The Joy of Yarn
January 28, 2025
"Once while Jesus was standing beside the Lake of Gennesaret and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God..."
~ Luke 5:1
Activity of This Living God
If you ever feel the need to reflect on scripture in a brand-new light, spend some time unpacking scripture with our teenagers. In preparation for youth-led worship this coming Sunday, many of our teens gathered together to prepare. I have never heard exegetical work (the work of interpreting scripture with careful study) quite like this.
In his book Unpacking Scripture in Youth Ministry, Andrew Root writes, “The Bible is the greatest of treasures because it witnesses to the living God. The Bible is filled with a great deal to contemplate, but in the end the function of the Bible is to reveal the character and activity of this living God. We want young people… to encounter God, to give them eyes to see the action of God in their lives…”
Our scripture reading this week (in the New Revised Standard Version) concludes with “Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’ When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.” (Luke 5:10b-11) We read this together Sunday evening at Youth Group, and from a giant bean bag chair, with a mouth full of potato chips, one youth exclaimed, “Catching people!? Like they catch fish? That’s just wrong.”
Now, one could dismiss the comment as if it were meant to be a goading dig at the call of Jesus to the first disciples, but they would miss the deeper, vital, vulnerable questions being asked: How do we know we can trust Jesus? What is God doing?
We went on to talk about the importance of looking at one piece of the Bible (especially if it is a piece we do not understand) in light of the whole story of scripture. Before and after this conversation on the lakeshore with the first disciples, Jesus healed people, taught of God’s love and forgiveness, and gave a vision of possibilities for new life that folks had not imagined.
With the context in mind that we could trust that Jesus loved the people he was “catching”, we asked, “What does it mean to fish for people?” Our youth’s collective answer can be summarized as this:
Jesus was asking for help in bringing all different kinds of people together to truly know they are loved and to live in ways that share God’s love through faith, kindness, and care of all. We are invited to join in this work too.
God is at work in the world, and our teens are seeing it – even on giant bean bag chairs with potato chip crumbs. Maybe especially so.
