Tasked with Net Work--July 31, 2026

Tasked with Net Work--July 31, 2026

[Jesus said:] “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 13:47-50)

All right, let's face it: this is a pretty harsh-sounding story on the lips of Jesus, and we might not actually want to explore it any further, because it seems so violent, hopeless, and literally damning.  Many of us heard this parable as part of a longer passage this past Sunday in worship, and I'll bet a good many of us put it out of our minds immediately after, just because it is so troubling.  

And maybe in particular, this passage just seems so different from the other kinds of stories Jesus tells--ones which are more open-ended, hopeful, and redemptive.  How does an illustration that concludes with bad fish being thrown out and "the evil" being thrown into "the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" come from the same storyteller who dared us to imagine a long-lost son being welcomed home despite all his failures and disrespect for his family, or the lender who cancels astronomical debts at the drop of a hat?  How can the same Jesus who boldly declares that God "is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked" in the Sermon on the Mount also depict people being thrown like rotten fish into the fire or the trash heap? It's understandable, then, why we might want to put these verses out of our minds and only focus on the stories that don't make us so uncomfortable.

So, fair warning: if you keep reading, we'll be resisting that urge and digging deeper into this story of Jesus rather than ignoring it or pretending it isn't there. And like a wise Bible teacher has said (I think it was Renita Weems), we will attempt to wrestle with this text like Jacob and not let go until it blesses us.  This is your last chance to close the tab, swipe to another post, or move on with your day. Here we go.

Still here? 

Ok, well, I think there are two things about this parable that need to be said, while admitting that the imagery of comparing anybody to a rotten fish makes us squirm.  The first is that this story is ultimately about the triumph of good over evil.  Does rottenness get the last word at the end of the day?  No--not at all, Jesus insists. For folks in Jesus' audience, who saw daily evidence of the cruelty and corruption of the Roman Empire, or the crookedness and cheating of tax collectors from among their own people, or the frequent hypocrisy of the Respectable Religious Leaders, it sometimes had to look like wickedness was invincible and inevitable.  If all your life, you've seen crooks get away with their schemes and brutal tyrants go unpunished and unthwarted, it is actually a word of hope to have Jesus say, "When all is said and done, their violence and cruelty will not get the last word.  And their rottenness will not ultimately corrupt or contaminate what is good and beautiful and worthy."  Despots and dictators like to imagine that they will reign forever and their legacies will be eternally enshrined in marble statues, triumphal arches, and engraved stone monuments--and here Jesus dismisses all of them like bad fish.  If you have been suffering under the bootheel of some wicked empire, it is deeply good news to hear Jesus say they will not rule forever.  They do not have God's endorsement or approval, no matter what they say, and God will not let them get the last laugh.  In a time like ours, too, despots and autocrats around the world often seek to break the spirits of their critics and subjects so they will give up on hoping that things could be different or better. And over against those efforts, Jesus' story insists that in the end, justice will be done, wrongs will be put right, and rottenness will not ruin goodness forever.  When we feel ourselves tempted to give up into despairing cynicism about the world, Jesus' story says, "Every cruel Caesar, every dictator, and every tyrant who thinks he's the Big Fish will eventually be tossed into the dustbin of history, don't you worry. They will not hold power or threaten you forever."  And on the days when we are at our most jaded, we need that assurance.

The second thing I think we need to see in this parable is that despite Jesus' insistence that evil will not triumph in the end, he is equally clear that is it not our job to weed out or destroy the bad fish ourselves.  Sorting out who are "the righteous" and who are "the unrighteous" is not our prerogative, much less dispatching the wicked and segregating out the good.  That is decidedly God's role, and God will use God's own heavenly host ("the angels") to do the work of sifting and separating when that is to be done.  It is not ours to resort to cruelty in order to get rid of the cruel, or to employ brutal violence in order to rid the world of the brutal and the violent.  It is up to God, both to identify evil and to dispose of it, which takes those tasks entirely out of our hands.  

