From today's reading:
While the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening to the word of God,
he was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret.
He saw two boats there alongside the lake;
the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets.
Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon,
he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore.
Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.
What really struck me about this passage today was that Jesus decided it would be better to preach from a boat.
Now, in a literal interpretation of the Bible, this makes sense. The previous chapter tells us, "At daybreak, Jesus left and went to a deserted place. The crowds went looking for him, and when they came to him, they tried to prevent him from leaving them." Preaching from a boat certainly makes sense from the perspective of crowd control. To start with, he doesn't have to worry about being cornered--he can zip off if he wants to and do so in an inconspicuous way. It also means that the people will have to listen to him. These chapters are full of crowds looking for physical and miraculous healing from Christ. Although Christ can certainly heal people remotely, he seems to want to emphasize his teaching at this moment. He can probably do that better if the crowd is a little further away.
But this is obvious enough. What more can we pull out of the text?
Well, for starters, we have a curious detail that there are two boats.
Seems a pretty minor thing to note...exactly two boats.
My first instinct is to think Old and New Testament: the Old Covenant and the New Church.
The boats are empty, though. The fishermen aren't in them -- they are washing their nets, but they aren't currently in the process of catching any fish. The old priests have taken a break from their duties, and the new priests haven't yet started. It might even be significant that they are washing the nets. For the Old Testament boat, it brings to mind all of the Jewish laws about cleanliness. For the New Testament boat, it brings to my mind how the new priests are going to prepare nets for catching more followers on another day. One might think of this christening all those secular or pagan traditions that will become a means of bringing in the gentiles.
That one of the boats represents the Church seems more likely when you consider that only one of the two boats belongs to Simon Peter. It is in his boat that Christ. It is in Peter's boat Jesus catches fish:
After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch."
Peter as Pope leads the ship of the Church, but he is merely following orders from above. It is not Peter who teaches from the boat (although it is Peter who catches the fish). Christ taught the crowds from the boat -- just as he teaches the crowds through the Church. It certainly isn't the only place in the Gospels where such an allegory is used.
There are other places I could go with this. For instance, a boat over deep waters is bound to have some connection to Noah and the Ark, and Peter, like Noah, follows an seemingly absurd command to go to work and is rewarded for it.
And why is it important that these are fish that come up from the deep? Does it symbolize those furthest from God in pagan religions? Could it also be a foreshadowing of the harrowing of Hell (Christ redeeming those from the abyss)?
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