Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity
admin | 30 June 2013“Nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net”
It is, to my mind, a powerful picture and an enchanting scene. Jesus sits down in a boat which he uses as a pulpit for teaching those that “pressed upon him to hear the word of God,” then bids Simon to “launch out into the deep and to let down [the] nets.” There is the intriguing response of Simon Peter. “Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing; nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net.” It captures a marvelous moment and one which speaks to the existential despair of our age as well as providing the exact counter to our sense of futility and hopelessness.
What follows is equally marvelous. Having let down their nets, “they inclosed a great number of fishes, and their net brake.” Another ship is beckoned to come to their aid and yet the catch is so overwhelming that it “fill[s] both the ships, so that they began to sink.” It is a great marvel and it sparks a further response from Simon Peter: “depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” to which Jesus replies, “fear not, from henceforth thou shalt catch men.” We are very much in the presence of God, it seems. The story marks Luke’s account of the call to discipleship of Simon Peter and the others.
In God’s Providence, this Gospel story read on The Fifth Sunday after Trinity coincides with Petertide, the Church’s celebration of St. Peter and St. Paul, the twin pillars and princes, we might say, of the Apostolic Church, so outstanding and so incalculable is their witness. Their joint commemoration is a kind of accident of history, on the one hand, and the providence of God, on the other hand, having to do with the coming together of their bodies to a common place of burial in the sixth century, long after their martyrdoms in Rome. Yet there is something fitting about their being commemorated together. It speaks to the truth and unity of the Church’s mission and life.
And wonderfully so. “Be ye all of one mind,” Peter bids us in this morning’s epistle reading from his First Letter. It can hardly be said that Peter and Paul were always of one mind! In fact, part of the life of the early Church in the New Testament period is about a tension between these towering and charismatic figures, both bigger than life, we might say. And yet, through controversy and debate, there is a unity that not only arises out of division but transcends the divides between them. At issue was the universality of the Church in the form of the question about whether circumcision was to be required of non-Jews in becoming Christians. The working out of that question is a kind of model about the interplay of principle and practice, about charity and truth, which is what ultimately unites these apostolic personalities.
What unites them, I think, is captured in the wonderful scene depicted in Luke’s Gospel this morning. Two things in particular are at work here. First, the image of “the people press[ing] upon Jesus to hear the word of God”; and secondly, Peter’s ‘yes’ to Jesus in the face of futility and despair. In a way those two things point us to what it means to “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts” and to what constitutes the complementarity of the lives and witness of Peter and Paul. Paul, formerly Saul, the persecutor of the Way, becomes Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, through his intense encounter with the Risen Christ, something, I would argue, which makes no sense apart from his strong intellectual desire to know and understand God. For Paul, there is the breakthrough of the understanding which sees how the glory of the Messiah and the sufferings of the Crucified Christ go together – a glory in the suffering and a suffering in the glory. Or to put it another way, the wounds of the crucified Christ do not disappear; they become the marks of love in the Risen Christ.
Out of the rage to destroy comes the passion to proclaim and serve. It complements this scene in Luke’s Gospel. Peter here names and anticipates, avant la letter, the existential despair of our age, the sense of nothingness and futility. “We have toiled all the night,” he says, and to what end? “We have taken nothing,” he says. Does that not speak to our lives? What really have we accomplished? Anything we might point to and say with Ozymandias, King of Kings, in our pride and pretension, “look on my works, ye Mighty and despair” are themselves the very things that seem but to dissolve into dust and vanity, a kind of nada, nothingness. What is the point of all our labour and activity? Ecclesiastes, the ancient philosopher preacher of the Jewish Scriptures, had it right when he points out that “all is vanity and a vexation of the spirit,” “a striving after the wind” – all a kind of empty nothingness, at least “under the sun.” And therein lies the possibilities of the turning point, the crux of the matter.
The world cannot satisfy us because our humanity is meant for something more. It is not just fish that are to be caught and profit to be made but souls to be saved and gathered into the kingdom of God. It happens exactly through the desire for something more, for the Word of God that speaks to the emptiness of our souls in distress and brings light to our darkness. We are, to put it bluntly, more than simply our activities, even more than just our desires. At issue is the transformation and sanctification of our hearts in desiring what God wants for us. That implies an openness to the idea of the absolute goodness of God as something far greater than the vagaries of human experience. I hardly need to remind you that things don’t always work out the way we would like. Faithfulness does not translate directly into worldly prosperity.
The Gospel is always counter-culture in the sense that it can never be reduced to our projects and preoccupations. It is always challenging us even when cultures are more clearly set on Christian ideals than the post-Christian and even anti-Christian world in which we now find ourselves.
This Gospel passage speaks so profoundly to a deep spiritual truth. The real measure of our lives is not found in what we do but what Christ is doing in us and through us. What this story reminds us is the abundance of God’s grace for us. But only if we act “at thy word.” It is the defining condition of faithfulness. It is the Marian moment at work in Simon Peter: her, “be it unto me according to thy word”; his, “at thy word.”
At times, everything in our lives seems empty and futile. All our labour, day in and day out, sermon after sermon, paper after paper, class after class, work-day after work-day, meeting after meeting, meal after meal, housework after housework. Sometimes there seems to be no progress only regress and failure, only silence and indifference. Simon Peter has named the reality – nothingness. At least considered simply in ourselves. But that is the point, the turning point of salvation. It is captured in his word, “nevertheless.” Despite this reality and this experience of futility, “at thy word I will let down the net.” I will do what you have commanded. Why?
Out of the desire for something more that takes us out of ourselves and places us with God. If this is so, then here is where we must be faithfully and truly, “press[ing] upon [Jesus] to hear the word of God,” the only antidote to the emptiness our souls and lives. It is found in him who is the Word of God without whom we can do nothing, and without whom we are nothing.
“Nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity V, 2013