Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity

admin | 12 July 2020

Audio File of Matins & Ante-Communion for Trinity 5

Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord

Peter’s confession here is paradoxically the condition of our abiding in the Word and truth of God. It signals the wonder of the grandeur of God in the beauty of the world and the beauty of human affairs but only through our awareness of our emptiness, our nothingness in and of ourselves which stands in such stark contrast to the abundance of the divine life. His confession complements his exhortations to us in the Epistle to “be of one mind” and to “sanctify Christ as Lord in [our] hearts.” Such things are only possible through his confession here.

Peter’s confession is usually understood to refer to his response to Jesus’ question, “Whom do men say that I am?” to which Peter replies, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” His insight into the divinity of Christ solicits, in turn, Christ’s words, “Blessed art thou, Simon son of John: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.” But that doctrinal confession complements this confession of sin. Why? Because all confession of sin is equally a confession of the truth of God. Confession is equally praise, an acknowledgement of God’s truth without which there can be no acknowledgement of our sins and failings. As such Peter’s awareness of the gulf between himself and God is the condition of our being with God, of our abiding in the holiness of his Word. That theme of abiding in the Word and Truth of God belongs to our sanctification, to our holiness as found in our abiding in the holiness of God.

How does that work? Through our attention to the things of God in our midst. “The people pressed upon him to hear the word of God,” Luke tells us. Do we? Or we are caught up in all of the false forms of knowing that belong to our technocratic world? We are easily caught up in an instrumental reason that limits us to what we think is practical and useful only to find ourselves as the willing slaves to the devices and desires of our lives. The devices are even now quite literal and they so easily define us. But Jesus “sat down and taught the people out of the ship.” What was that teaching? “Master” Peter says, “we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing; nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net.” What was that word?

It is the word of abundant life. The teaching and the word are not information. Google teaches us nothing and knows nothing. Information is not knowledge; it is not wisdom. Here is the living word of the understanding, literally that which stands under all of the activities and pursuits of our lives. Jesus’ teaching and word is about our abiding in the ethical understanding of our lives with God and with one another. Peter here says, “Depart from me.” Jesus says, “Fear not, from henceforth thou shalt catch men.” This Gospel is the classic story of the call to discipleship of Peter along with James and John but it signals as well the idea of our abiding in the understanding of God in and through all of the ways of human life. Such is our sanctification.

The patterns of justification and sanctification belong to our incorporation into the life of Christ. From Advent to Trinity, we run through the Creed as it were, attending to the significant and doctrinal moments in the life of Christ which belong to human redemption. Such is the pageant of justification. Christ for us. Now in the long Trinity season, those teachings are meant to be realized in us. Such is the pageant of sanctification. Christ in us. They complement one another as two aspects of the same principle of our abiding in the life of God. Christ for us and Christ in us.

The qualities of that understanding are laid out by Peter. It has to do with an understanding that is lived out in our common life together. It is about our blessedness which is more than material happiness. It is about being alive to the teaching and word of Christ, “having compassion one of another, lov[ing] as brethren, be[ing} pitiful (meaning full of pity towards others), be[ing] courteous.” Such are the positive moral injunctions followed by the negative injunctions, “not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing.” We are not to be defined by our antagonisms and animosities, our divisions and hatreds, our desire for revenge, “but contrariwise blessing.” How radical is that? To bless one another rather than condemn one another!

Yet is that not precisely at the heart of the Christian understanding? Just as here “he sat down and taught the people” so “he sat down” and “opened his mouth and taught them, saying ‘blessed are ye’” in the teaching known as the Beatitudes. As Peter tells us we are called to blessedness and we are meant to know this. But only if we attend to the teaching and word of Christ, come what may in our troubled and uncertain world. His teaching and word open us out to the understanding of God who is abundant life. More than a broken net full of a great multitude of fishes, we are caught up in the net of the understanding. Like Simon Peter, we are meant to be called up into the greater understanding of God’s abundant life. It can only be “at thy word.”