by CCW | 1 July 2018 15:00
Knowledge is power, it is commonly said. It serves as the defining cliche or mantra for our modern technocratic world, a world dominated by our assumptions of power over nature through technology and, paradoxically, over ourselves. But it is a dangerous and destructive mantra and one which is largely false. What kind of knowledge and what kind of power? To ask the questions is to begin to be more critical about human reason and to realise our limitations.
The phrase “knowledge is power” is usually attributed to Sir Francis Bacon, the father of empirical philosophy in the early sixteenth century. Certainly the question for him was about how our knowledge could be used to better the human condition but he was under no illusion about how false and falsifying our claims to knowledge, either through the physical senses or through the mental operations of our minds, could be. His was a cautious interrogation of nature, forcing her to give up her secrets through careful experimentation. Marx would later take up the scientific idea to say that the point is not to know nature but to use nature for our ends. With industrialization and now digital automation, we confront the dark side of these assumptions and their realizations.
We are no longer at ease in a world of human domination of either nature or ourselves. The narratives of progress are equally fraught with the conditions of loss and destruction: the seas have been overfished; the land diminished and destroyed by pesticides and machines belonging to the industrialization of agriculture. We have lost our connection to land and sea; in short, to creation.
We also have got the narratives all wrong. For Bacon, the world was God’s creation and he did not say that knowledge is power but that God’s knowledge is power. Therein lies an important distinction and one which belongs to the insights of our religious and philosophical traditions. They provide a counter to our hubris and destructive domination of nature and ourselves.
Nautical, sea-faring and fishing images complement the more abundant agrarian, agricultural and farming images in the Gospels. They belong not to our domination and manipulation of nature and our humanity, not to the dynamics of power, but to the truth of our incorporation into the life of God in Jesus Christ. They recall us at once to our necessary and inescapable connection to the created world and to the God in whose image we are made. As such they provide a self-critique of human reason without which there is only loss and destruction, a loss and a destruction that is entirely our doing.
There is a providential wonder about these scriptural readings. They speak beyond their immediate historical context, whatever that might be, to the truth of our humanity in God, the God who transcends time and space, not in a gnostic flight from the world but in the redemption of the world and our humanity. We are opened out to the radical goodness of God’s knowledge and to his power which is greater than all our doings and all our knowing.
“If ye be followers of that which is good, who is he that will harm you?” Peter argues, adding that “if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy are ye.” On that basis “be not afraid … neither be troubled”, he says, “but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.”
Wonderful words, strengthening and comforting words, but what exactly do they mean? The Gospel passage from St. Luke complements Peter’s words and illustrates their meaning. And it is Simon Peter who learns from this remarkable encounter with Jesus. The scene is, first of all, about teaching. Jesus uses one of the ships as his pulpit. The teaching or knowing comes first. Then comes the doing. Simon Peter states the real truth and nature of the human predicament. His words are like Mary’s words to Christ at the Wedding Feast in Cana of Galilee. “They have no wine,” Mary tells Jesus. Here Simon Peter is basically saying ‘we have no fish’, only he says it less concisely though no less eloquently. “Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing.”
Our labour simply in and of itself is nothing. This is itself a profound self-critique of human reasoning and doing. All our labour, both our thinking and our doing, depend upon God and the created order. Forget that and you know nothing and all our doings are worth nothing. “All our doings without charity are nothing worth,” as one of the great Collects puts it, reminding us of God’s love and knowledge as prior and primary to all our doings. But Simon Peter does not end just with this statement of loss and emptiness. He appears to have learned from the lessons of Jesus and so he quickly and wonderfully adds the mystical and life-affirming words, “nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net.” This is the crucial and saving grace, we might say, because it is an explicit acknowledgment of God’s truth and goodness over and against the assertions of human enterprise.
This should be enough for us, simply the openness to acting upon God’s Word in Christ, and it is, but the Gospel goes on to make more explicit what it means to “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.” The net is let down and great quantity of fish are inclosed to the point of almost sinking the ships. A miracle of divine abundance after the night of human futility, a miracle that signals our working with God according to his word. That is the whole point of our lives and the corrective to the assumptions of our own autonomy and the arrogance of our technocratic will.
There is abundantly more for us to learn here. The teaching never really stops. Such is the richness of these Gospel readings that reach out to us in our confusions and follies. Simon Peter falls down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” Why? He has glimpsed the vast gulf between God’s knowledge and truth and human knowing and actions. He sees in Christ’s words and actions the truth and presence of God. That brings him to his knees in wonder and astonishment; in short, worship. He recognises the limits of human knowing and doing. This is the saving grace and marks an important transition. He becomes a disciple of Jesus and along with James and John, the sons of Zebedee, “they forsook all, and followed him,” becoming at Jesus’ word, fishers of men.
Peter’s words and response to Jesus are an example of metanoia, the change in our thinking which belongs to the ministry of John the Baptist, the ministry of“preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” On this Canada Day – not Cannabis Day, yet! – and the Octave Day of the Nativity of John the Baptist, we are recalled to repentance and reminded of the importance of grounding our lives in the word and will of God. It means recovering and reclaiming the narratives of repentance and humility, the very things that belong to the wisdom of our religious and philosophical traditions.
Does that mean giving up the labour of fishing and farming? No. But it means giving up the false sense of our own knowledge and power. It means forsaking our attachments to ourselves and our interests and our doings without recognising God’s knowledge and power as the only and true basis and measure of our lives. This is what it means to “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.” It means thinking and doing “at thy word”; in short, it means worship. It is a necessary critique of the kind of human reason which in its arrogance leads only to loss and destruction. Moved by the teachings of Christ, Simon Peter provides the real mantra for our lives.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity V (Octave Day of the Nativity of John the Baptist)
Christ Church & St. Thomas’, Three-Mile Plains
July 1st, 2018
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2018/07/01/sermon-for-the-fifth-sunday-after-trinity-8/
Copyright ©2026 Christ Church unless otherwise noted.