Fifth Sunday in Lent, cycle A

John 11:1-45

The Gospel of John is not like the other three gospels.  It is put together to tell us the meaning of Jesus -- it’s more theology than history.  The last few Sundays we’ve been seeing some of Jesus’ miracles described by John.  Today’s is the last one he describes.  John calls the miracles “signs” beginning with the miracle at the wedding feast of Cana.  In addition to the seven miracles, John also describes seven statements that Jesus makes beginning with “I am”.  Today’s statement is probably the most profound when Jesus tells Martha that he is the resurrection and the life.

As I read this gospel, I notice something else.  Jesus’ conversation with Martha is sort of an intellectual one.  It begins with Martha saying “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  And then there is a dialogue about resurrection; Jesus promises that her brother will rise, and she replies that, yes, she believes that it will happen on the last day.  Jesus replies that he is the resurrection and the life, and asks Martha whether she believes this.  She sort of does, agreeing that he is the Messiah but not affirming Jesus’ claim in so many words.

Mary’s conversation is very different.  It also begins with the words, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” but Jesus does not enter into a dialogue with her.  Instead, he becomes “perturbed and deeply troubled” and asks the mourners to show him where the tomb is.  And that’s when Jesus wept, bringing some of the bystanders to remark, “See how he loved him” and others to find fault with Jesus.  And John again emphasizes that Jesus was visibly disturbed as he commands that the tomb be opened.  

Martha protests, pointing out that by now the body of Lazarus would stink; but the stone is rolled back, Jesus says a prayer and calls Lazarus, who comes out of the tomb, and as the gospel says, “now many of the Jews who were with Mary believed.” 

So this is a spectacular miracle.  Four days was long enough to be sure that the soul had left the body and gone to the underworld.  No power other than God could reunite it with the body.  And everyone expected that rolling back the stone would release a stench, because  by now the body would have entered into a state of decay.  

But there are some other points in this story.  Lazarus and Jesus were friends -- not like the apostles were friends.  Lazarus was an ordinary guy, probably worked with his hands like Jesus did, and took care of his sisters.  I suspect Lazarus wasn't perfect.  Probably got upset with Martha who seems pretty bossy.  Probably would get upset with Mary in the near future, when she took the only valuable thing they had, a jar of fine perfume meant to be used on the bride at her wedding, and broke it and used it to anoint Jesus.  Lazarus was ordinary.  He would go to bed at night wishing he had used his day better; he’d be upset with himself for losing his temper now and then. He would wonder if God could really love someone as unpromising and unaccomplished as he was. 

When  Jesus hears about Lazarus, he is relatively safe.  He’s outside the part of Palestine that the Jewish authorities had the most control.  When he proposes to go to rescue his friend, Thomas voices what they all fear  -- to go to Bethany, a couple of miles from  Jerusalem, was to put themselves in severe danger.  But  Jesus goes anyway.  And I think he knows that this act will initiate the events that lead to his own crucifixion and death.  After all, John will tell us later, that the authorities decided to kill Jesus and Lazarus too, because so many people were coming to believe in him.  

As Jesus meets Mary the weight of what he is about to  do descends on him.  He's going to confront death itself, and in doing so will initiate the events which will end in his crucifixion.  And this is the point, Jesus is doing this so that his friend Lazarus might live.  Jesus is trading his one life for that of Lazarus.  He is going to ask his Father to call the soul back from the underworld into this decaying body, and the authorities will hesitate no longer, and within a few days he will be arrested.  

And perhaps that is the point that John is making -- not the raising of Lazarus from the dead -- we marvel at that, of course -- but that Jesus exchanges his life for that of his friend.  During these last few days of Lent, let us remember that what Jesus did for Lazarus he does for each of us.  He lays down his life in exchange for ours, not because we deserve it, but because he has chosen to be my friend and  yours.   

Fourth Sunday in Lent, cycle A

John 9:1-41

A miracle is when something happens for which there is no explanation.  In our age we can come up with explanations much more easily than those in Jesus' time.  After all, science now can answer questions that would have been impossible to answer years ago.  And if you know science and know something about statistics, you don’t have to worry about miracles -- you can make them go away.

