I love the imagery we have in our Gospel reading, about a fishing net full of all kinds of fish, in which the fisherman sorts out the good from the bad. This image is compared to our eternal life, when the righteous will be separated from the wicked. And what we value here on earth and judge to be worthy might be very different from the criteria God uses. When I lived in Ecuador at the mission site located in the tropical forest on the coast of the country, you can imagine that we ate a lot of fish and seafood. There was this one fish that we ate often that had a very tough skin on it and that had to be smoked over a wooden fire and then marinated for several days before it could be cooked and eaten. It was the shredded and when it was served the consistency was similar to pulled pork. For a long time, I was not sure what this was. It was not until the end of my time in Ecuador that I realized that I was eating stingray. It was once considered a junk fish by the people, more often thrown out than eaten, but it later became a prized delicacy.
Jesus uses parables to describe the kingdom of God since it is so different from our reality here on earth. May we recognize those aspects of God’s kingdom that are with us in the present age.
No comments:
Post a Comment