Saturday 9 February 2019

Sermon Opoho Church Sunday 10 February, 2019 Epiphany 5


Readings:  1 Corinthians 15:1-11   Luke 5:1-11
We pray:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our rock and our sustainer.  Amen.

“By the grace of God I am what I am, and God’s grace toward me has not been in vain.”  With those powerful words Paul shares what was a profound moment of truth for him with the people of Corinth.  Despite the fact that he had persecuted the Christians, despite his being a latecomer to faith, despite his awkwardness and his lack of stature and feeling like an outsider, despite his spectacular ‘road to Damascus’ experience, he is who he is and God works in and through him.  For all his striving, all his pushing himself to the limit, it was the grace of God that spoke through him just as he was, a flawed and fallible follower of Christ. 

By the grace of God, we are what we are!  How we proclaim the good news of God with us does not require of us perfection or status or immense skill – it requires us to acknowledge that in Christ, just as we are, we have a new centre of existence, a new power for living, a new perspective from which to view all things.  It changes our lives forever yet we still ‘are who we are’.  Remember the words of the hymn by Deirdre Brown – ‘Come as you are, that’s how I want you…. Come as you are: that’s how I love you;…..  Nothing can change the love that I bear you; all will be well, just come as you are.’

And this is exactly what Jesus is saying to us as we hear the story from Luke of his inviting this man Simon Peter to join him in the journey – ‘come as you are’ he says to the rough and ready fishermen cleaning their nets, exhausted after a fruitless night of fishing, tidying up before they head home - such an ordinary moment of their daily living.  There would have been fishy smells, torn nets, no doubt a bit of choice muttering and some worry at their non-existent catch
And Jesus stepped into their world, just as they were; and he preached to them and to the people who had gathered – but he especially had Simon in his sights.

Remembering that in Luke’s Gospel this was not the first time that Jesus and Simon had met – in Luke 4 we hear of Simon’s mother-in-law being healed by Jesus – and that helps to explain the seemingly sudden request that Jesus makes for the use of his boat.  Simon Peter owes Jesus and that is a serious obligation.  So when Jesus asks ‘Will you help me?’ the answer has to be yes. And so we have a preacher who, with Simon’s strong hand to keep it steady, uses a boat in a lake as his pulpit, with an exhausted perhaps reluctant hand at its helm.  And Simon finds himself, instead of heading home for some well deserved rest, sitting back in his boat, on the lake, listening as he worked at keeping this makeshift pulpit on an even keel and close to shore.

We are still operating in Simon’s world at this point – lake, boat, fish, smell, nets, mates alongside –with the addition of this rabbi Jesus and the crowd that has come to hear him of course.  All is ordinary, unusual but still familiar - yet everything is about to change.  For suddenly Jesus takes their world and turns it upside down.  This landlubber, this carpenter demands that they launch their boats and head out with their nets at a time when every part of their long experience told them ‘you don’t catch fish in the day in Sea of Galilee’.  Can you imagine it?  You can almost see the thoughts going through Simon’s head: ‘You have to be joking! There’s nothing out there.  I’ll show you who knows the most about fishing, boss man! Let’s go!’

The result – mind blowing! In that moment Simon and his fellow fishers would have come face to face with the heady taste of success and unimaginable wealth.  The haul of fish was beyond belief.  Yet for Simon Peter, it was also unexpectedly a moment of truth, of realizing that Jesus was not who he thought he was, not an ordinary rabbi or someone he owed a debt to – but was actually calling him to something new.
His first reaction is that he is not worthy – but Jesus, keeping him still in his familiar world, tells him he will become a fisher of people.  The skills he has for fishing will be his skills for discipleship: patience, teamwork, hard work, dealing with failure and getting it wrong, doing things even when he doesn’t understand why!   He is to be who he always has been but changed because he has heard the call of Jesus and can never be the same.  As he walked away from the only life he had ever known, he took with him all that he was to enter in to discipleship with Jesus.

This story of the call of Peter, forever known as ‘the big fisherman,’ has much for us as we contemplate what it means to be ourselves in Christ. 

Jesus came to Peter –where he was.  Jesus approach was within his familiar world – he came to the side of lake where the fisherfolk were working, made a seemingly innocuous request for help as we might ask someone to hold the ladder for us.  He preached into their world, using the things they knew to relay his message – as he so often did. He asked for Simon Peter to be company on the way – stepping out into a new world, changing his perspective, encountering new ways.  And here’s the thing - he didn’t ask Simon Peter to go to a ministry school before he joined the company of the faithful

Jesus comes to us where we are, as we are and invites us too to be company on the way. 
He assures us that worlds we live in are the places that need us, that our skills and our abilities fit us well for the work Christ calls us too, that in the power of the Spirit healing and wholeness can some from our stumbling attempt to console, that plate of scones we popped over the fence really helped, that the word of support to the workmate over a cuppa made a difference.
We are well equipped each one of us, to discipleship just as we are – active within our daily living.  Paul’s words again: ‘By the grace of God I am what I am.’  But for many of us it is his next words that are the challenge: ‘his grace toward me has not been in vain.’
To know that we have skills and talents and value good enough for Jesus, to understand that we are loved as we are is one step on the way that Jesus invites us into.  As we reflect on how that journey has been, where it has taken us, are we also able to say with surety as Paul did that it has not been in vain.
Can we hold that tension between being accepted as we are and yet allowing the presence of God to change us, to make us bold and courageous, able to leave the familiar surroundings or rather take them with us as we journey with Christ Jesus.  The pivotal moment, I believe in the story of the call on Simon Peter is when he and others left everything and followed Jesus.  Everything being their possessions, their familiar surroundings, their comfortable existence – but not who they were.  Our everything might be our giving up of control and reasonable expectation, of a humility that paralyses the gifts we are given, of an unwillingness to venture into the unknown and sometimes, yes, to leave that which is familiar and set foot on a new road which leads only God knows where. 

You and me, with all our familiar foibles and joys, you and me and Jesus travelling together in the grace of God.  What can we not do?  In confidence and hope we walk together as Christ’s body here in Opoho.  I’m excited about that – I hope you are too.

I would finish with a blessing from Joy Cowley:

May the deep peace of our Lord Jesus Christ abide deep within you.
May you know you are exactly who you are meant to be.
May you be content with yourself knowing you are God’s unique creation and can never be separate from God.
May you not forget the great potential born of faith, that is in you and others.
May you use the gifts you receive, and pass on the love that is given to you.[1]
May your soul always find freedom to dance in abundant gratitude
And may God continue to bless you and other through you.  Amen.

Margaret Garland


[1] Blessing  from  Veil over the Light: selected spiritual writings by Joy Cowley p.154


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