheer size of this new universe helped him appreciate the small things like fishing even more. John never spells it out, but I do believe that Peter returned to his work with the faintest tingling of love.
That love which is given to us is the fuel that gives meaning to all that we do, in rest and in work, in sickness and in health. Because God is big, we're free to be small. Because Christ died for us, our small things are made big. Because Christ is alive, He has a relationship with us. Because we have that relationship, we can either work or rest and still be completely ourselves. Because we are ourselves, we have the Truth. Because we have the Truth, we have life. Because we have any life at all, we have eternal life.
And our limited Now becomes an Eternity.
Sincerely,
John Hooyer
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