Sowing the seed

Address given at the annual ecumenical service of thanksgiving for the Lough Derg Yacht Club Regatta on Sunday 18th August 2013.

Every year members of the Lough Derg & Loug Ree Yacht Clubs join with friends from near and far to share time together sailing on the Shannon, in competition but also in friendship and love. It is a great blessing. And it is very right that participants should also join together to give thanks to God for blessing them in this way. The Regatta Service has been held annually for more than 70 years. It is a lovely tradition, and one I hope will continue for many years to come.

Do you find it difficult to remember the point of a sermon you’ve just heard, 5 minutes later?

I do - it’s as if what goes in one ear comes straight out the other! But I do remember one sermon preached by Stephen White, then the Dean of Killaloe, at a Regatta Service like this one several years ago.

He likened our different Christian traditions to a flotilla of yachts racing on the lake. We may look as if we’re sailing in different directions as we tack to find better air, but we are all sailing to the best of our ability to reach the same mark – which is God’s heavenly kingdom. Stephen was not a sailor, and may not have intended it, but I had to laugh when I thought of all the shouting and roaring which so often goes with racing, whether it’s the crew arguing about tactics, or shouts of ‘Starboard!’ or ‘Water’ to other competitors. How like our different churches so much of the time!

The point I took from his sermon is that we are all sailing the same race together, and there is so much more that unites than divides us. I remember it of course because the image Stephen conjured up was so vivid and familiar, and appropriate to the time and place.

Jesus was also a master of the vivid, familiar and appropriate image to make his words stick.

Let us enter in our imagination the scene of the reading from Mark 4:1-9 we have just heard, what we now call the ‘Parable of the Sower’.

So many people wanted to listen to Jesus that he used a boat as a pulpit to address the crowd on the beach. The beach was on a lake, the Sea of Galilee. I’ve never been there, but I see it in my minds eye as rather like Lough Derg: it’s about 40% larger in area, and wider but not so long. Imagine the people crowded on the beach at Dromineer, and Jesus in a lake boat talking to them.

Did Jesus see a man sowing in a nearby field? Perhaps this prompted the parable, and everyone could literally see what he was talking about. The sower wouldn’t be using a seed-drill; he would be broadcasting the seed by hand, just as our ancestors would have done only 150 years ago. The seed would be in a bag or a basket, and he would walk steadily up and down the field, taking a handful of seed and throwing it out as evenly as he could. Even at a distance it would be quite clear to everyone what he was doing: they had seen it hundreds of times before, and many had done it themselves.

And Jesus describes just what the crowd can all see:

§         Imagine a big field divided like allotments into strips farmed by different families, with paths between them, beaten down hard by the passage of many feet. The crowd can see the birds following the sower swooping down to gobble up the seed that inevitably falls on the path, for all the sowers skill.

§         Everyone would understand that different parts of the field are of different quality.

§         Some parts would be stony. Don’t imagine small pebbles - imagine great sheets of rock just under the surface, with just a few inches of soil on top. The soil above the rock would warm early, and the seeds would germinate quickly, but without a depth of soil the young seedlings would soon run out of nutrients and water and shrivel up in the sun.

§         Some parts of the field would be infested with perennial weeds: imagine scutch grass and creeping thistle, which would quickly outgrow the delicate crop, choking it.

§         But other parts of the field would be good land, with a deep, clean soil. Here the crop would have nutrients and water enough, and little competition. It will flourish and produce a harvest of thirty, or sixty, or a hundred times the grain sown on it.

‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’ Jesus finishes.

·        But when the crowd has left his disciples are still uncertain what he meant – as we are so often uncertain. So Jesus interprets it for them himself, in the passage that follows - perhaps to reassure them that they do indeed understand what he is getting at.

·         The seed sown on the path is the word spoken, but not understood. Satan snatches it away, before it ever has the chance to sprout.

·         The seed sown on rocky ground is the word received with joy, but by a person with shallow roots, without character, whose initial enthusiasm cannot withstand trouble or persecution.

·         The seed sown among thorns is the word heard by those who are so trapped by worldly cares and the lure of wealth that they cannot act upon it.

·         And the seed sown on good soil is the word heard by those who understand it, and act upon it. Only such people will yield a harvest of good.

The point of Jesus’ sermon is just the same as it was on that lake shore 2000 years ago.

If we are to be the good people God wants us to be, we need to cultivate our characters so that as good soil we yield a rich harvest.

Each one of us has to develop the character traits of attention, persistence, and concentration. Attention so that we do not miss God’s call when it comes. Persistence so that we can withstand opposition when we answer God’s call. And concentration so that the cares of the world and the pursuit of wealth do not distract us from acting on God’s call.

And I suggest these 3 marks of character are also needed by any winning sailor. Attention to the wind, the water and other boats. Persistence to overcome temporary setbacks. And concentration to make the most of the conditions we encounter.

I was never a winning sailor, as most of you know. But my prayer for every one of us is that we may never cease striving to build up our character – our powers of attention, persistence and concentration - so that we may be better sailors - and more like the people God wants us to be.

May you have fair weather and good sailing in the year ahead!

Rivers & Lakes

Address given at the Ecumenical Service of Thanksgiving for the Lough Derg Yacht Club Regatta, at Killodiernan Church on Sunday 19th August 2012.

We’re so lucky, aren’t we!

