Sunday, 9 February 2025

Going out into the deeps

Isaiah 6.1-2a, 3-8 ‘Here I am! Send me.’

1 Corinthians 15.3-8, 11 ‘So we [reach and so you believed’

Luke 5.1-11 ‘They left everything and followed him.’

 

 

‘Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch’

 

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There’s something a bit fishy about today’s gospel reading.

 

Yes, it features fishermen: but they’re commissioned to become fishers-of-men, not catching fish anymore, but saving souls.

 

And isn’t it a bit odd that the Galilean fishermen need the direction of a carpenter’s son from Nazareth, which is not by water, to tell them how to do their job effectively?

 

And what of that most remarkable catch of fish, so much so that two boats were almost sinking under their weight?

 

And perhaps most bizarrely, the fishermen, who are effectively small businessmen, leave their lucrative catch and walk away!

 

Well, as in all reading of scripture we are called, like the fishermen on the Sea of Galilee, to push out away from the shallows, to see beyond the surface and let down our nets deep.

 

To use a different image, Gregory the Great, the Bishop of Rome who, in 597, sent St Augustine of Canterbury to England to evangelise afresh, once said ‘Scripture is like a river again, broad and deep, shallow enough here for the lamb to go wading, but deep enough there for the elephant to swim’.

 

We can fish the surface of faith or cast our nets deep.

 

On the surface it’s about Jesus helping out some fishermen who are having a tough time; that’s amazing and miraculous in itself, but where does that take us?

 

Is Jesus just a bit of a wonder worker, an impressive guru figure who can do remarkable things so that people follow him?

 

Gregory speaks of different senses by which we read the gospels: the surface and the deeper.[1]

 

So, when we look again at this gospel we can see there are deep things going on.

 

Peter unlocks this for us, ‘…he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” (Luke 5.8)

 

This is an act of awe-filled devotion, falling to his knees as one would only before God: Jesus is Lord, sovereign now in Peter’s life.

 

We can’t, then, read this passage as an interesting fisherman’s tale, but as something that has direct bearing on our life of faith as individuals and for the Church as a whole.

 

When we cast out into the deep and put down our spiritual nets we find there is much we can draw from those waters.

 

This gospel is about the fruitfulness of daily life, of calling, of decision, of response and of commission.

 

We see that the fishermen’s daily tasks are made fruitful at his word.

 

Their fishing efforts were literally fulfilled – filled full – by Jesus’ word.

 

Can his word for you, to go out into the deeps? What holds you back from doing that?

 

We can always go deeper into faith and into the life of the Holy God.

 

Are you ready, like Peter, flaky as he was, to say, ‘at your word I will let down the nets’? (v5)

 

Peter is awestruck by what Jesus can do, not just on the surface level, but going deeper too.

 

Peter’s words echo Isaiah’s reaction of inadequacy and awareness of his personal sinfulness in the majestic presence and power of God in the temple: ‘Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips.’ (Isaiah 6.5)

 

Reverent awe is the response proper to the call, and word, of Jesus Christ.

 

This text, alongside our first from Isaiah, tells us not to think that faith in Jesus Christ is a self-help technique, rather one of faith and trust in Him.

 

The encounter with awe, majesty is converting: the immediacy and impact of what the fishermen did is shocking when you think about it.

 

‘And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.’ (v11)

 

They put  aside their own priorities and came, in St Benedict’s words, to ‘prefer nothing to Christ’.

 

They say in effect the words of Isaiah, ‘Here am I! Send me’ (Isaiah 6.8) and the words of Mary, ‘Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word’. (Luke 1.38)

 

Those are words of going out into the deep in love and trust, facing down fears through faith in Jesus Christ.

 

If you push out into the deep, you want to know your boat will float and be buoyant: this is the spiritual move Peter, James, John, you and me are called to make: ‘do not be afraid’ (v10) says Jesus.

 

When we do this our nets filled, our lives are full-filled, we are nourished spiritually so that we cannot keep the Good News to ourselves, but to bring it ashore to a hungry world.