Many years ago I had a patient with lung cancer.  Given his stage and general condition, he had about three months to live.  We didn’t have anything that worked in those days.  When I was discussing this with him, he said that all he wanted to do was stay alive until his granddaughter, whom he had raised, graduated from college.  That was seven months away.  He said he was praying for that.  Well, he made it, and he even got an extra month in.  At our last visit, he had lost about 50 pounds, needed oxygen, and couldn’t get out of his wheelchair by himself.  But he was cheerful, because he had seen his granddaughter graduate, but more importantly, he was convinced that he was the recipient of a miracle.  I wasn’t.  I knew that the prediction I had made was an average, and that there were people on both sides of that number, some who would die quickly and others who would go on longer than expected.  An average is an average.

But maybe it was a miracle.

I couldn’t come up with a scientific explanation for the man who was born blind and recovered his sight when Jesus smeared mud on his eyes.  So I asked my favorite artificial intelligence agent if she could find one (at least her voice sounds feminine) and sure enough after scouring the internet, she told me that psychological blindness was a very real thing, and there have been cases where a dramatic trauma cured the blindness.  So there you are. An alternative explanation.

And that’s what was happening back in the days of Jesus.  The apostles just accepted the fact that people with disabilities were probably sinners, or maybe their parents were -- after all some of the threats in the old testament suggest that curses on the parents travel down to the descendents.  Even though they had witnessed Jesus' miracles, a miracle for this guy was the last thing in their minds -- why would God work a miracle for a sinner, or the son of sinners?

The townspeople don’t believe in miracles either.  He looks like that blind guy, they say, but clearly he couldn’t be. No one has heard of a man who was born blind receiving his sight.  When they asked the man, he recounted his cure, but rather than believe, they brought him to the Pharisees. Our blind guy gives the same story, but the Pharisees answer that it couldn't be -- it happened on the sabbath, after all.  And God would never violate the sabbath, right?  So they ask the parents, who deny any involvement.  You would think they would be delighted, rejoicing that their son could see again.  But no, they say, “ask him yourselves, he is old enough to answer.  Their joy at their son’s cure was no match for their fear of being kicked out of the syinaogue.  

And back to the Pharisees.  This time on questioning the man born blind gives an argument that no one could refute logically.  “No one has ever opened the eyes of a man born blind.  If this man were not from God he could not do anything.”  That was the last straw.  They kicked him out the door.  

  Notice that the man born blind after being cured starts out  by attributing his cure to “a man named Jesus”.  As he is further questioned, he calls him a prophet. More questions, and he answers, he is someone from God.  And finally, he calls Jesus “Lord”.  

So maybe a miracle is not something that defies explanation.  Maybe a miracle is something that happens that challenges us to come closer to God, to know him better.  Maybe a miracle is when someone dear to us dies and we are challenged to make sense of the event.  Maybe a miracle is when something happens to us that requires all our efforts to stay faithfull, to trust in God -- and we do.  If that’s the case, God is working miracles all the time, miracles which are opportunities to become closer to Him.  In the story in the gospel, many people looked for other explanations rather than believe.  The man born blind does not.  He calls Jesus Lord, and will for the rest of his life.   

Second Sunday of Lent, cycle A

 Matthew 17:1-9

The apostles probably had a lot of different ideas about who Jesus was. Sure, he could work miracles -- they’d seen a few. At the time of the transfiguration, they had even seen miracles such as Jesus walking on water, quieting a storm, sending demons into pigs -- but you know human beings, then and now. The Pharisees witnessed his miracles and decided that he drove out demons by being in league with demons. And there were other healers in those days, pagan as well as Jewish. Could they heal as well? And if so, how? In any event, Jesus attracted a lot of people to follow him, but despite the miracles, a lot of folks decided it didn’t mean they should change their lives. And the apostles who traveled with Jesus couldn’t help but notice that he wasn’t that different from them; he got tired, he had to eat, walking on those roads he got dirty; on a hot day you could see sweat on his brow. And they would wonder -- is he just another healer? Is he a holy man, a prophet? Is he the messiah? And if he’s the messiah he doesn't look like a messiah! And they would ask, when is it going to happen? And he’d say, The Son of Man must suffer and die. It didn’t make sense so they would ignore it.

