Broken Nets

“ Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net. And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes: and their net brake. And they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come and help them. And they came, and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink. ”

Sinking boats and broken nets. A man face down in fishy water. The beginning of a ministry of mystery. Do you feel like your nets are broken and your boat low in the water? Is it due to a miracle of God or your own innate failure to launch? What is the mission of the Church and how is it doing?

Simon, son of Jonah, was a simple man who had a heart for God. Jesus saw the plain clothes, the rough fisherman's hands, the sunburned face and He smelled the man's profession all over him. He saw his heart as well, and used his boat purposely to go fishing, for men. Knowing the catch of the last evening was a wasted trip, but knowing also the power of His own Presence, Jesus preached those things that would lift the cover of His divinity just enough to intrigue Simon and cause him to take one more fishing trip.

The results of that excursion we know. The nets were so full of fish the nets began to break. He called for help, and though two boats were hauling in fish, both began to sink. We see these things as the measure of the miracle, and that's true, but they were also the measure of the men. They were incapable of carrying out God's commission; their nets were too old and threadbare, their boats not nearly big enough.

When they reached the shore dragging this incredible catch of fish, Jesus looked at Simon, John and James, and said to his skipper, “ Don't be afraid; from here on, you will catch men.” Three years would pass, and these men walked the roads of Palestine with Jesus, saw His miracles, heard His words, received His grace and empowerment, saw His death and resurrection. And they returned to the lake. He'd been gone for days again. It occurred to Simon Peter to try fishing, like the old days. And like the old days, they caught nothing. Jesus, disguised and standing on the shore, called out for them to “ Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved (John) saith unto Peter, It is the Lord. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fisher's coat unto him, (for he was naked,) and did cast himself into the sea. And the other disciples came in a little ship; (for they were not far from land, but as it were two hundred cubits,) dragging the net with fishes. As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread. Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which ye have now caught. Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes, and hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken.” John 21:6-11

Note that: the net was not broken , despite the great catch of fish. At the first outing, Simon's nets weren't up to it. Now, with Christ's guidance, Peter could catch many fish and his nets would hold.

All of this is a parable for the Church. The official religion of Christ's day had the true God, worshiped Him, and did many things competently, like our frustrated fishermen. They did it all right, but God wasn't coming to rescue them as they thought He should. He did in fact come, but they looked right past Him. Their outreach program was to call all Gentiles dogs . Their missionary zeal was to kill all the Romans and exclude all others from their realm, including the half-breed Samaritans. The nets of these guys were in tatters. Jesus showed the complete failure of their understanding of God and His ways, so they killed Him. But His followers received the plan, understood the mission, and began to catch men in nets that could now hold a great catch. On Peter's first day out as the leader of the Apostle band, now driven by the Holy Ghost, his very first sermon converted 3,000 people. Nice catch!

What is the catch today? How is the Church doing fishing? To see the empty pews, not just in this church, but in nearly every church in America, it would seem the believers are out fishing… for fish. In summer, that's okay once in a while, for a vacation. I think God likes us to go fishing for fish occasionally. It makes us humble. For that same reason I go golfing. But where is the fruit, the grain, the harvest, the sea of happy faces? Are our nets broken? Are we fishing without the Lord's blessing and commissioning? Is our boat seaworthy? Are these the wrong waters?

The problem is pandemic. Not one church, but most are looking for the great catch of fish and wondering when it will come. Pastors get together and talk about the coming revival with hope, but the conversation reveals that we are not yet revived. We live in a day of doubt, pride, easy entertainment and slippery values. The Church has answers to these, but they don't play well on modern ears. We've told them, and still they do not believe our report.

It's not a new story but an old one. God lamented through His prophet Jeremiah, “Has a nation changed gods, When they were not gods? But My people have changed their glory For that which does not profit. Be appalled, O heavens, at this, And shudder, be very desolate," declares the Lord. For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, The fountain of living waters, To hew for themselves cisterns, Broken cisterns, That can hold no water.” Jeremiah 2:9-13 He was saying that the pagans hold on to their false gods without fail, but the people who have the true and only God, forsake Him for the phonies. They become broken cisterns, leaking water tanks, and don't even want the living spring of water that flows by their own front door.

