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It might surprise you that in Luke’s telling of Jesus’ ministry, Jesus and Simon weren’t strangers when Jesus stepped on to Simon’s boat. Simon had invited Jesus into his home after meeting him at the synagogue sometime before. And Jesus went to his house, and healed Simon’s mother-in-law of a fever. Simon might have been surprised at the end of his nightly fishing to have Jesus come on his boat but at least they weren’t strangers to each other.

The audacity comes in when this mason or carpenter from land-locked Nazareth tried to tell Simon, who grew upon these waters and made a living fishing… most nights, that Jesus would tell Simon how to fish. The nets would be visible in the water during the sunshine. Not a very efficient way of fishing.

But when the nets came up full, so full they needed their partner boat to help, Simon knew this wasn’t just some random teacher and healer passing through town. It seemed he knew he was in the presence of the Divine.

There was an idea among some, among some of the religious elite and powerful, that if you didn’t participate in the temple life, in the worship and sacrifices, you were sinning. And it was hard to leave, and expensive to travel, and not everyone could get away or could make the journey. Maybe that was what Simon was saying when he called himself a sinner, unworthy, that he hadn’t been living into what they said it meant to be worthy, spiritually.

And Jesus doesn’t forgive him. He tells him to not be afraid, and to follow him, to become one who fishes for people. And Simon does. It was the best, most successful fishing trip he ever had and he leaves it for someone else. Jesus calls him with all the skills that he has and says, let’s re-focus them.

It took all of Georgia Gilmore’s willpower not to explode at the driver of the crowded bus in Montgomery, Ala., one Friday afternoon in October 1955.

She had just boarded and dropped her fare into the cash box when he shouted at her to get off and enter through the back door.

“I told him I was already on the bus and I couldn’t see why I had to get off,” she recounted a year later at the trial of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as quoted in the book “Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott” (1997).

But after collecting herself, she complied and stepped off the bus. Before she could get back on, however, the driver sped off. Right then she vowed never to ride the buses again.

Two months later, after another Montgomery bus rider, Rosa Parks, was arrested after refusing to give up her seat to a white man — a pivotal moment in the civil rights struggle — Gilmore resolved to join a community meeting at the Holt Street Baptist Church to talk about injustices toward African-Americans. She sensed that a movement was afoot.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/obituaries/georgia-gilmore-overlooked.html

When Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and others met at the Holt Street Baptist Church to hold meetings of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), Gilmore was there selling fried chicken sandwiches to the folks who had gathered. Gilmore organized Black women to sell pound cakes, sweet potato pies, fried fish and stewed greens, pork chops and rice at beauty salons, laundromats, cab stands, and churches. Gilmore then immediately reinvested her profits in the city-wide bus boycott aimed at desegregating public transportation.

The funds she raised helped pay for the alternative transportation system that Black communities relied on during the 382-day bus boycott. There were hundreds of cars, trucks, and wagons that transported workers to and from their jobs each day and Gilmore’s cooking helped pay for the insurance, gas, and repairs that kept the system running.

Gilmore and a collection of other Black women organized under the group name “the Club from Nowhere,” and raised hundreds of dollars a week. Their earnings were donated each week to the MIA. Gilmore leveraged her strengths and her community to produce capital that was crucial to keeping the boycott alive. Inspired by food, anchored by community, and driven by a relentless pursuit of justice, Gilmore reminds us all that we have a role to play in the revolution!

https://www.northwestharvest.org/news-insights/womens-history-month-georgia-gilmore/

After that, Miss Georgia grew the group to a large network of Black maids, cooks, laundress, and service workers who prepared food like pork chops, greens, mac and cheese, fried chicken, and cake. MIA meeting attendees and boycott supporters knew to look for Miss Georgia and her friends “in the parking lot and on the front steps of the [Black churches]” for hot food to eat after they rushed from work to the meetings. [iii]

The logic behind the group’s name was evident when Miss Georgia dropped the Club from Nowhere’s funds into the collection plate at each meeting: the money came from nowhere — an unknown group of Black women. MIA used the money to partially support the drivers and upkeep cars used in the carpool system that transported Black folks in Montgomery. Around the same time, Inez Ricks founded a similar group in West Montgomery called the Friendly Club. The Club from Nowhere and Friendly Club had fundraising competitions to see who could raise the most money. Since then, Miss Georgia has inspired other Black womxn, like Martha Hawkins who opened Martha’s Place in Montgomery in the 1980s and still running today, and Kia Damon’s Supper Club from Nowhere, also currently active.

https://www.mdcinc.org/2022/08/23/southern-black-womens-presence-in-invisibility-miss-georgia-gilmore-the-club-from-nowhere/

King lived a few blocks from Gilmore and was a fan of her cooking and her activism. “Whenever VIPs would come to town, he would always have Miss Gilmore cook up a batch of chicken,” Nelson Malden, King’s one-time barber in Montgomery, recalled in a 2005 interview with NPR. “When she was fired from her restaurant [job], Rev. King said, ‘Well, why don’t you go into business for yourself?’ “

So she did. With King’s support, Gilmore turned her house into an informal restaurant.