When I read about the transfiguration, I wondered how Jesus persuaded his disciples to climb the mountain with him. Maybe he invited all twelve but only Peter, James and John took him up on it. We know that later on when they came down the other nine were trying without success to drive a demon out of a boy. But it may have been nothing more than a desire to pray. We read many instances in scripture when someone ascends a mountain to pray. It’s a way to get away from the world and at the same time feel closer to God, even though we know God isn’t up there somewhere. Jesus is always making time to pray, where he can tune out the rest of the world. We read that after curing people in Peter’s village he withdrew to a deserted place to pray; and one time he told his apostles, after he had sent them out to preach and heal, that now was the time to withdraw and rest a while. You and I need this as well. I don’t know if you have a favorite place to pray or meet God on a regular basis, but one of the wonderful things that happens right here in Saint Mary’s is that there are times when we place Jesus on the altar so that people can come in and sit before him and pray.

When Jesus and his disciples get to the top of the mountain, the story tells us that he was transfigured before them, and was conversing with Moses and Elijah. Moses climbed a similar mountain to receive the ten commandments, and in his encounter with God he was transfigured as well; when he came down it says that no one could look at his face so he had to cover it. Elijah climbed a mountain and encountered God in a still small voice, not in thunder or lightning. And like Moses, he was changed and was strengthened to continue to do God’s bidding. Matthew and Mark both tell us they conversed; Luke tells us they conversed about what was to happen in Jerusalem -- his passion and death. In our moments of prayer when we sit in the presence of God we need to look carefully at our lives and ask God for wisdom and strength to face our futures, because there will be suffering, there will be death.

You can imagine how the apostles felt in the presence of this scene. Jesus, who up to then was their teacher, worker of miracles, and indeed, friend, is now revealed as much more than that, and it is all confirmed when the voice from heaven calls him “son”. Greater than Moses, the lawgiver; greater than Elijah, the prophet. Messiah, sure, but Son, a title given by God. Peter, sensing the miraculous nature of this moment, wants to prolong it and proposes that they build structures for the three. We human beings like to hold on to those moments that make life worth living. We remember anniversaries, birthdays, religious and public holidays, that in some way connect us with those great moments in the past. The Jews build little structures like the apostles were proposing during the feast of Succoth, to remind themselves of how they sheltered during their time in the desert with Moses.

But then the vision is gone and there is Jesus, dusty and sweating from the climb, his old self. And when those great moments happen to you and I, at some point we have to get back to the real world. Peter, James and John will never see Jesus the same way again; and in some way have been prepared to hold the little community together when Jesus is captured, condemned, suffers and dies. That’s what adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is supposed to do -- prepare us to re-enter the world renewed, strengthened and given wisdom.

So who was transfigured on the mountain? Jesus of course. But so were the apostles, who would never be the same. The presence of Jesus does that. And his presence is here in this Church all the time, but especially during adoration. Make it a point to come and visit him a few times during Lent, and be transfigured yourself.

First Sunday of Lent, cycle A

Matthew 4:1-11

As some of you know, Joan and I have a great grandchild, who as far as we can tell is the cutest little girl in the world.  She’s about seven months old now, and between her parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, she gets a lot of attention.  I think she must believe she is the most important person in the world.  But that made me think about myself.  I’ve always believed, deep in my heart, that I’m the most important person in the world, in fact, that I’m the center of the universe, and I don’t know how the world could get along without me.  Now my brain tells me I’m wrong.  But that feeling of being at the center of things is common to all of us -- it’s human nature.

In today’s gospel, Jesus has just come from his baptism when he heard the words of the Father:  “This is my beloved”.  And then he goes off to fast for forty days and forty nights, the same number of days Noah’s ark was afloat; the same number of years the chosen people roamed around before settling in the promised land.  And it’s not surprising that he was hungry. 

Someone said that he was hungry, not just for food, but because after all this time fasting, he began to wonder if he really was beloved.  Jesus must have felt very mortal when he ended his fast.  Forty days is enough to make you lose a fifth of your body weight; it’s enough to make you feel so weak that you have trouble getting up from a sitting position.  The Spirit leads Jesus into the desert -- maybe the fast wasn’t entirely voluntary.  Jesus is hungry for food, yes, but also for reassurance that he is beloved.