 

As he calls them, Jesus is coaching, training, shaping, these fishermen to a task that goes well beyond the shores of Galilee.

 

There’s purpose in what we are called to as Christians, not solely for ourselves but for the sake of the world.

 

And what feeds the world is Christ, the Living Bread from heaven, who takes the ordinary loaves and fishes to multiply them that all people may know salvation.

 

As with the teeming fish, which is an image of the life of the Church and all her people throughout the world, so the task falls to us by our faith, our hope, our love and our devotion to Christ to share the Good News and draw others to Christ.

 

The fishermen found their lives repurposed in Christ; Isaiah found new purpose in the presence of the same Living God, you are called ‘to shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father’: are you ready to say, ‘Here am I! Send me’?



[1] Gregory uses a method typical of his era, and valuable today, a fourfold way of reading scripture, the Quadriga: the historical sense (plain sense), the allegorical sense (typological), the moral sense (tropological), and the anagogical sense (pertaining to the last or ultimate things).

Sunday, 2 February 2025

The Light of the Temple

Malachi 3.1-4 ‘The Lord whom you seek will come to his Temple

Hebrews 2.14-18 ‘He had to be made like his brother so that he might become merciful

Luke 2.22-40 ‘The child grew, filled with wisdom’

 

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Today’s gospel reading is such a rich and beautiful story.

 

The key features were set out in the introduction to the entrance procession with our candles:

 

Mary and Joseph, as obedient Jewish young parents, did what they were meant to do under the Jewish Law.

 

The figures of Simeon and Anna, obedient and expectant older people, filled with the Holy Spirit, who saw in Jesus the fulfilment of their long-held desire to see the Lord’s Messiah.

 

Jesus declared to be ‘the light to enlighten the nations’ and the hope of Israel, with whose light we are illumined at baptism: that’s the Christian Enlightenment!

 

All this takes place in the Temple in Jerusalem, the epicentre of Jewish religious practice, the very dwelling place and visible focus of the invisible God.

 

The Temple is at its heart a place of presentation.

 

In the Temple sacrifices are presented to God.

 

To sacrifice is to give up something precious of our own, in order to receive blessing in return.

 

In pagan religion even children were sacrificed, the Bible condemns this in no uncertain terms.

 

The cult of the god Molech demanded child sacrifice, but in Leviticus we read, ‘You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord. (Leviticus 18.21).

 

The great patriarch Abraham has to be taken right to the brink of sacrificing his son, Isaac, to understand that the God of Israel is not like that, does not demand that. (Genesis 22.1-19)

 

So, in ancient Israel sacrifices were not of children but were typically of animals – which is why God provided a ram for Abraham to sacrifice, instead of Isaac.

 

‘The LORD will provide’ (Genesis 22.14)

 

And in Jesus Christ the Lord provide himself as the sacrificial offering for sin: he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

 

So in anticipation of his offering of himself, Jesus is presented in the Temple

 

The prophet Malachi sees deep into the Lord’s intentions so that our eyes are open to the work of John the Baptist, whose birth was announced to Zechariah in the Temple, and who prepares the way for Jesus Christ, the one who offers and the one who is offered:

 

Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. (Malachi 3.1,2)

 

That cuts straight to the scene we heard today: of presentation and reception in the Temple.

 

Mary and Joseph present; Simeon and Anna receive.

 

Mary and Joseph the young parents present the Christchild in the Temple.

 

Anna and Simeon, two elderly people yet refreshed, vigilant, eager, receive him.

 

This is the Church in embryo: young and old, men and women, presenting themselves to the Lord, receiving the Lord.

 

Just pause on that elderly man and woman: how inspiring!

 

In a tired world, with so many people feeling just tired, it is a great gift to be infused, inflated, inspired by the Holy Spirit.

 

This is call to allow ourselves to be inflated by the Holy Spirit!

 

The Spirit is the presence of God allowing and enabling us to recognise the Lord and the things of God in the world and in the heavens.

 

Here in the Temple, just as at Christ’s baptism, which we have already celebrated, but that comes later in his life, we see the Blessed Trinity in action: the Son is presented in the power of the Holy Spirit, in his Father’s house, the Temple.

