Ichthys (Fish)

Matthew 14:13-21

Ichthys is the ancient Greek word for fish.  Fish is important to the early church.  Not only the feeding of thousands with a few fish, the first disciples were fishermen who Jesus told would fish now for people. The resurrected Jesus makes a coal fire breakfast of fish, when he tells them to cast net on the other side of the boat and they miraculously catch 153 fish, and Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves Him, and tells Peter to feed and care for His Sheep.  Today the cross has become the greatest symbol of Christianity, but in the first century it was still in use to kill criminals, including Christians.  The fish became the most used symbol.  The story of Jonah was also very important to early Christians and my favorite was the idea that followers of “the way” were little fish because they were born in the baptismal water.

Those reasons above would be enough to use ichthys as the symbol of the movement, but it was also an acrostic for Jesus Christ God’s Son Savior (in the ancient Greek).  To remind you an acrostic is a word that the letters of the word are the first letters of the words, and in this case a wonderful saying that demonstrates who is Jesus.  This was known and thus when they saw a fish they knew that others believed Jesus Christ God’s Son Savior, just as we now see it on the back of cars and business cards. 

As for this scripture, Jesus has the disciples feed over 5,000 people.  Amazing.  I would love to had been there, but I did have an experience that makes me understand what the disciples were feeling and thinking.  I will share with you that experience.  I was in Jamaica leading a short-term mission trip.  Our goal was to develop relationships with other Christians as we helped their church.  Specifically put a new metal roof on top of their grade school, tile a bathroom, create a playground, and run a 5 day Vacation Bible School. 

Each day after the VBS we would have lunch in the fellowship building, where we had the children.  We would clear the room of anyone that was not of our mission team.  We had to, we thought, we had limited resources for lunch and we especially had to make sure all of our team was well fed and well hydrated.  The first two days we easily cleared the room of everyone but the team for lunch and we dined on either pork, chicken, or curried goat.  However, on the third day the kids asked if we could perhaps try Jamaican Patties and sure enough someone arrived early with enough for our team to have 1 1/2 patties.  However, the room was not cleared at that time, in part because lunch arrived early, I and the other leader were tired, and the people were more confortable with us.  The other pastor and I tried to clear the room, we wanted our team to feel confortable as they ate and we had less food then other days.  But someone forgot to cancel the orders of pork, chicken, and curried goat, which arrived at the normal time.  Well us pastors kept on our perceived duty we were supposed to protect the mission team.  Now we had our lunch and the addition of a patty (and a few extra).  We wanted to help these people but we thought it was important for our team to be well nourished.

Well then there was Dylan.  Dylan was the youngest member of our team, whose father was on the roof each day.  Dylan though decided to be part of the VBS team, and in reality he was the only American participant of VBS.  He would help when you told him something specific to do, but he was generally just one of the kids (which if you remember our goal was to create relationships, and he was doing just that).  Well Dylan got up and grabbed one of the Styrofoam containers of chicken and offered it to a woman, who was just hanging around but was not asking for food.  Dylan heard Jesus say, “you give them something to eat.”  Dylan knew Jesus can feed 5,000 plus with just five loaves and two fish, that we could certainly feed all the people in that room.  We realized that we leaders were resisting the the command “They need not go away.”  And while I have had many confusions on mission trips with food, I never had a third lunch arrive, but sure enough on this day another greater amount of patties arrived.  We needed to find people to take this food. 

What a wonderful lesson that experience was, and I know who Jesus is via the acrostic of Ichthys, yet I need to remember what it means to be a Christian who follows Jesus the Christ God’s Son [our] Savior, so I remember an acrostic for fish; Fully I Savior’s Helper.  I know who Jesus is and I realize that I need fully give myself and He will provide.

Called

John 10:1-10

Jesus tells us he is the shepherd at that gate and then emphasizes He is the gate, when the disciples did not understand.  Jesus tells us that only through the gate can you enter the sheepfold.  That thieves and bandits jump the fence and use violence.  In our contemporary language we see thieves and bandits as synonyms, but in the Greek thief does refer to someone who is stealing for their own benefit, while the word bandit would be better translated as insurgent,  someone doing crimes for political reasons.  Because some were waiting for a military messiah to save the people from the Roman occupation, it was a wonderful how Jesus combines both a petty thief and “bandit.”  Jesus goes on in the chapter to say He is the Good Shepherd who lays down His life, completely in contrast to those calling for a military response to oppression.  

