Rector's Reflection: By the Numbers, May 3, 2025

Beloved Members of St. Martin’s,

Numbers are fascinating. When I was a child, one of my favorite School House Rock Episodes was the very first one ever broadcast on January 6, 1973. It was called “Three Is a Magic Number.” I can still sing the entire song. But this little video made me curious about numbers—which was interesting since I didn’t particularly like math, since it didn’t come as easily to me as reading.

But I liked patterns. I noticed that you could always tell if a number was divisible by 3 by adding up the digits. If that smaller number was divisible by three, then so was the original number (144? 1+4+4=9. So 144 is divisible by 3. 273? 2+7+3=12, so it also is divisible by 3). This discovery got me through one very boring math class when I was in 6 grade-- AND it had the bonus of making the teacher think I was working on his assignment.

Three, of course, is the number of sides on a triangle, as the School House Rock song reminds us. And sometime around that time I leaned about something called “triangular numbers.” Triangular numbers are created from adding all the integers together in order. When you did this, no matter where you stopped, the numbers could be placed in a triangle shape, starting with 1+2. So, 1+2=3; 1+2+3=6; 1+2+3+4=10; 1+2+3+4+5=15 (like when you rack up pool balls). And so on.

Numbers in scripture and theology almost always have a special meaning—and lots of them are multiples of 3, come to think of it. First, and foremost, the Trinity. In the first creation account in Genesis, humans are created on the sixth day. The hours of Jesus’s crucifixion are defined in 3s, and he is nailed to the cross at “the ninth hour.” There are nine fruits of the Holy Spirit. There are 12 tribes of Israel and 12 apostles. Then there is 7 as representing perfection, and 40 as representing testing.

Why do I bring this all up now? Because this weekend’s gospel contains a very specific number, and that is both often easy to overlook on the part of the reader and a deliberate choice on the part of the author. In our gospel portion from John 21, the Risen Jesus finds the apostles out (pointlessly) fishing, tells them to put their nets down in a specific place, and they catch dozens of large fish. The boat nearly sinks. They bring their catch ashore and count out 153 large fish.

Those who work in advertising or in other persuasive industries will tell you in is far more persuasive to use a specific number rather than a “round number.” The use of 153 sounds much more precise than, say 150, or 100. The mathematicians would notice that 153 is divisible by 3; it is a triangular number based on adding all the integers from 1-17 up; it is also a Harshad number, divisible by the sum of its digits (1+5+3= 9; 153/9=17); it is also the sum of the cubes of its digits (1+5+3), AND if you divided it by one of its digits, 3, you get the other two digits in reverse order (153/3=51). You get the idea. It’s actually a pretty fascinating number, pattern-wise.

It is clear that numbers had special meanings in biblical era societies, and there are a variety of possible explanations of this number that have been put forward through time.

Numbers still have meanings for us—even superstitious ones. Professional athletes in team sports often like to wear the same number even when traded to a new team, and some have been known to pay a teammate to let them have “their” number. Both Michael Jordan and my favorite 2 baseman, Ryne Sandberg, wore 23. Every year all of baseball honors Jackie Robinson by wearing his number, 42.

Turning to our story, numbers are a big thing for fishers: how big? What did they weigh? And of course, how many?

What becomes a problem is when we allow numbers to define us rather than work for us. When I taught school, too many high achieving kids defined themselves by their GPAs, or their SAT or ACT scores. All through our lives we are judged by how tall we are, how old we are, or how much we weigh. Financially, we are judged by our FICA score. Higher numbers are almost always better, except for weight.

I do believe it’s possible that this number may have been chosen because it has so many facets, as I noted above. But it’s also just as likely that 153 fish means exactly that—they caught 153 really big fish. And, of course, everyone who has ever been fishing knows that catching 153, even with a net, is an abundance of fish.

If the number 153 has any meaning at all, I think it has meaning as the reminder of the promise of limitless love and grace that God fulfills for each of us every moment. I suspect that it is a symbol of God’s abundance, and God’s promise of abundance as the apostles prepare to live out the commission Jesus gives all of his followers: to go out and share the good news of God in Christ’s teachings to all of the world. It’s a big number to remind us that no matter how much we give back to God, God always gives us more. It’s also a challenge: God is never stingy with us, so let us never be stingy with God.

In Christ,

Mother Leslie+