by CCW | 5 July 2015 14:32
“It came to pass.” Something happened. It seems almost like the beginning of a fairy tale ‘long ago and far away,’ or ‘once upon a time,’ as it were. Yet this is no ordinary event but something extraordinary communicated through the quotidian, every day events of human lives. This story speaks wonderfully and directly to the deepest concerns of our contemporary world and day, namely, the sense of nothingness, the meaninglessness of our lives, what is properly called nihilism. The nothingness of life.
“If you live today, you breathe in nihilism,” the American writer Flannery O’Connor observed. It is “the very gas you breath,” whether you are “religious” or “secular” as the publishing venture “Interventions” notes in promoting works aimed at providing an alternative to the nihilisms of our day theologically and philosophically through a thorough-going and “genuinely interdisciplinary” approach. The challenge and the task is about rethinking everything, we might say.
Such an approach might be said to have a kind of Scriptural beginning with this Gospel story along with the Epistle from 1 Peter. We read these anciently appointed readings this year in what is traditionally and anciently known as Petertide, referring to the Feast of St. Peter to which is also added the figure of St. Paul. Both were martyred in Rome albeit at different times and buried originally at different places. Their common commemoration arises from the translation of their remains to a common place of burial during a time of persecution in 258; subsequently, their remains were returned to what is thought to have been their original places of burial.
As Fr. Park reminded us at his 30th anniversary celebration of his ordination to the Priesthood this week, both Peter and Paul were missionaries and both Peter and Paul spoke to both Jew and Gentile communities alike. There is an intercultural engagement that belongs to the emergence and the development of the Christian Faith. Add to the picture that their joint commemoration has very much to do with Rome, with the way in which, through both, the Gospel of Jesus Christ engages the Graeco-Roman world of law and philosophy, and one begins to see the necessary nature of the interdisciplinary and intercultural aspects of our thinking and believing.
This connection between the readings for The Fifth Sunday after Trinity, as it later comes to be known, and Petertide is not altogether accidental. It belongs to a deeper wisdom and understanding of the Church’s reading of the Scriptures in the doctrinal pattern of the Christian year and in relation to the major feast days of the Saints as well. While they do not always coincide of course, they are often closely connected particularly with The Octave of St. Peter and St. Paul but above all else with the theme of the confession of faith. The Gospel reading for Petertide is about Peter’s Confession of Faith. “Whom say ye that I am?” Jesus asks, to which Peter famously replies, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The extraordinary nature of this confession is signaled by Jesus. “Blessed art thou, Simon son of John: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven,” he says before going on to rename him as Peter, the rock upon which “I will build my Church,” the Church to whom he gives the keys of the kingdom.
Something heavenly and divine is revealed through earthly and human means. Yet the power of this which reflects in turn upon this morning’s Gospel is that no sooner has Peter confessed this heavenly insight and understanding and been pronounced by Jesus as “blessed” than he is denounced by Jesus. Why? Jesus had proceeded to speak about his passion and death in Jerusalem to which Peter said, “this shall never happen to you.” Jesus who had just said, “blessed art thou” to Peter now says, “Get thee behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men;” there is a complete disconnect between the human and the divine. Peter is at once completely right about Jesus as “the Christ, the son of the living God,” and completely wrong about its real truth and meaning. He is not alone in such confusions.
Yet this is a disturbing turn around, to say the least. It reminds us of our human frailty and sin. We recall that Peter will himself deny Christ three times. Perhaps that also explains the additional reading within The Octave of St. Peter and Paul from John’s Gospel where the Risen Christ reconstitutes Peter three times in love and recommissions him, commanding him to “feed my sheep.” There is a renewal in love even after we betray our confession of love.
All this is preliminary to a reflection upon this Gospel story. What is it about? Our absolute need for God’s grace and the utter insufficiency of our worldly enterprises to provide meaning and purpose for our lives. Something happens. Jesus enters into the ship of Simon – who will later be called Peter – “and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land,” not literally to fish but to preach and teach. “He sat down, and taught the people out of the ship.” Something happened because “the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God.” There is a hunger and thirst for something heavenly and divine as against the nothingness of our lives. Jesus uses Simon’s ship as a pulpit. The context is about desiring to hear the word of God. Just so, “it came to pass.”
It is only after Jesus has taught the people that we have the next episode. Jesus says to Simon, “Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.” Simon’s response confesses, it seems to me, a sense of the futility and emptiness of human endeavor in itself. “Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing.” Left at that we have simply the air of nihilism which we always breathe. But there is another confession which follows immediately and which picks up on what has happened, namely, the word of God proclaimed in Jesus Christ. “Nevertheless,” Simon says, “at thy word I will let down the net.” “At thy word” is the counter to our nihilism. Something happens.
What follows is the miraculous draught of a large number of fishes so many that “their net brake” and the other ship is called in to help but the catch is so great that both ships “began to sink.” This leads to another confession on the part of Simon who will be called Peter; a confession that in no small way contributes to his famous confession of faith about Jesus but also to Christ’s denunciation of him immediately following. It reveals something about the human condition, here in its truth and honesty. When Simon Peter, as Luke here names him for the first time, thereby making explicit the connection which Petertide affirms as well, sees what has happened, “he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”
His genuflection is about the truth of the human relation to Jesus as Lord. We do not, as our liturgy reminds us, presume upon ourselves but knowing our own emptiness and nothingness, we can only confess our sinfulness in acknowledging the truth of God and the plenitude of his grace. This confession leads to Jesus’ words, “Fear not, from henceforth thou shalt catch men,” a new vocation, a new ministry; one which arises from what has come to pass. Something happens and we are changed.
We are fed. We are filled with more than we can desire and more than we deserve. Something happens but only in the face of the empty nihilism of our lives and experiences. Only “at thy word” can we discover “a renewed atmosphere” of faith and thought so that we can breathe “an air that is not nothing.” It came to pass. Something happens. Our humanity is radically incomplete, empty and nothing, without God.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity V in the Octave of SS. Peter and Paul
2015
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