Satan tempts Jesus, first telling him in essence, “If you are God's beloved, why don’t you turn these stones into bread?  And Jess answers, “Man does not live by bread alone.”  Another way to put it is: My being God’s blessed one doesn’t depend on whether I am full or empty, rich or poor, well fed or starving.

Satan then shows Jesus the kingdoms of the world and offers them all to him if he worships him.  In other words, “If you are God’s blessed one, why are you a nobody?  Because at this point in his life Jesus was just another peasant, putting in long days of hard work,  but never getting ahead.  That’s the way most people lived.  But Jesus replies, “I may be a nobody, but I can still be God’s blessed one.  Being blessed has nothing to do with fame or power.”

The third temptation is put forward.  Jesus is taken up to a tower and dared by Satan to prove he is blessed by throwing himself off the tower.  Because surely if you are blessed, Satan seems to be saying, God won’t let anything happen to you.  Jesus replies, in essence,  “Being God’s blessed one doesn’t have anything to do with special privilege, or miraculous blessings.  I’ll take the stairs, like everyone else.”  

Jesus decides that after all, he is God’s blessed one.  And you are as well, and I am, and each of us here, no matter what our circumstances.

And fasting is a chance to be feasting.  We trade earthly satisfactions for heavenly ones.  Fasting is a discipline to remove distractions and sharpen our spiritual senses.  When I was in fourth grade, we were all asked what we were giving up for Lent.  Most of us were giving up candy, sometimes more specifically, certain kinds of candy like Hershey bars.  One of my classmates volunteered that not only was she giving up candy, but the dentist told her to.  It isn't that candy and the other things we fast from are bad -- at least they shouldn’t be-or we shouldn't be doing them at all.  God likes to see us delighted by what he has put in front of us.  But he made them so that we would seek him as the one who gave them to us in love.  But we tend to get hung up by what delights us instead of looking beyond.  Saint Paul talks about those whose “god is the belly”.  When we give something up for a little while, we are acknowledging its goodness and our weakness.  We are making the choice to feast our spirit on our Father rather than feast our bodies on what God has made.  

Jesus, having fasted, is strong enough to resist the temptation to doubt his specialness, that he is the beloved of God.  And your fasting should do the same.  When you have completed your Lenten journey may you be even more convinced that you are God’s beloved, God’s special child.

Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 5:13-16

When I visit Catholic residents in the nursing home, it’s very likely that the television is tuned to EWTN.  Oddly enough, it’s true of a lot of non catholic residents as well.  Most of the time the topic on television is religious news, or an interview of someone.  Sometimes it’s prayers being said, maybe the angelus.  Other channels are available, but it seems as though these residents find better company in EWTN.  

EWTN, the Eternal Word Television Network, currently has about 400 employees and brings in about 64 million dollars every year, much of it from donations and bequests.  It is a very transparent company compared with many tax exempt organizations.  Their annual financial report is accessible online.  

The history of EWTN is remarkable.  Rita Rizzo  was born in 1923 to parents who subsequently separated and eventually divorced.  Rita was raised by her mother and grandparents, living in poverty and moving frequently. She attended Catholic grade school and remarked once that she hated nuns, who were the meanest people on earth..  She went to a public high school where she was in a marching band.  She barely graduated, since during this time she held down two part time jobs to support her mother and help out her grandparents.  After graduation she worked as a secretary, She suffered from a chronic stomach problem which caused her to lose about 20 pounds.  Her mother brought her to a self-proclaimed mystic who urged Rita to make a novena to saint Therese, after which she had a conversion experience and all her symptoms disappeared..  She felt she had a  vocation and eventually took vows as a Poor Clare nun, with the name “Angelica of the Annunciation".  She suffered a bad fall resulting in problems walking which got worse.  She had a back operation which was partially successful, but for the rest of her life she had back pains and difficulty walking.  During this time she felt God was calling her to set up a monastery in the south.  With a few other poor Clare nuns she moved to Birmingham, Alabama, and she and other nuns began making fishing lures to support themselves, and they raised enough to begin the process of building a chapel.

