“Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing;
nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net”
Simon Peter’s words capture elegantly and poignantly the reality of Christian experience and faith especially in contemporary times. There is the haunting sense of nothingness, the fear that what we have been doing all the years of our lives is really worth nothing. And yet, as Simon Peter says, “at thy word I will let down the net.” We press on not just with a sense of stoic futility, not just because, but “at thy word.” That changes everything and makes all our doings something worth and something understood. It is really about the Providence of God which rules and moves in and through our lives.
The Collect prays “that the course of this world may be so peaceably ordered by thy governance, that thy Church may joyfully serve thee in all godly quietness.” The Epistle reading, too, from First Peter (the role and place of Peter are suggested in these readings which belong to the early part of the Trinity season and in close proximity to the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul) exhorts us to a certain outlook and behavior regardless of the material outcome and regardless of the realities of suffering. It concludes by bidding us to “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.”
The idea of Providence is a rich and important theological concept. It is not unique to Christianity, of course, but it takes on a certain colour and hue in the Christian understanding because of the figure of Jesus Christ. The three great Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all word-centered, we might say, but in different ways. For Christians, Jesus Christ is “the Word made flesh” and that gives special meaning and poignancy to what Peter says here: “nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net.” In the face of the emptiness of human experience, in the dark night of suffering and sorrow, too, I would add, there is this strong affirmation of the goodness of God who alone can bring good out of evil, and light out of darkness, the God who is no stranger to the darkness of human sin experienced as suffering and death, emptiness and loss.
For Christians, that sensibility is rooted in the story of Jesus, in what is proclaimed and revealed to us in the witness of the Scriptures and in the life of the Church in her reflection and contemplation of the Scriptures. It becomes a way of making sense of human life and experience by placing it all under God’s Providence. The overarching principle here is the idea of the God who cares.
But some will ask, how can you say that God cares in a world so full of unspeakable atrocities and suffering? The spectacles of which are our daily fare: ranging from the gruesome acts of perversity to the human body perpetuated by an individual, such as the accused Luka Rocca Magnotta, to the continuing saga of atrocities committed in any number of wars, civil or otherwise, that confront us constantly, such as in Syria? Where do we see the care of God in the face of such mindless and empty and yet destructive nothingness?
There are no easy answers; only a way of facing dark and difficult things, the dark and difficult things of the heart, of your heart and mine, dare I say. For the empty nothingness of human experience, whether it takes the active form of outrageous acts of destruction or the more passive form of despair and depression is all about us independent of God. In a way, that is the point. It is precisely not “at thy word.”
Some will protest that “religion poisons everything,” to use Christopher Hitchens’ celebrated and, to be sure, grossly exaggerated phrase in his virulent attack on religion. After all, aren’t some of the forms of violence in our world altogether about religion? Isn’t religion inherently violent and, therefore, evil, some will say? There is a remarkable debate and discussion about such views. Yet there is a problem about associating religion, let alone equating religion, with violence, not the least of which is the question, what is religion? “Capitalism is religion,” the economic protestors in Europe and elsewhere allege (see the cover of Prospect Magazine, July 2012); “Communism is religion,” it has long been asserted. In Windsor and Falmouth, yard sales are religion! When religion becomes everything, it is nothing.
In his book, The Myth of Religious Violence, William T. Cavanagh points out the difficulties of arriving at any comprehensive definition of religion, eschewing, as he does, any sense of the essence of religion. The so-called ‘wars of religion’ in the seventeenth century, that some have argued paved the way for the emergence of secular culture, turn out not to be wars of religion in any meaningful sense at all but wars about power and wealth, about land and control. Same old, same old, we might say. After all, if Protestants are fighting as much against other Protestants as Catholics and Catholics as much against other Catholics as Protestants, in what meaningful sense can such wars really be about religion?
Religions can be and have been hijacked to any number of other agendas and concerns. In my view, the Jihadis have hijacked Islam to a political and cultural agenda. My point is that “at thy word” recalls all of the Abrahamic religions to a deeper reflection upon the logo-centric (word-centered) features of these religions and in ways that challenge all and any acts of violence whether within or between cultures, communities and institutions. Anglicans, too, are being challenged, locally and internationally, with respect to what it means to act “at thy word” as opposed to the politics of identity and the fashions and fads of social constructs. Betrayals are a sorry feature of our lives and reveal our emptiness and nothingness.
“At thy word” is not about mindless acquiescence to a divine command. Simon Peter here engages Jesus and expresses precisely the human predicament. We have toiled all the night long and have taken nothing. There is something profound and prophetic in his remark. The scarcity of material resources has always been a feature of the human experience and we deceive ourselves when we think that it can be otherwise. But the deeper insight is that the world is not and cannot satisfy our spiritual needs and desires. We yearn for something more.
Ultimately that idea is captured for us in this gospel. Luke tells us that “the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God.” Jesus uses a fishing boat as his pulpit, “and taught the people out of the ship.” It is a wonderful image. But note the element of wanting to learn! “They pressed upon him to hear the word of God.” Somehow in the hearing and the learning of God’s word we find meaning and purpose for our lives without which we remain empty and dead no matter how hard or how long we think we have worked.
This point is brought home ever more forcibly by the exchange between Simon Peter and Jesus. “Master,” he says, “we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing.” We glimpse his sense of futility and despair but then, as if in a kind of echo to the context of Jesus’ teaching from the boat, he immediately adds, “nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net.”
“At thy word.” This signifies an openness to what transcends human experience and yet is present in it. It is his recognition of God’s Providence in the face of the emptiness of human experience considered in itself. It is a wonderful and poignant reminder of who we are in the sight of God and of his providential care for us no matter how grim and gruesome the news of the day, no matter how cruel and harsh the hardness of human hearts. “God is greater than our heart,” we were reminded only a few Sundays ago. Our lives are something worth and something understood when we are open to God’s Word and seek to “act in God’s eye what in God’s eye [we are]” (Hopkins), namely Christ. To see Christ in each other and to know that he has embraced and redeemed the sufferings of the world is our challenge, our dignity, and our freedom. It results in our being caught up into the amiable captivity of Christ, embraced, as it were, in the net of his love.
“Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing;
nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity V, July 8th, 2012
Christ Church & St. George’s, Falmouth