In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
There
was a father and son who had become estranged from each other. The cause of the
estrangement really doesn’t matter, but the rift in the family was real. At the
urging of wife and mother in this family, the father and the son begrudgingly
agreed to go on a fishing trip to patch things up. They got in the car and
spent the three hour drive in awkward silence. Eventually, they arrived at the
river that they had grown up fishing in, but before they could even get the
bait on their lines, the silence had been broken. The argument started over
what sort of bait would be best to use, but at least they were talking to each
other. Somehow, by the grace of God, one of them put their finger on the source
of their estrangement, and their yelling turned into crying, which turned into
a hug of reconciliation. They fished the rest of the day and didn’t catch a
thing. When they got home, a neighbor asked them if they caught anything. They
said “Nope.” And the neighbor said, “So the fishing trip was unfruitful.” This
is a sermon about missing the point.