It was during this time that her weekly conversations about the faith began to attract more and more people, and the bishop helped her set up weekly broadcasts and later videocasts of these talks.  Anyway, one thing led to another and she eventually founded EWTN, which produces television content and is accessible world-wide.  As her vision for the monastery and EWTN took shape, she got in the habit of making plans, with the expectation that God would step in where needed, and that helped.  Her biography is fascinating in this regard -- so many close calls where out of the blue someone came forth to give a donation or lend needed expertise.  She died in 2016 after a series of strokes that made her active involvement in her apostolate no longer possible.  EWTN and her convent in Irondale, Alabama, continues to thrive.

This remarkable story illustrates what Jesus is asking of his disciples.  He’s not calling them to something new, he’s reminding them that they are already called, that through his grace we all have salt and light, we are all part of the city on a hill.  Rita Rizzo started with nothing and suffered many setbacks.  Mother Angelica let what she was become what everyone could see -- salt of the earth and light of the world.

I see two things to take away from today’s gospel; first, you and I are already salt and light; we get the tools we need at Baptism -- to enrich the lives of others and to be people who show the world what being a follower of Jesus is all about.  Most of us are hampered from this vocation by false humility.  We are afraid to be like  Mother Angelica, even though we could be. Second, bearing salt and being light is meant to glorify God.  The gospel we read uses the words “give praise” but most translations as well as the Greek original use the word meaning “glorify”.  We toss that word around a lot in our prayers and liturgies.  I realized as I was studying this gospel that I didn’t know what “glorify” meant.  It doesn’t mean “praise”.  It means showing the world the goodness of something, in this case, our heavenly father.  Mary uses the same word in her song, where it's sometimes translated as “magnify” as in “my soul magnifies the Lord”.  

Today, let us ask ourselves, are we glorifying God with our lives? Are we salt, are we light?  If not, how can we let God take over and show us how we live the way Jesus calls us to live -- to be salt and light? 

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

 

Matthew 5:1-12

Someone sent me something on Facebook. The title was “What heaven really is, and why many people would not like it”. We imagine heaven to be a state of being in which all our desires are satisfied, and we live in complete happiness for all eternity. That’s probably true, but there are conditions, and some of us may not like them. That’s ok, because you don’t have to go to heaven. There are alternatives.

The author makes the following points:

First of all, heaven is not just about beauty, joy, peace, and so forth. At the core is union with God himself -- the awesome holy presence of God in myself. Second, heaven is the palace where God’s will is everything - nothing exists outside of His will. No pride, no stubbornness, no sin, no complaining; heaven is total surrender. Third heaven is pure holiness; holiness is not just avoiding sin, but it is becoming like God. Fourth, heaven is where nothing, but love remains -- not comfort, not gossip, grudges, revenge, selfishness. Fifth, heaven is eternal worship. Some of us start looking at our watches during the sermon. Heaven is unending praise, thanksgiving, adoration. If your prayer feels empty now, think of what it will feel like in heaven.

Many people like the idea of heaven, but few want to be transformed into someone suitable for heaven. Maybe hell is not fire and demons, but full of people who reject what heaven is -- people who want freedom without obedience, pleasure without holiness, God’s gifts without God Himself. Becoming holy on hearth is heaven’s training ground.

And that brings us to the beatitudes, the eight statements we’ve just heard in the gospel, and the ninth which warns us of the consequences of living that way.

Did Jesus just think of several random things and preach them? He starts with “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. That’s the introduction. The kingdom of heaven belongs to people who have emptied themselves out, who live to do the will of God, who turn their lives over to God.

When you read the next seven statements, they describe what it means to be pure of heart. It’s being someone who mourns. I never quite understood that, but I think it means someone who is sensitive to what is wrong with the world, and is moved to do something about it. It’s being meek. Not being walked on, but recognizing that other people have as much claim on the necessities of life, physical and spiritual, as you do.. IT’s desiring with all your energy, that true justice will prevail. Justice and righteousness are very similar; justice is about reward and punishment; righteousness is justice that seeks to transform through reward and punishment. It’s God’s justice; it’s why bad things happen to good people. It’s being merciful; it’s avoiding things which lead to sin or cause others to sin. That’s “clean of heart”. it's being a peacemaker. Many people like to stir up conflict; they go around saying, in effect, “let’s you and him fight!” They take pleasure in getting people riled up. Just check the internet. Many people live to make other people angry, to sew division. That will never get you into heaven. Jesus refers to righteousness again, when he tells us that the kingdom of heaven belongs to people who are doing something about righteousness -- remember, justice which transforms - even to the point of being persecuted.