And at least a part of what this means is that God is willing to live with the world as it is, in the mixture of goodness and badness together, for the present time, rather than to wipe out the whole thing in the name of throwing out the "bad fish" right now.  If you are the fisherman casting your nets into the open water, the first priority is catching whatever you can. While you are out at sea, the thing to do is just haul in as many fish as possible.  You want to get as many good fish as possible, not spend your time tossing bad ones back right away.  You can wait until you are back at the docks to worry about that.  And in Jesus' telling, if God is like the fisherman, then the immediate moment is just a time for pulling in as many people as possible--now is not the moment for zapping people, smiting people, or even labeling people as "unacceptable" or "unworthy." At the present time, the priority is reaching as many people as possible.

In this regard, the parable of the good and bad fish is much like Jesus' parable about the wheat and the weeds growing together in the same field.  Yes, Jesus assures us, there will come a time when the weeds will be pulled up and sifted out so they don't get mixed up with the good wheat.  But in the meantime, God is willing to live with wheat and weeds, "good" and "bad" together, in the world, for the sake of keeping the good.  And in that story, too, Jesus emphasizes that when the time for sifting and sorting comes, it is not our job, but God's to do.

That point is critically important: Jesus never gives his disciples authority to decide who's "in" and who's "out," or to label who is "worthy" and who is "unworthy" of God's care.  After all, the person I am certain is a hopelessly unrepentant sinner might turn out to become a dedicated witness of the gospel (ask Saul of Tarsus, aka the Apostle Paul about that).  And on the flipside, the folks who present themselves as the models of public piety might really be the religious fakers and hypocrites Jesus was constantly warning us about.  God isn't fooled, and when the time comes around for putting fish in the right bins or cutting down the harvest and sifting out the weeds, God is perfectly capable of handling that job, thank you very much.  Jesus knows full well that we (especially we Respectable Religious Folks) have a way of deputizing ourselves to rid the world of those we deem irredeemably evil, and he puts a stop to it with this parable.  Jesus has not given us permission to wipe out  indiscriminately the people we think are wicked or terrible, nor has he authorized us to label people into piles of "righteous ones" and "evil ones."  That's important to say, because history is tragically full of episodes of people using their power to kill, remove, or harm others that they have labeled "wicked" or "evil" and done so by telling themselves they have God's endorsement to do so in the name of "righteousness."  From the Crusades to the Inquisition to the Doctrine of Discovery that led to the colonization, dehumanization, and extermination of peoples in North and South America, to the Holocaust, to wars today fought in the name of "getting rid of those evildoers" we have been telling ourselves we had God's support to vanquish our opponents because THEY were wicked and WE were good--because THEY were the bad fish and WE were the ones (we told ourselves) authorized to sort through the catch in the nets.  We were wrong.  Jesus does not give us this authority; it is God's and God's alone.

In that light, this story is actually meant to put a check and a hold our impulse to do violence to others in the name of religion or righteousness.  As Blaise Pascal put it, "People never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." But if we actually listen to Jesus, precisely in this story, it becomes clear that God does not authorize us to destroy our enemies or wipe out those we have labeled as "wicked" or "pagan" or "unrighteous" out of some sense of being authorized to rid the world of evil. God is still committed to putting the universe right at the last, and God will indeed deal with evil in God's own way and time--but God has not authorized the followers of Jesus to launch violent crusades to wipe out the ones we think are "unrighteous." God reserves the right to turn even the staunchest opponent into a disciple, after all, and God gets to be the One who decides how to deal with human beings at our worst.  Taking this story of Jesus seriously will actually pull us back from committing monstrosities in the name of fighting monsters, and from doing evil ourselves in the name of fighting supposed evil.  We are entrusted at most with net work, not with fish sorting.

That may not make this parable a warm and fuzzy one for us, but it does tell us two things we deeply need to know for this moment in history.  God is still committed to the triumph of good and that evil will not get the last word, but that is entirely God's call for how to accomplish it, not ours.  We have hope in God's promised victory and a world put right, and we are humbled by Jesus' story to learn that we are not the ones deputized to sort out who is "good" and who is "bad." God has chosen to love us, after all, even at our worst.  Knowing that will always put a story like this in a different light.

We step out into the day now equipped with assurance that God will put things right at the last, and with the humility that God has not delegated it to us to throw anybody away like bad fish.  At this point of the voyage, at most we are just called to help pull in the nets.

Lord God, work out your victory over evil in whatever ways you see fit, and enable us to trust in your ways.