That does set the scene for what Jesus says in these verses, He is the gateway to the sheepfold.  That is not simply to heaven as it is sometimes stated, but to the church (thus eventually to heaven).  This is an important nuance, for the church is called out of the society by Jesus and only Jesus.  The sheepfold represents the church and we are to enter it by following Jesus’ call to us, just as the disciples did when He said to them at the sea of Galilee, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” (Mark 1:17) 

Jesus calls us to be the church.  The word “church” comes from a Middle English word referring to the “Lord’s House.”  Today we do use the word to mean the building in which we worship, but we understand that the church is not simply the building and/or what occurs in the building.  Rather it is the mission of the Body of Christ that defines church.  In our Bible the word “church” is used once by Jesus.  Jesus says in Matthew 16:18, “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”  Now it sounds like Jesus is using the term church as a building, at least in a metaphor, as He will build it on a rock.  Of course when we use the word “rock” to refer to a person, it is a metaphor about their character, but more importantly the word we translate as church does not have the same root as the English word, it is not a word for a building at all.  The word is more closely related to the definition of church we have come to understand, the mission of the Body of Christ.

The word is Ecclesia and it was a word used to describe a group of people gathered or assembled.  Specifically gathered and assembled for a specific, generally political reason.  Not unlike how we assemble people for jury duty.  The word refers not to a physical building at all, but a group gathered for a specific purpose.  Called.  The church is inherently the group called and those assembled by Jesus. 

I believe that the prophet Isaiah understood this when he wrote,

Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.’ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’ (Isaiah 6:6-8)

Jesus the Good Shepherd, the gate, calls each of us, and has triumphed over death with the last needed sacrifice.  The altar has been appeased, so that our sins are blotted out and our guilt departed, so we can hear Jesus asking and calling.  We answer, “Hear am I; send me!”

The Great Commission Begins

Matthew 4: 12-23

When I was in High School, my friends and I would “hang-out” in the library.  This was in part because we were generally nerds either on the debate team or National Honor Society, or both.  For fun we would scour the microfilms and microfiche for interesting articles or pictures.  It was our internet.  We would debate and make games on various information and thus for fun we would debate the meaning of certain words.  We would look them up in the various dictionaries and determine who had a better grasp of the meaning of the word in question.  I can clearly remember the time we were looking in the “W’s” and I saw the definition for woman.  I know we were not looking up the meaning of that word, for even though we certainly did not understand women, we were smart enough to know the dictionary would be of no value to us to understand.  What I did notice was the small “n” and small “v” in the definition.  I knew that woman was a noun, but I had never thought of the word as a verb.  I then looked around the library and realized it was womaned by great librarians.  (It is true that not every dictionary has woman as a verb, but it is clear that it was once a verb, meaning “to equip or staff with women” or “to put into the company of a woman” as per Dictionary.com)  The point of this, is not about inclusive language, but that a word can mean something to us today, and we lost part of the meaning, and specifically in this case a tense.

Today’s word is μαθητεύω (Matheteuo).  Which in the ancient Greek was a verb, yet it is often translated as a noun.  The word is disciple as a verb, or “to make disciples.” In today’s scripture, we learn of Jesus’ first call of His disciples, near the sea of Galilee.  This is actually really where the Great Commission begins, with Jesus’ preaching, teaching, and healing, and at the crossroads of Israel and the Gentile nations.  This was not understood in entirety until the resurrection, when Jesus asks his followers to go back to Galilee and He gives them the Great Commission.  Matthew 28: 16-20

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’

They and thus we were told to do exactly this, and we see the term make disciples and miss that it really is a verb.  Even in English the word disciple is a verb and a noun.  The noun is someone that follows the teachings of someone, generally assumed Jesus, capitalized it means a member of our denomination, but the verb tense is considered archaic and means to teach.  Thus the above highlighted text should just say “disciple” or “teach,” for the “make disciples” hints that the goal is to make more nouns and not do the verb.  Hope that makes some sense.

Let us return to the fishing metaphor Jesus used when He called the first disciples.  When one fishes even for a living it is about getting fish, but there is a lot of knowledge and preparation that must be mastered to allow for the full nets.  This is hinted at in the scripture, first of all that James and John sat with their father, implying that they learned the vocation of fishing from him, and they sat their mending their nets.  This reminds me of the adage, “watch the pennies and the dollars will follow.”  A good fisherman would know that there is a lot of preparation, knowledge, patience, and skill, to be awarded with the fish.  Even today when we successfully accomplish something that we did with preparation, knowledge, patience, and skill, we rightly thank God. 

When we try to fulfill the Great Commission we must remember that the first Disciples were told they would be fishing for people, and as fishermen, would understand the metaphor as the work they would do for God to provide the outcome.  The word, μαθητεύω, should be a verb to us and let the noun be for God.  Just as when I lower someone into the baptismal waters, it is God, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus, who baptizes, not I the pastor, I am just there doing.  We are to teach, to disciple and as any good teachers will tell you when you teach you learn, and God will make disciples.