And then Jesus looks at you directly, and promises that if you have decided to take him at his word and seriously try to live these beatitudes, you will probably meet a lot of resistance. You might even get your head chopped off, or burned at stake. It wouldn’t be the first or last time something like that happened to someone who tried with all their heart to follow the beatitude, to do what Jesus proposes. And if you are being persecuted and libeled for living this way, you know you are on the right track, you can look forward to heaven.

Heaven is there for the taking. God wants everyone to get to heaven. Jesus tells us that it takes more than just following the ten commandments; it requires allowing yourself to be transformed into someone who belongs in heaven, who is comfortable there.

That of course is the greatest argument for the existence of purgatory -- it’s the completion of God’s work to make us citizens of heaven. For some of us it won’t be long at all, or be very difficult. For others it might take a long time and a lot of work on God’s part to finish what was begun on earth. For some, they will take one look and say, “I don’t really want heaven, thanks anyway, God.” So use the time you have left in life to be the kind of person who will enjoy heaven.

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 4:12-23

Last Sunday we heard about John the Baptist testifying about who Jesus is. That was in the gospel of John. Now we are back in Matthew, whose gospel will be the main one of cycle A, the first of three annual cycles of readings. The Church hasn’t forgotten about the gospel of John; it’s very prominent in all three cycles during the period of time after Easter. So if you are at a party and there is a lull in conversation, tell them that a person who attends mass on all the Sundays and holydays for three years would hear 89.8% of the four gospels. At least that's what the internet told me.

In today’s gospel, Matthew wants us to know that Jesus is up there in the area of Capernaum because it fulfills a prophecy from Isaiah, that those northern provinces have been in darkness and now see a great light. With that as a prelude, Matthew describes the calling of four of the apostles. One of the themes of Matthew’s gospel is that Jesus is ushering in the kingdom of heaven. The signs of that are that the blind see, the lame walk, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. As Jesus goes about preaching and proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, we are supposed to notice that his presence and his message cause abrupt changes in the two sets of brothers, both of whom drop everything and immediately follow him. Later Matthew will tell us about his own conversion, using the name Levi, the tax collector who drops everything to follow Jesus.

But there is another character in this short gospel passage, a man named Zebedee. I can remember that whenever I would hear this gospel I would feel kind of sorry for Zebedee, watching his two sons leave the family business to follow a wandering preacher. I wonder how Zebedee felt -- angry? Disappointed? Maybe delighted to give up his sons to Jesus. But there must have been sadness.

Zebedee is an unusual name, not only in the bible, where it is used only in reference to the father of James and John, but also in the names that were popular at that time. The apostles, in fact, had common names -- in the writings of the Jews during those times, we find other men with similar names. And Zebedee never caught on as a name to give your child, unlike many Old Testament and New Testament names.

Zebedee was a real person. His name means “gift of God”. Other parts of the New Testament tell us that his wife was probably one of the later followers of Jesus, and her name was Solome. We find her mentioned in the passion stories as one of the women who met Jesus after his resurrection, and she is referred to as the mother of James and Joses, which was another name for John. She probably became a follower of Jesus because she had first followed her two sons. So she represents another loss for Zebedee.

I think a lot of us, probably most of us, can identify with Zebedee, especially those of us who are parents. As we raise our children, they gradually become their own persons. What we might want for them is often something they don’t want. We might like them to live close so that we can see them more often, but sometimes they move far away. Some of us, like Zebedee, might have built a business we would like to leave to them, and then we discover they don’t want to do that. Maybe we find joy in seeing how our kids turned out, but maybe there is a little sadness because they didn’t follow in our footsteps. When your last child leaves home, there’s a part of you that would like to see a time when the whole family got together again, not just for a day or so but like it used to be. Zebedee must have felt that way as well.

But maybe Zebedee, like his two sons, recognized that Jesus was ushering in the kingdom of heaven, and despite the sadness in his heart, he rejoiced that his two sons were singled out to be apostles, to help spread Jesus’ message, to guide the early church. But at the same time, someone had to run the boat, someone had to fish, because people depended on fishermen. Do any of you parents identify with Zebedee? I know I do.