Fishing on Sunday

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. -- 1 Corinthians 15:50

This would seem to say that the kingdom of God is completely out of reach of flesh-and-blood, material entities.  Yet Jesus Himself spoke frequently of how we might strive to enter into the kingdom.  Both He and John the Baptist preached that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand”.  In the prayer He taught His disciples, we read, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  Also when we read Christ’s parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl of Great Price, the Lord is telling us that we must give up everything if we would gain the kingdom.  The very next parable in Matthew’s gospel describes the kingdom as a net cast into the sea that brings out fish of all kinds – large, small, acceptable and unacceptable.  It suggests that many are lured by the kingdom, but not all find a home therein. 

Though Paul is primarily addressing the death of believers and the necessity of a resurrection both of the Lord and of His saints, our transformation out of the flesh does not begin with physical death, for, “those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”   In order to be a part of the kingdom one must belong to Christ which can only happen if the Spirit of God dwells in us.  But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.  If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you (Romans 8:8-11).  That is a new kind of life, a life that is eternal in its nature, not just its duration.  This mortal begins to put on immortality.  It's almost like being a little pregnant, but it is true.

In the same way and at the same point, our death to the flesh begins as we are drawn into the kingdom.  Maybe we should take a closer look at the Parable of the Dragnet:  Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind.  When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the bad.  So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 13:47-50).  Normally we think of each fish as a person who is judged by God’s standard, i.e., Christ, to be worthy or unworthy of inclusion in the kingdom.  That is correct, but there is another way to look at it.  I caught, filleted, and deep-fried a couple of fish this past weekend.  They are, as animals, quite simple.  You could not construct a human being out of hundreds of fish – except, to some extent, by the process of a person digesting said fish.  We are far more than the sum of our parts; yet there are parts to us. 

When by His Spirit the Lord draws us into His kingdom, if we are willing to surrender ourselves completely to Him, He will sort through us like the fisherman opening his net.  Some of those seemingly alive parts of us -- “raw and wiggling” as Gollum prefers them – are acceptable while the Spirit must dispose of other parts.  He is separating "the evil from the righteous".  The flesh cannot enter in, and all that is flesh that must be consigned without mercy to the furnace of judgment.  Weeping and gnashing of teeth indeed is present there. 

How I have wailed over my weaknesses, often less because I could not overcome them than out of fear that I might lose them and lose, in the process, something I thought of as an essential part of my identity.  Have you ever said, “that’s just me”, or of another, “that’s just him” with regard to a foible or “eccentricity”?  It is a sacrifice to surrender those ugly, useless, worthless fish.     

Under the Law, God decreed that the fires of the altar might burn throughout the night for the burnt offering.  Those fires would, nevertheless, from time to time, need to be lit and fueled.  In the kingdom, the fire is never quenched.  There are flames always patiently waiting to consume the flesh we will sacrifice that we may pass clean through the gates.