Death to Life: A Fishing Metaphor

I went fishing with my friend Curt a while back. We caught some big ones! Curt is a hard working farmer, loves God, has a great sense of humor, and is one of those guys who would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. Truly a great man. He showed me a good spot to fish since I'm still fairly new to this area, and haven't done much fishing lately. It felt great to reengage something I used to do a lot more of.

This picture is right before we filleted them. I won't show you any pictures after we filleted them...😛

As we were cleaning the fish, I started to wonder what it would feel like to be filleted alive. I mean, these fish were mostly dead by this point, but still... ouch.

All so I could enjoy some tasty fillets. I found a recipe online for a catfish sauce, smothered some fillets, and then grilled them. And they were quite tasty. I was nourished both in body and soul, because eating the fish I just caught does something good for my soul. I'm not sure if it's a macho man thing (*grunt* "I just caught my own dinner! I could survive in the wild! I'm basically Macgyver on steroids!" *grunt*) or if it's simply reconnecting me to the land, and I'm realizing how modern life often isolates me from it.

Anyway, the point is that these fish are a metaphor. They died to contribute to my living. And that sounds a lot like Jesus.

Many things die so that other things can live. It seems to happen a lot in this universe, this cycle of death to life. Fish die so people and animals can be nourished. Lots of different animals die so other animals and people can be fed. Plants die so other living things can eat them and live. Skin cells die and flake off so new cells can be born. Stars die and new stars are formed. In the fall and winter, much of the vegetation dies and then in the spring and summer--new life appears! This mysterious cycle of death to life can be seen everywhere, displayed in pictures and metaphors. It's like the whole creation is telling a particular story.

And it seems to be at the heart of the spiritual life. Jesus died to give us life. We have to go through a kind of death to find true life. "Whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:27). We have to abandon the false self to find the true self. And it's not just once, but a pattern that repeats itself over and over. The gospels tell the story of Jesus this way, in a pattern of his life leading to his death on a cross, and culminating in his resurrection. Death to Life.

And then the New Testament proclaims, "Christ is your life" (Colossians 3:4). Through the death and resurrection of Christ, our lives are joined with him so that we also die and are raised to new life, the life of Christ in us. And so we should expect the pattern of the Christ--life, death, resurrection--to also be true in us. We die to the old self, the way of sin and self-centered living, and become vessels of Christ's self-emptying love, broken and poured out for the sake of others so that they may also live.

That's the symbol and meaning of baptism: "Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life" (Romans 6:3-4).

It's also the meaning of Communion. In the mystery of the Lord's Supper, we ingest the bread and wine (or grape juice if you're a good Protestant), the body and blood of Christ, which nourishes us. Christ's death has become our life. "Do this in remembrance of me" (1 Corinthians 11:23-26).

I think most people have at least an intuitive sense that there is something true about this way of being in the world. The way to life is self-emptying, sacrificing, giving, even dying for the sake of another... or very simply, Love. When we live in Love, we are flowing with the river (1 John 4:16)-- the universal pattern of death to life. When we live self-centered lives, refusing Love, we are trying to swim upstream against the river. Over time it becomes pretty obvious which one leads to true life and which one leaves us exhausted, though all of us have a natural desire to swim upstream.

Take any relationship: marriage, family, friendships--they don't work unless we are flowing with the river. We have to be self-emptying, sacrificial, giving people if relationships are going to last. We have to die to that part of ourselves that wants to be self-centered, swimming upstream all by ourselves. To die to that part of ourselves is to let go and trust the river to carry us and take us home. It may seem like it costs a lot to give up our self-centered way of life, but the cost of swimming upstream in self-centered delusion is far greater. Letting go is a kind of death, but it leads to life.

All of life is filled with this sacrament of death to life. I wonder if that's why the scripture writers talked so much about giving thanks, since we're all in this constant give and take and we're all interconnected and everything is a gift from God. Only arrogance allows us to believe we are self-made individuals and that we don't need anyone or anything else.

I'll probably never look at fishing the same way again, and maybe you won't either, but that's just the way my weird brain works.