We are all so lucky to be able to spend time relaxing and enjoying ourselves, with friends and family, on the beautiful waters of the ‘Lordly Shannon’ - whether it is for just a few hours, or for a full two weeks, if you’re one of those hardy souls who’ve sailed both Regattas! I personally feel particularly lucky to have been able to make my home with Marty in sight of the water, in a community where my family has lived, worked and played for generations.

Actually, I feel certain it is down to much more than luck. The right way to see it, I think, is as a gift from God. God has blessed us, blessed us all with this great gift of the Shannon which we have been enjoying, and blessed us with the even greater gift of the families and friends who we’ve been enjoying it with. That is why so many of us keep coming back here, year after year, generation on generation.

It is the worst of bad manners not to thank someone who has given you a wonderful present.  So it is very right and proper that we should come together at the end of the Regatta season to thank God for his gifts which have given us so much enjoyment. And this is just the sentiment that Isaiah expresses in beautiful poetry in the 1^st reading (Isaiah 43:16-21): ‘Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters … I give water in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.’

And in just the same way as we expect a child not to wilfully spoil or break a generous present, our duty is to look after the great gift of the Shannon, as well as the greater gift of our families and friends. We need to cherish our families and friends because these relationships are precious and fragile. This is not the time or place to go into the politics of water abstraction, but we should surely also do our best to ensure that however we use the gift of the Shannon we conserve it for those who come after us, because it too is precious and fragile.

The Sea of Tiberias is also a great gift from God to the people of Galilee.

Jesus and his disciples were Galileans and they surely loved their lake, just as we love our Shannon lakes. Today’s 2^nd reading (John 21:1-14) is set around the Sea of Tiberias, otherwise known as the Sea of Galilee. After all the heightened emotion in Jerusalem surrounding Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection, it is not surprising, I think, that the disciples returned to the Sea of Tiberias. They surely needed to take some time out to work through all that had happened, and where better than the lake they knew so well?

I’ve never seen the Sea of Tiberias, but it’s much the same size as Lough Derg - about 40% bigger in area, and wider, but not so long. In my mind’s eye I like to imagine the many Gospel stories that are set in and around the Galilean lake as taking place around Lough Derg.

So, indulge me, let us imagine Jesus standing, just after daybreak, on a grassy lake shore - in Luska bay, perhaps, where there are still places which scrub has not invaded. The seven disciples, prompted by Simon Peter, have been fishing all night without catching a thing – how frustrated they must be! They’re about 100 yards out when Jesus calls to them from the shore, saying ‘Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find (fish)’. They do as he suggests, and they catch so many fish that they can’t bring the net back into the boat. They have to pull it into the shore, where they find they’ve caught no less than 153 large fish.

Notice, this is not described as miraculous – just amazing. Perhaps Jesus, higher on the shore, could see a shoal of fish which those in the boat could not.

But there is something strange about the story, as there is with all the stories about the disciples encountering the risen Christ. They do not immediately recognise their close friend Jesus, even when they came ashore. Just as Mary Magdalen mistakes Jesus for the gardener. Just as the disciples on the road to Emmaus fail to recognise their companion on the road as Jesus.

‘None of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord’, we are told. You don’t ask a friend you know well ‘who are you’. The risen Jesus on the shore must have seemed rather different to the Jesus the disciples knew so well. But they just knew it was him.

It is the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’ who first makes the connection, crying out, ‘It is the Lord!’ He is traditionally believed to be the apostle John, the author of this Gospel. Hearing this, Simon Peter – brave, impetuous Peter – jumps into the lake to get to Jesus on the shore before the others. But first he pulls on some clothes, because he has stripped naked to work the nets – now that's a striking image, St Peter stark naked in the boat!

Jesus has already prepared a barbeque breakfast for the disciples, with fish and bread over a charcoal fire. Just imagine the delicious smells of the fish grilling! How hungry the disciples must have been after fishing all night! He says to them, ‘Come and have breakfast’, and then he waits on them. He ‘took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish’, we’re told. It reminds me of the Eucharist in which we re-enact the Last Supper, but with bread and fish instead of bread and wine.

It’s a lovely, vivid story - it could almost be a film script! But what are we to make of it?

John is not writing a biography of Jesus, nor is he writing history. John is writing a Gospel, in which he weaves stories of Jesus’s life and ministry, death and resurrection, into a rich tapestry, in order to explain Jesus’s true significance – Jesus the incarnate Word, the Son of God, through whom those who believe have life in his name. No doubt this particular story can be understood in many ways, but this is what I take from it.

We often encounter the risen Jesus when we are struggling and failing, searching but unable to find what we’re looking for. We find him in the stranger we do not recognise, at the time and in the place we least expect it, with a sudden realisation, ‘It is the Lord!’ If we listen carefully we will hear Jesus call us to change what we are doing – in other words to repent – to cast the net to the right, not the left. When we do so we haul in a great catch of good. And this risen Jesus feeds our spirits in a life-giving banquet – a Eucharist if you will - with the gifts he has prepared for us.

God spoke through Isaiah saying, ‘I am about to do a new thing.’ As Christians we believe that God is doing this new thing through Jesus - not 2000 years ago, not in the distant future, but now, today. In Isaiah's words, ‘Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?’.

Let me finish with a prayer:

Loving Father God, may we all encounter the risen Jesus, may we respond to his call to change, may we haul in a great catch of good, and may we join with him in the life-giving banquet he has prepared for us. Amen