A sermon by the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, Associate Professor of New Testament, given on December 1, 2006, in Christ Chapel

Feast of St. Andrew

And God said, Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky. So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves of every kind with which the waters swarm and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them saying, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let birds multiply on the earth. And there was evening and morning, the fifth day.

Ted Ames is a commercial fisherman in Stonington, Maine and his specialty is ghost or remnant schools of cod. In addition to being a fisherman, Ames is a historical ecologist. He takes oral histories of aging fishermen about their routes and their catches, the years when fish stocks were plentiful and the ones when they began to disappear and with that anecdotal information and his training in marine biology, he charts the spawning grounds and migration patterns ancient cod. He hopes that his archeological efforts will provide clues to restoring the gulf to health. Today the cod is nearly gone, schools tracked by sonar of factory ships. Their huge nets take the fish and scrape the bottom clean. “Those factory trawlers make one tow,” Ames says, “and the crew can take a vacation for fifteen years, because nothing’s coming back. “Having stripped one ground, the ship moves to another. Entire populations of fish can be erased.” The old fishermen Ames interviews recall their methods: “We used to run off with just a watch and a compass, thick of fog, run off at night, set out trawls, hang a kerosene lantern on your flag. First class equipment.”

[Frank and I were once out on a boat in the fog in the bay in the thick fog. How do you know which way you’re going? We asked. The captain grumbled offhandedly: “the color of the water.”

Fishermen survived by knowing things about fish that other fishermen didn’t know. If you’re going to fish, you must read the bottom. Ted Ames tells the journalist writing his profile: “when someone like you looks at the bay, you see the top of the water. When I look I see the bottom too. I know this is shoal here, there’s sandy bottom over there, and rocks and a ledge there. That’s your stock-in-trade. You have knowledge that land people don’t have, and you’re attuned to finding things.”

At one point Ames points to a boat closer to the horizon: “That’s a nephew of mine, he said. “Some people have a talent for catching things ands some don’t, and he does, so he’s a joy to watch.”

The author of the profile of Ames writes:

“ Ames ambition is not merely to restore the populations of cod; it is also to restorer the vitality of the gulf, which he regards as a collection of species, divided into settlements, each dependent on its denizen’s well being. . . . He believes the government quota policies do not adequately protect spawning areas and nursery grounds – the places where young-of-the-year fish take shelter. It doesn’t allow for the fish’s gathering in order to migrate, and their vulnerability on such occasions. It takes no account of the interdependence of species. It treats an increase in the numbers of herring, say, as an opportunity to take more of them, when the increase might represent the stock on which a more desirable species, - cod for example – might feed the following year. If the herring are gone, the cod, trying to recover, might fail to thrive.” <Alec Wilkinson, “The Lobsterman,” The New Yorker, July 31, 2006 , 56-65.>

In the biblical imagination, the many, many kinds of fish in the sea imaged God’s infinite creativity – divine fecundity - the sea swarming with living creatures. Gospel accounts of the disciples catching fish of every kind, so heavy that their nets would break, spoke of Christ’s divine involvement with creation providing bountiful provisions for his people.

As Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee , he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea -- for they were fishermen. 19 And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 21 As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. 22 Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.

On this feast of Saint Andrew we celebrate the overlooked brother of Peter, called by Jesus to convert from unwavering focus on finding and catching fish to concentrated attention on the kingdom of heaven. As disciples they would gather people, teach them, enlist them, adopt them into the ecclesia, the church of God . We as disciples and evangelists are called also to this same mission, figured in the gospel language as becoming “fishers of people.”

As the seas themselves are endangered, threatened to become nothing but “slime eels and worms,” our very images for God’s creation are shaken. If we are to use fishing as allegory for evangelizing, I suggest on this St. Andrew’s day that Ted Ames might be our model fisherman. He and the fishermen of the generation before industrial trawlers, who were wise to be able to see and to know the bottom as well as the surface. For our preaching and teaching we would not rely on sonar, but on our wits and a watch and a compass and a kerosene lamp. The fish in the sea, the peoples and cultures of the world we would not consume and overpower but value /appreciate as species, interconnected created by God to swarm and play, and to thrive as the gulf of Maine restored in Ted Ames’ imagination. May we read the bottom. May we be attuned to finding things. May we treat the object of our seeking with respect.

“That’s a nephew of mine, he said. “Some people have a talent for catching things and some don’t, and he does, so he’s a joy to watch.”

Thanks be to God.