Sounds a little like broken nets, but it's the reason the Church can catch no men today. We should be able to present the True and Only God to the world better than at any time in history. A free country, mass media, easy access to the press, better Bible translations, computer science to help research—but technology helps our rivals better than us. No matter, God should help us. But we look in the tank and God has leaked out. We thought we had Him safely locked up, but He won't stay contained, not in our walls of words and pat phrases. He is a living spring, or nothing. We don't contain Him, He contains us. So we make doctrines about how He doesn't do miracles anymore.

The news is all about the Episcopal Church and its looming break up. Now it's easy to take pot shots at such a wounded behemoth, so I will forbear. Let's take a lesson from their current and past mistakes, however. The Anglican world woke one day to an American church enacting something it never thought possible. The issue was suddenly gay bishops. How could it have come to this? But thirty years ago, Robert Morse spoke out when the same church, his own church, illegally ordained women to the priesthood, the first of them a lesbian, and then ratify that flagrant break with Scriptural authority at its General Convention in Minneapolis. The new prayer book, he and others said, was rife with confusion, heresy and error. Bishop Pike had declared his apostasy, and John Spong would soon be spouting his own. Sexual scandal was lurking in the shadows, but first the libertines had to take out the pillars of their church. A first split in the Rock of American Anglicanism followed, and we are just the inheritors of those who bravely walked out onto the desert. What has happened since then had to happen, or else a drastic repentance. But they forsook their God and thought He was safe in their leaky cisterns. Just so the major Protestant bodies in the US have all declined for lack of going to the source, the living Spring, the Truth, the Way, the Life. Pity the poor homosexuals who are on center stage for just a moment as the dismantling of Christianity goes on by Christians, using gays as objects of feigned sympathy. It would be a good time for Jesus to return.

Yet He doesn't have to return for faithful Anglicans in Africa, where black faces outnumber white Anglican faces throughout the world in churches every Sunday, a testimony to Anglican missionaries of another age. In Nigeria alone, 16 million members, 20% of worldwide Anglicans, make the 800,000 Episcopalians in church today, look kind of sick. These Africans are not confused about the Bible or sexual sin. They came in number to the last Lambeth Conference, 1988, and demanded the American Church cease its aberrations, but to no avail. They are now sending missionaries to America to find an honest Christian. They've gone through the bishops. They are now searching the priests.

It was 118 years ago that the Lambeth Conference adopted what is called the Quadrilateral, a four-point reference of those doctrines we will not negotiate, leave behind, or denigrate. We will die on these four hills. Do you know them? They define Anglicanism in an easy statement, telling the world we believe in: (a) The Bible , as "containing all things necessary to salvation," and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith; (b) the Apostles' Creed , as the baptismal symbol, and the Nicene Creed , as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith; (c) the two sacraments ordained by Christ—baptism and the Lord's Supper; (d) the historic episcopate (apostolic succession).

Now, this is not a cistern. It isn't even a net. But it is where to measure how the church is tending its foundations. We believe in the Bible, that it is the standard. We believe in the Creeds. What the Bible and the Creeds contain is the basis of our faith. If we learn them, breath them in, live them out, and seek the God whose face set these things in motion, we will find that Spring of water, uncontained, but vital to our lives and our mission. Gay bishops won't even be a question.

“For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no falsehood: let him reject evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil.” 1 St. Peter 3:10-12 Good old Peter. That's him in our Epistle today. He soaked his face in fishy water for fear of what this holy man was doing in his boat. “You should leave me!” Obviously He had come to the wrong boat: “I am a sinful man.” What a good start! “Don't be afraid. From now on, I will make you fishers of men.”

So, how are the nets?

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