I like
to imagine Gospel stories happening in places I know, to better appreciate 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, 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 - 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 the empire over.
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 lose any
but a cultural connection with the Church, for weddings and funerals.
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, fishing for people as
successors to the apostles, surely need to do the same. They must go where
Christ’s 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. People who yearn to hear good news.
We faithful parishioners in the pews must be
filled with hope. We must support them in launching out to fish in deeper water.
Then we shall start to see change, leading to a renewed Church that brings the
good news of Christ to a new age.
Why
should we believe that change is possible? Why should we be filled with hope?
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 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 every time the Church
has suffered a crisis, as it has done many times over the centuries, the crisis
has brought renewal of the Church for a new age.
·
A new, monastic Church flowered
in the 5th Century amid the chaos of the imperial church of the disintegrating Roman Empire, bringing
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 St Francis,
focussed on preaching 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.
·
And in the 19th
Century the Spirit drove a new wave of Christians of all traditions to mission.
Some went as missionaries overseas. 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.
Let me finish in prayer with a Collect of the
Word:
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,
God for ever and ever. Amen
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