“[Robert F.] Kennedy came, [Lyndon] Johnson been here – Dr. King brought him,” Gilmore’s son, Mark Gilmore, who died in 2008, told NPR in 2005. (That NPR story from 2005 features many voices who knew Gilmore and is really worth a listen.)

“Gilmore’s house became a clubhouse for King,” Edge writes, and often the first stop for people in the civil rights movement who visited Montgomery. “When King arrived in Montgomery during the 1965 march from Selma, he beelined to Gilmore’s kitchen for pork chops.”

Gilmore died on the 25th anniversary of the civil rights march from Selma. She’d spent the morning preparing chicken and macaroni and cheese to feed people marching in observation of the anniversary. Her family served that food to those who came to mourn her.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/01/15/577675950/meet-the-fearless-cook-who-secretly-fed-and-funded-the-civil-rights-movement

Georgia had the call, it took who she already was and turn her world on its head. She feed the movement, she fed the movement makers, she hosted the changing world right there in her kitchen.

And here’s the thing, she did it for those who were on the margins, those oppressed, the poor, the forgotten. She did it in the name of liberation and justice. She was living out what Jesus quoted last week from Isaiah: to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free. (Luke 4).

See, when we read this story of the calling of the disciples, we have often, always, read it as if the goal of fishing for people is bringing people into the fold of Jesus. But Jesus was never really concerned about having a large group of people, he was not always saying what would bring in the crowds. In fact, often the crowds would leave upset, townfolk would run him out of town, some tried and some succeeded to kill him. He wasn’t really concerned about building a mega, let’s say, church.

“There is perhaps no expression more traditionally misunderstood than Jesus’ invitation to these workers to become ‘fishers of men.’ This metaphor, despite the grand old tradition of missionary interpretation, does not refer to the ‘saving of souls,’ as if Jesus were conferring upon these men instant evangelist status. Rather, the image is carefully chosen from Jeremiah 16:16, where it is used as a symbol of Yahweh’s censure of Israel. Elsewhere the ‘hooking of fish’ is a euphemism for judgment upon the rich (Amos 4:2) and powerful (Ezekiel 29:4). Taking this mandate for his own, Jesus is inviting common folk to join him in his struggle to overturn the existing order of power and privilege.” (Ched Myer: Binding the Strong Man, p. 132)

Jeremiah 16:16 I’m going to send hordes of fishermen to catch them, declares the LORD. Afterward I will send a party of hunters to hunt them down on every mountain, hill, and cave.

Amos 4:2 The LORD God has solemnly promised by his holiness: The days are surely coming upon you, when they will take you away with hooks, even the last one of you with fishhooks.

Ezekiel 29:4 I will set hooks in your jaws; I will make the fish from the Nile’s canals cling to your scales. I will drag you out of the Nile’s canals, and also all the fish from the Nile’s canals clinging to your scales.

I will admit, it makes Ched Myer an outlier when interpreting this story. But we do know, from last week, that Jesus knew the teachings of the prophets. And it is worth wondering, if they were just fishing to collect people, what were the people suppose to do afterward. And I think that answer goes back to the Isaiah text. I think Jesus inviting Simon to follow him because “We’re saving souls” might not be as compelling to him, a laborer in an occupied land as, “Come-on, we’re fishing out the powerful and putting them in their place.”

And it does matter that Jesus was making that was calling them to do that with non-violence but they didn’t really get that yet. It might take a few reminders.

And it matters that they, that Simon, left everything. When he turned his back on the catch, it’s a similar word to repent, to turn away from, to set in the right direction. It wasn’t just giving up the best catch ever, it was, like baptism, setting on a different path that was counter to the expectations of the world.

But they could bring their fishing nets. Or at least their fishing skills, and use them on this new path. This path that worked for justice and mercy, liberation and abundance.

That is what Miss Georgia was doing in Selma, feeding people, raising funds, it was the work of justice and liberation.

It has been quite a year this week. And somewhere in the middle of it, we got a glimmer of fishing for people.

Bishop Budde of the Episcopal Church and whose area of supervision includes the National Cathedral, preached at the Prayer service for unity the day after the inauguration. Did you know, this was the first year, I assume in many, that the inauguration committee is new president, didn’t plan the service and the speakers at it?

Anyway, Bishop Budde spoke of compassion and humility and love. She spoke to the president pleading for mercy for those who are afraid for their lives, their families, their marriages, for the immigrant and the LGBT folk.

Perhaps she was fishing for people. Maybe she was fishing to call out, to reveal, bring to the surface the powerful and those who have used Christianity to prop up the powerful. And maybe she was fishing for people to remind others that there are other ways of reading the gospels, ways that seem to honor Jesus of the Nazareth synagogue. Jesus of Simon’s boat in the Galilee. Jesus who will carry the cross, not affix others on it.

So that’s the question. Will you leave the ways of this world behind and follow Christ? Will you let go of what the world dreams as success to find the abundance in Christ? Will you, again and again, return to the way of Jesus because we will wander away? Will you use who are, and who you are becoming, to fish for justice and mercy and liberation, and build the beloved community?