 

At his baptism he hallows the waters of new life and new birth, waters that, in the prophecy of Ezekiel, flow from the Temple, just as the rivers flowed from the Garden of Eden to water the whole world. (cf Ezekiel 47; Genesis 2.10-14)

 

And when the soldier pierced the Crucified Lord, as he hung on the Cross, there flowed water and blood.

 

That was the sword, of which Simeon spoke, that pierced the heart of Blessed Mary too: as the 13th century hymn, Stabat Mater, puts it:

 

Through her heart, his sorrow sharing,

All his bitter anguish bearing,

now at length the sword has pass'd.

 

The water and blood, flowing from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, signifies life and sacrifice.

 

When a child is born there is water and there is blood.

 

In baptism – itself a birth - there is water; in the Eucharist there is blood: both of which graft us into the Body of Christ, so that we share in his offering to the Father.

 

Just as Jesus Christ is human and divine so we are to shape our lives as human beings in the way of the divine, of God.

 

This is what is meant by those words in the Collect today, that Christ came and was presented ‘in substance of our flesh’: the fullness of divinity and fullness of humanity meet in his body; he is the New Temple, the Temple to be destroyed and raised on the third day as told in St John’s gospel:

 

Jesus, looking at the temple in Jerusalem, said: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. (John 2.19-21)

 

St Paul teaches that your body is a Temple.

 

Your body is the meeting place of divinity and humanity.

 

Your body is a temple; it is also a sacrifice.

 

That doesn’t mean you’re going to be slaughtered; it means you’re going to offer yourself in service of God in his world and in the lifting up of your heart in worship.

 

Lift up your hearts. We lift them to the Lord.

 

Our collect today prays that ‘we may be presented to [God] with pure and clean hearts’.

 

This is how St Paul puts it, connecting the offering of ourselves to God and away from the corruptions and machinations of the world:

 

I appeal to you therefore, brothers [and sisters], by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12.1,2)

 

The human body, in Christian tradition, is precious, honoured, not to be sullied or abused.

 

It’s why we carefully treat a dead body and recognise crimes against the body: it’s why every body matters.

 

We come as members of the Body of Christ, drawn by the Holy Spirit, presenting ourselves at the altar so that in turn we receive the Body of Christ.

 

So let us also, gathered together by the Holy Spirit,

proceed to the altar of God to encounter Christ.

There we shall find him

and recognise him in the breaking of the bread,

until he comes again, revealed in glory.

 

 

 

Sunday, 26 January 2025

Word of God: Scripture fulfilled

Nehemiah 8.2-4a, 5-6, 8-10 ‘They read from the book of the Law, and gave the meaning.’

1 Corinthians 12.12-14,27 ‘You are the body of Christ and individually members of it.’

Luke 1.1-4; 4.14-21 ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled’

 

‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’

 

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Scripture is fulfilled; fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.

 

Scripture, in the words of the letter to the Hebrews, is ‘living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword’. (Hebrews 4.12)

 

The fundamental conviction of the Church is that the Bible, our Holy Scripture, the Word of God, is central to the Christian life and to Christian worship: it is alive and active; feeding us, challenging us, inspiring us, guiding us on the way of holiness.

 

The Bible is the guarantee and witness that the living God binds your life and my life into the unfolding story of creation and covenant and redemption.

 

And Jesus says, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’.

 

This tells us something really important about the logic of Biblical Christianity worth considering today.

 

In the synagogue in Nazareth, we are given a key, the key to unlocking the scriptures.

 

The key is Jesus Christ, the Anointed One of God, the one who declares, ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ (Luke 4.21)

 

He is the key and the fulfilment of scripture, he is the Living Word.

 

The Church reads scripture always in the light of the Crucified and Risen Lord.

 

We see that at Easter, when a great series of reading from the Old Testament is read: promises and pledges, good in themselves, yet waiting to be fulfilled for all humanity in Christ.

 

We see it in the story of the Ethiopian Eunuch in the Acts of the Apostles, St Luke’s second volume (Acts 8.26-40).

