Fishing for People in Dangerous Times

“Come, follow me,” he said, “and I'll show you how to fish for people.” This is Jesus’ invitation to Simon and Andrew, James and John, who dropped their fishing nets and became his first disciples. I don’t know if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Columbia Heights, Minnesota had that verse from Matthew 4 in mind last week when they detained Liam Ramos at his home, but the fishing metaphor applies, albeit in a way that blasphemes Jesus’ call to discipleship.

Speaking at a press conference last Wednesday, Zena Stenvik, the superintendent of the Columbia Heights School District—where Liam is a student—said that an ICE agent walked the five-year-old boy to the front of his house and directed him to knock on the door asking to be let in, “in order to see if anyone else was at home—essentially using the five-year-old as bait.” When Liam’s older brother, a middle schooler, came home 20 minutes later, he found his father and brother missing. The dad, who has an active asylum claim, had been apprehended, and the child, Liam, had also been taken to a detention facility in Texas. A preschool kid was used to fish for a person, but the fishing was completely unChristian—antithetical to Christ’s call to follow him and “fish for people.”

Jesus is steeped in the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures. The rabbi from Nazareth is well aware of the ancient implications of “fishing for people.” The Rev. Matthew Myer Boulton points out that in the Book of Jeremiah, for example, in the context of exile in Babylon—about 600 years before Jesus—“fishing for people” refers to God’s judgment: the unrighteous and unjust are caught by divine agents, “doubly repaid for their iniquity,” and only then rescued from the exile and returned home. Think of an anxious parent who finds their child after they had gone missing, but first scolds the child—“Don’t you ever run off like that again!”—before pulling them into an embrace of unconditional love and bringing them home, safe and sound. Rev. Boulton explains that by borrowing the provocative phrase “fishing for people,” Jesus is inviting those who follow him on an adventure that “includes plenty of struggle, including confronting iniquity and injustice, along the way,” but that “ultimately ends with salvation.”

What’s more, like a steadfastly loving parent, Jesus is compassionate even when he is confrontational. When he rails against the Pharisees about their hypocrisy, and when he rebukes Peter—one of his own followers—for his shortsightedness, Jesus is trying to get them back to the moral orientation and the very personhood that God intends for them: beloved and blessed. Think of a parent saying to a wayward child, “You know better, and you are better than this. Come back to yourself. Come back to the house. Our home is not the same without you.”

Salve is healing. Salvation is restoration. The adventure of following Jesus to fish for people is not about identifying those who supposedly don’t belong and catching them for a punishment. Following Jesus is about advocating for those who are on the margins of society—living in the shadows of social exile—alleviating their fear with compassionate hospitality, and bringing us home to one another in the embrace of God’s love that is meant for all; a love that calls everyone beloved and blessed, no matter who we are or where we come from.

After Jesus calls his first disciples, he proceeds to heal every disease and sickness among the people (Matthew 4:23), restoring the community to wholeness by bringing those separated from it back into the safety and well-being of it. As exemplified by the Christ who says, “Come, follow me, and I'll show you how to fish for people,” the adventure of discipleship is not a numbers game of rounding up converts to Christianity; rather, it is a commitment to pluck people out of danger, to pull our neighbors away from whatever is doing them harm and return them to the good will of our shared humanity. Fishing for people is about meeting basic needs so that no one is left fearing for their safety outside the fold of God’s all-encompassing love. Especially in this moment, we followers of Jesus would do well to remember that.