But the good news is that there is good news. It is precisely the dangerous, fraught world where the dominion of God comes near, as Jesus says in Mark’s Gospel in proclaiming the good news of God: “The time is fulfilled, and the dominion of God has come near; repent, and believe the good news.” (Mark 1:15)

Paul’s observation that “the present form of this world is passing away” is thus both a judgment that provokes foreboding and a word of promise that evokes a sense of hopefulness in the dominion of God coming near in Jesus’ proclamation and his whole ministry.

It seems to me that’s also where we are in these early days of the new year, 2021, a time of foreboding as well as hopefulness. Quite prominently, there is hopefulness that vaccinations will be the beginning of the end of the pandemic. And foreboding that things may get a lot worse with Covid-19 before things get better, especially with the slow roll out of the vaccination process. A listing of circumstances that mix hope and desperation could go on and on. You no doubt have your own list.

It is to this time when and these circumstances where God calls me as a pastor, where God calls Resurrection Lutheran Church, where God calls each of you in your own ministry in daily life.

What does God in Christ call us to do? A focus in today’s gospel reading is this, when Jesus says in Mark, “Follow me and I will make you fish for human beings.”

This is at first blush a troubling metaphor. Yes, fishing was the profession of Simon and Andrew, James and John.

But the metaphor of fishing conjures up images of entrapment, of enticing fish into nets, very much against the will and well-being of the fish!

The metaphor is even more troubling in light of a long history of Christian missionary work and evangelization that has in fact been the stuff of a kind of entrapment and even forced conversions.

Even in our day and age, some churches engage in manipulative practices in their approaches to evangelization, sometimes bait and switch methodologies. Some will try to hook people by offering practical helps to get by in hard times, but only later reveal that religious conversion is the real aim of the offering of assistance.

Can we redeem the fishing for human beings image for our understandings of our own call to follow Jesus and to share in Jesus’ missionary work?

Toward that end, recall again that in the wonderful story of Jonah, the prophet originally resisted God’s call and fled as a passenger on a ship that was headed in the opposite direction from Nineveh. A storm arose and the sailors came to realize that Jonah’s presence was a source of the maelstrom, so Jonah ended up jumping ship and then he himself was caught by a great fish, a whale.

Here the fish did the fishing! A profound reversal of roles. But it was a case of catch and release. Though Jonah was swallowed whole, he was unharmed and the whole experience resulted in Jonah changing his mind to become willing to answer God’s call and to travel to Nineveh to proclaim God’s word, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

Likewise, where in the book of Jonah a fish does the catching in a reversal of roles, Jesus in Mark’s gospel intends a different kind of mission from the disciples’ usual profession of using nets to trap and kill fish for profit.

These disciples fishing for people will share in Jesus’ ministry of proclaiming good news, saying “The time is fulfilled, and the dominion of God has come near; repent and believe the good news.”

This mission of proclamation has evolved in Christian history into what we now understand and practice as a call to baptism. Repentance leads to baptism, which is part of parcel of coming to trust, to believe the good news in faith. Baptism seals the deal by word, water and the Holy Spirit.

Indeed, in baptism we are swallowed up by the deep in the waters. Our sin is swallowed up. Our sin is what is caught, entrapped. And then we are released in the Trinitarian name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

So, the kind of missionary fishing trip to which we are called really is all about catch and release (perhaps not unlike many of our actual fishing trips for fish in real life ….).

This catch and release dynamic is what happened in Jonah’s proclamation to the people of the great city of Nineveh. In response to Jonah’s preaching, “the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.” (Jonah 3:5, 10)

Again, it’s a story of catch and release. The people of Nineveh were caught by Jonah’s word of judgment, and then released from punishment by a very generous God who was quite capable of changing the mind.

Of course, if you recall the story of Jonah, Jonah was not pleased with this outcome of the people’s actual repentance. Jonah wanted God to rain down judgment on the people. He had no interest in the people being forgiven.

We, too, might be more interested in focusing only on the judgement of God, especially during these days of great felt offense when it may well be that certain people deserve the fullness of God’s wrath.

But judgment is not the ultimate focus, telos, or end of the mission for which Jesus was sent and in which we are called to share in this world that is passing away.

God’s mission for Jesus is fully realized on the cross and in the empty tomb where we see again God changing the mind about deserved calamity for all of humanity.

Jesus was caught up on the cross, along with the whole burden of human sin and brokenness. Jesus was released from the belly of the tomb.

So, too, we when we are baptized, when we share in the bread and wine from the table, when we hear words of absolution, when we hear the good news again in our holy conversations with each other – we are released from our captivity to sin and death.

So, too, the world. God knows our sorry, unstable, fraught world needs release! The world is trapped in nets of sin and the ways of death, violence and corruption.

When we fish for people it’s all about proclaiming to this world the profound generosity of our gracious God for the freedom of release.

This is good news indeed for a world entrapped in the ways of sin, if not to say, evil.

May our faith be awakened and our passions stirred to share in this catch and release mission of Jesus for the sake of the world’s freedom.

Some reading, seeing or hearing this sermon will participate in the annual congregational meeting of Resurrection Lutheran Church today when we as a congregation begin to discern together the particular contours of our Spirit-inspired vision for our share in God’s liberating mission to the world. May God in Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit lead and guide our communal discernment for the sake of the mission entrusted to us for such a time as this. Amen.

And now for your reflection and holy conversation at home:

• In what ways have you perhaps experienced release from various kinds of captivity by God’s grace in Christ?
• To whom might God be sending you to proclaim good news of gospel freedom?
• How can we as individuals and as a congregation share in God’s liberating mission for the sake of Christ?