 

This is when an important official of the Queen of Ethiopia is on a journey reading a passage where Isaiah is talking about a servant who will suffer for the life of others (Acts 8.32-33).

 

The Ethiopian asks the Apostle St Philip, ‘who is the prophet talking about? Is it about him or about someone else?’ (Acts 8.34).

 

In response, ‘Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told [the Ethiopian man] the good news about Jesus’. (Acts 8.35 quoting Isaiah 53.7,8)

 

Philip has used the key!

 

Scripture opens up in relation to who Jesus Christ is.

 

Sadly, the Bible is seen by many today as either irrelevant to life, a remote document of the past or perhaps as a text to be dissected and analysed.

 

That is fine as far as it goes - great for a literature student and it can give some insights - but it does not treat the Bible as the fulfilled Holy Scripture that it is, a living and active, converting, inspiring word, burning with God’s love and presence and holiness.

 

Analysing the Bible as literature is just dull, and doesn’t do justice to the power of scripture.

 

Can you imagine if Jesus stood up in the synagogue that Sabbath day and read that stunning piece of Isaiah and declared:

 

Today you have heard a text that is from Trito-Isaiah, which is chapters 56-66 of so-called Isaiah, composed after the exile in Babylon, not to be confused with Proto-Isaiah (chapters 1–39) written in the 8th century BC; or Deutero-Isaiah, which is chapters 40–55, and is the work of an anonymous 6th-century BC author writing during the Exile. It deals with the power dynamics of what politics should look like when exiles return home.

 

Now that may be academically accurate: but it’s word not made flesh.

 

It attempts to rob the text of its power: no action of the anointing Spirit, no good news to the poor, no liberty for captives or oppressed people, no recovery of sight for the blind, no jubilee.

 

That takes us back to the key.

 

For Jesus picks up the scroll, unrolls it, reads the text, sits down and declares, ‘today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’.

 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon him,

    because God has anointed him

    to proclaim good news to the poor.

God has sent Jesus to proclaim liberty to the captives

    and recovering of sight to the blind,

    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour, the jubilee.

 

What we seek and find in the scriptures is a living encounter with Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh, that is a way that avoids fundamentalism and liberal scepticism.

 

We know the dangers of fundamentalism when it comes to the Bible and we should also know the perils of how the Bible is treated by many even in churches today.

 

The trouble is that both the fundamentalist and the liberal takes the Bible literally but not seriously: it suits both to do that; one so as to overclaim what the text says and the other so as to underplay it.

 

The absence of dinosaurs in the Bible makes the fundamentalist say that dinosaurs are made up: that’s taking scripture literally but not seriously.

 

The absence of dinosaurs in the Bible makes the liberal say that the Bible is limited and not applicable today: that’s taking scripture literally but not seriously.

 

The Bible is sacred word not scientific text book; it is of human authorship but divinely inspired.

 

The tradition of the Church is to take the Bible totally seriously, but not literally, in every aspect of what we read; it feeds and inspires the living faith of the Christian.

 

Read the Bible, mark it, learn it, inwardly digest it!

 

We do this in personal reading of the Bible: at the very least check out the readings for the coming Sunday each week, or get Bible reading notes.

 

We do this too as we come together to worship and hear ‘the word of the Lord’ because we come to meet Jesus.

 

Our text today was from the beginning of St Luke’s Gospel, and at the end his gospel the power of the Bible proclaimed in the Eucharist is affirmed

 

Two disciples walk along the road to Emmaus, they are joined by the Crucified and Risen Jesus, yet they fail to recognise him.

 

They start talking about Jesus, to Jesus, and, as they walk along, we read that, ‘beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, Jesus interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself’. (Luke 24.27)

 

At journey’s end they break bread together and they recognise Jesus.

 

As he went from their sight they said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?’ (Luke 24.32).

 

May our hearts be set on fire through the scriptures, may our ears tingle with eagerness to hear them, may we be set free by the one they proclaim and may we say with the psalmist:

 

How sweet are your words to my taste,

sweeter than honey to my mouth!

(Psalm 119.103)