Fishing for people

 

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 13^th 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 16^th 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 19^th 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

Reading the signs of the times

An address given in Templederry on the 1st Sunday of Advent, Year C, 2nd December.

We are living through ‘interesting times’ as the Chinese say – times of crisis.

Let me try to read some of the signs of the times:

·        We know that our Irish economy is banjaxed following the crash. Government expenditure exceeds receipts. The Troika dictates that services will be cut and taxes raised in the forthcoming budget. Meanwhile ordinary families struggle to pay the mortgage and energy bills and to put food on the table, carers are at their wits end, and our children leave because they cannot find work at home. And it is not just Ireland in trouble - overseas the Euro area and the entire global economy look to be faltering.

·        Scientists tell us that potentially catastrophic climate change is upon us, and that this is a result of human activity like burning fossil fuels and cutting down rainforests - recent reports show the ice caps are melting three times faster than they previously realised. And there is precious little evidence that the leaders of our world are able and willing to lead their peoples to make the changes necessary to avert disaster.

·        Advertising constantly urges us to consume more and more in an increasingly materialist society, encouraging us in fact to be self-centred and greedy, a sure path to disaster. The internet revolution is driving perhaps the biggest social changes since the invention of the printing press, so that we begin to feel that we live in a different world from our children. And as Christians we face increasing challenges, as churches struggle to respond to scandal and division, while both militant atheism and religious fundamentalism are on the rise

No wonder we worry about the future – our own, our children’s and our grandchildren’s. We are afraid, and I think we have reason to be afraid. We are living in apocalyptic times.

Luke records Jesus speaking in apocalyptic terms in today’s Gospel reading (Luke 21:25-36).

‘There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and waves’, Jesus says. ‘People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” with power and great glory.’

Jesus’s words are in an apocalyptic literary tradition reaching back into OT times - “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” is actually a quotation from the apocalyptic Book of Daniel. The tradition reaches forward to the NT book we call Revelation. And from there through medieval visions of the last judgement, to modern science fiction fantasies of disaster.

Is Jesus forecasting in these words that the world will end in apocalypse? There are Christian fundamentalists who look forward to the second coming of Christ amid awful battles and destruction in the end-time. They may believe so, but I don’t. They take scripture too literally, and I think they are deeply misguided. Instead I suggest that Jesus intended his words to apply to every time, not just to an end-time.

Perhaps his parable is a clue: ‘Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near.’ Trees sprout new leaves every year – the image is of something that happens again and again, not just once at the end.

And it is true, isn’t it, that every generation faces its own apocalyptic fears. We may be terrified by the looming catastrophe of global warming. But my parents were haunted by the horror and destruction of total war and nuclear holocaust. Their parents suffered the horrors of the trenches followed by bloody rebellion and fratricidal civil war. And every previous generation has lived through its own nightmares – famines, plagues, wars and social collapse.

Jesus tells us to read the frightening signs of the times clearly. Otherwise we will be unable to respond to them in the way God wishes. But his message is surely one of hope as we confront our fears - hope for us and for every generation that hears his words. ‘So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.’ Even if these things are terrifying. ‘Stand up and raise your heads’, he tells us, ‘because your redemption is drawing near’.

The basis of our hope is the miracle of the Incarnation.

This is the first day of Advent, the time each year when we look forward to the Incarnation; the miracle that God has chosen to be part of the world he created, our world; the miracle that God has taken on our flesh in a stunning act of solidarity with us his creatures. We wait in expectation for the kingdom of God and our redemption to come near.

On Christmas day Jesus will be born as the helpless baby son of Mary and Joseph into a frightening world. A Roman imperial decree forces his parents to travel from their home to Bethlehem. There they find no shelter but a stable in which Mary gives birth. And soon they will be forced to flee as refugees from Herod’s violent wrath. Mary and Joseph have to confront their own fears just as we must.

But through the eyes of faith we will see this helpless child grow up to be ‘“the Son of Man coming in a cloud” with power and great glory’, who announces the kingdom of God and promises us redemption. ‘Heaven and earth will pass away’, he says, ‘but my words will not pass away’.

Jesus urges us, ‘Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.’ It is through praying that we will find the strength and confidence to endure, and even we may hope avert, the worst the future can bring, so that in the end we can stand fearlessly in front of God in his Kingdom.

I shall finish with a prayer:

Loving Father,

Who sent your Son Jesus Christ

to proclaim your kingdom

and restore the broken to fullness of life:

Look with compassion on the anguish of the world and of your people;

Give us the strength to overcome our fears

And to stand before the Son of Man;

Through Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Redeemer.

Amen