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When I was a child, I heard this parable with Baltimore Catechism ears. Some people were going heaven, some people were going to hell. If I wanted to be thrown into the heavenly bucket, I needed to obey the commandments. It was all very straight-forward.
Things don’t seem quite so straight forward anymore. I hear Scripture through older ears. Today, the fish seem to represent the many “Carolyns” I have been in my life. Sometimes she was healthy, perhaps she even manifested Love for herself and others. Other times, she acted out of motivations that were not healthy or grace-filled or loving. What good news that “at the end of the age” there will be a sorting. What was not loving will be let go or cast away. What will remain, what will go into the bucket, will be what was “fitting and right.”
I am not suggesting that this most current interpretation is the true and right reading of Jesus’ parable. I will admit that it feels good when my older ears hear words that encourage me to sort through my life here and now rather than words that have me, at some future time, sitting in heaven while others are in hell. But it feels even better that my understandings of Scripture can grow, as I have grown; change as I have changed, be alive and vibrant rather than stagnant and stale. I enjoy being led by such living waters.