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
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