Fishers of Men

[N.b. Cleaning out my draft folder. . . this post and the next are not quite finished, but who knows when I'd get around to polishing them?]

A few posts ago, I mentioned that I’d gone to church. It was the first time in a long time; I have not been a believer for years, but I choose not to argue with my family on that subject and I don’t mind attending every once in awhile despite my ambivalence. I do admire reverence, and there are precious few opportunities to see it in everyday life. On the other hand, I am uncomfortable with some of the traditions, such as testimonials, and of course the emphasis on fathers, brothers, men of faith. Sometimes these words are figures of speech to describe relationships between men and spirits; sometimes they are taken as universal, just shorthand for all humans. But idioms have weight, and if Bible-based religion is frequently practiced in male-centered ways, this is in part shaped and justified by male-centered language.

I learned these idioms at one point in my life, along with many other small lessons about where I stood in the world. I was reminded at the small church I attended recently. The preacher there has a routine of improvising an “object lesson” in the sermon. He has a child from the congregation bring him a box of random objects from the child’s own possessions, and he improvises a lesson on scripture based on the objects. That Sunday, the child was his own daughter who shares my name, and her objects included a tiny electronic game on a keychain, a multicolored bracelet, and. . . a flashlight, maybe, I forget what else. I remember the electronic game because it had something to do with fish, and the lesson was about “fishers of men.”

“Fishers of men,” as you may or may not know, comes from the Gospel of Mark: Christ walks along the Sea of Gallilee and says to the men fishing there, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men!” This is generally taken to be a call to evangelism: follow my teachings, and teach them to others. There are a number of other biblical references to casting nets in a similar metaphor: apparently you’ve got to go out and catch men to bring them into salvation. Always men: the stories show Christ teaching to a few women and a few women in turn teaching others, but New Testament metaphors tend to be about men and traditionally masculine tasks.

That Sunday, the preacher reiterated the gospels and after he had connected all of the objects into a lesson, he engaged his young co-star in a call-and-response. I forget the specifics here as well, but it went something like this: the preacher would repeat his point about the flashlight, and say something like “we must be bringers of. . .” and the child, nervous (after all, she was improvising too) would fill in the blank: “. . . light.”

I do remember, vividly, that he began “Jesus calls us to be fishers of. . . ” and held the microphone to her. She answered, in a sweet questioning voice, “. . . men?”

I think it is well worth questioning.