.jpg) |
| The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, Raphael 1515, V&A |
Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan churches on Sunday 9th February 2025, the 4th before Lent
I like
to imagine Gospel stories happening in places I know, to better understand them.
In this morning’s Gospel, Luke (5:1-11) describes how Jesus called Simon, James and John to be his disciples beside the lake of Gennesaret – another name for the Sea of Galilee. But in my imagination, the scene is the banks of Lough Derg - the lake of Gennesaret is just a bit larger than Lough Derg, and wider, but not so long.
So, in my mind’s eye I see Jesus, pressed in by the crowd, commandeering Simon’s lake boat from which to speak to the crowd on the beach at Dromineer, a couple of boat lengths out. Jesus must realise that Simon and his partners James and John in the second boat have had a bad night’s fishing. He does them a good turn in exchange for their help. When he has done speaking, Jesus tells Simon to take the boat out to the deep channel over by the Clare shore where they will find fish. And they do – so many that they fill both boats up to the gunwales until they almost sink.
Everyone is amazed at the size of the catch. Simon falls to his knees in front of Jesus saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’ – for the first time Simon acknowledges Jesus’s power. Jesus says to him, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people’. And Simon, together with his partners James and John, the sons of Zebedee, make their life-changing decision to leave their old lives as fishermen and follow Jesus in his travelling ministry as his disciples.
This
is a key moment for Christians and for the Church
On the face of it there is nothing special about these three men. Simon - nicknamed Peter, meaning the Rock – and James and John are plain fishermen, just ordinary working people. But along with others Jesus also called, they become apostles, sent out by Jesus to preach the good news he taught them. They were the first leaders of the Jesus movement we call the Church.
Jesus trained them to be apostles as they followed him in his travelling ministry. They were flawed as we all are – they often failed to understand Jesus’s message, they fled in terror when he was arrested, Simon Peter would deny knowing him three times, and only John would witness his crucifixion. But after the resurrection they all encountered the risen Christ, and at the first Pentecost they all received the gift of the Holy Spirit.
From the upper room where they had been hiding, they burst out onto the streets of Jerusalem. They preached the good news that Jesus had taught them, and they attracted a growing band of disciples – the first Church in Jerusalem. The Book of Acts tells the story of how that Church spread like wildfire across the Roman empire - 300 years later under Constantine it would take over that empire.
The explosive growth of the early Church marks the success of Jesus’s project to bring good news to all people – but it all began that day on the shore of the lake of Gennesaret.
The
situation we are faced with today in Ireland seems rather different, doesn’t
it?
More and more people, particularly younger folk, feel less and less connection with the Church, no matter what tradition they come from. The numbers who attend, listen to the good news, and lend financial support, seem to fall year by year and decade by decade.
Clergy and Bishops thrash about looking for new ways to fill the old pews again. Meanwhile ordinary parishioners like you and me are fearful that ours may be the last generation of our families to sit in them. We are all too aware of neighbouring churches which have shut, causing many in their congregations to lose the habit of regular worship, and to lose any but a cultural connection with the Church, for weddings and funerals.
The words of Isaiah (6:1-13) in the OT reading speak to our times, I think. Israel has ceased to flourish, just as the Church has. The future is grim. They will ‘keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand… until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate’. I am reminded of the images of Gaza we see in the news every day. But notice, that Isaiah ends with a message of hope. The broken and burned stump of the great tree of Israel will be the holy seed from which it will spring again. Perhaps the great tree of the Church can sprout again from a broken and burned stump.
I
suggest that today’s Gospel story has a lesson for us.
Simon Peter and James and John had spent a fruitless night, fishing where there were no fish. It was only when they did as Jesus advised and went out into deeper water, that they would haul in nets filled to breaking point.
Christian leaders who fish for people as successors to the apostles, surely need to do the same. They must go where God’s Holy Spirit directs, away from the shallow waters of our sterile theological divisions and tribal identities, into the deep waters where real people are found. People suffering from illness, poverty and injustice. People frightened by an uncertain future and change they do not understand. People searching for meaning and peace in a world of excess and violence. People who yearn to hear good news.
We faithful parishioners in the pews must support those who launch out to fish in deeper water. We must be filled with hope, hope that a renewed Church will bring the good news of Christ to a new age.
But how can
we be filled with hope? Why should we believe such change is possible?
Firstly, because the Church decay we are experiencing is not inevitable. It is largely confined to Western Europe and increasingly North America. Churches in Africa, in South America, in China and other countries are vibrant, dynamic and growing rapidly, filled with the Holy Spirit and with joy. We need to learn from them.
And secondly, because the Church has suffered
existential crises many times, and each time it has brought renewal of the
Church for a new age:
·
A new, monastic Church flowered
in the chaos of the imperial church of the disintegrating Roman Empire. That
brought Christian faith here to Ireland and across pagan northern Europe.
·
The rich and corrupt church of
the 13th Century in turn spawned orders of friars like that of St Francis
of Assisi, which renewed popular faith through their simplicity of life and
service to the poor.
·
Abuses in the 16th
Century Church fuelled the Reformation, and with it came renewal, not just of
protestant churches, but of the Roman Catholic church too, in reaction to the
reformation.
· And in the 19th Century the Spirit drove a new wave of Christians of all traditions to mission. Some went as missionaries overseas, seeding those churches which are growing today. Others joined orders dedicated to education, health care and the relief of poverty in the new industrial towns and cities – the lovely ‘Call the Midwife’ series on BBC1 captures how that spirit lived on into the lifetime of many of us.
It is right that we should be filled with hope, because history teaches us that Church renewal follows crisis, as the Holy Spirit prepares it for changing times.
I shall finish in prayer with the Collect of
the Word for today:
Most holy God,
in whose presence angels serve in awe,
and whose glory fills all heaven and earth:
cleanse our unclean lips
and transform us by your grace
so that your word spoken through us
may bring many to your salvation;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God for ever and ever. Amen
