Wood carvings: the fish
At the front of the sanctuary are four beautiful wooden pieces that were conceived, designed and produced by people in our church, a scallop shell, a fish, an anchor cross, and wine, branches and fruit.
The symbols represent some of the ways the church has communicated the changeless message of and about Jesus through the centuries. We intentionally picked Christian symbols that tie in with our location on Cape Cod and our proximity to the ocean.
Learn more about these symbols: scallop shell, fish, anchor cross, boat, and wine, branches and fruit.
The Fish is a traditional symbol of Jesus and his followers.
Our fish is a striped bass larger than
any of us could dream catching. In the early church, the fish was a way of confessing one's beliefs about
the identity of Jesus and also of revealing one's own identity as a Christian. From the beginning,
it was
dangerous to admit that one was a follower of Jesus. The night before Jesus was crucified a fearful
Simon Peter vehemently denied he had any connection with Jesus
to the point of cursing because the consequences
would have been severe. For the first three hundred years of the church there were
sporadic persecutions of
Christians. Believers were told not to seek out martyrdom but to be fearless in its face rather than to deny Jesus.
Christians who would not renounce their faith in Jesus developed a secret code through which they could express their faith. So an acrostic was born, the beginning letters forming the word "ichthus" meaning fish. The letters stood for "Jesus Christ of God the Son Savior." This became a simple and secret way to bear witness to Jesus the Son of God. The symbol of the fish appears often in the walls of ancient catacombs and on the bumpers of cars today.
Jesus called several of the disciples to give up fishing in order to fish for people and the fact that they did tells us how powerful and attractive Jesus truly is. Of course, one person observed that perhaps what makes it most difficult to believe the miracles of Jesus is they are told to us by fishermen. In the feeding of the 5,000, the only miracle that appears in all four gospels, Jesus provides for the needs of the people with two fish and a few loaves of bread. The fish reminds us of our identity in Jesus Christ and how Jesus can fill our deepest hunger.
Links: scallop shell, fish, anchor cross, boat, and wine, branches and fruit.