Sunday, 6 February 2022

SERMON 169 - SUNDAY 6 FEBRUARY 2022

Sermon at Whiteparish All Saints’ Parish Church, - 4th Sunday before Lent    Sunday 6th February 2022

Isaiah 6:1-8(9-13); 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

Each of the three readings this morning has, essentially the same theme. Can you identify what it is?  Well, for me, the message which each of these three pieces of scripture portrays is that of “renewal” after a period of desperation and I think that we can all identify with this topic as we hopefully move out of our own Covid exiles into a new beginning.

I have always liked the gospel reading in particular.  Many of you will know that I was brought up in a tough northern town – Grimsby on the southern bank of the Humber Estuary famed for its fishing and food processing. Indeed, when I was growing up it boasted of being the largest deep sea fishing port in the world with literally hundreds of trawlers sailing daily out of the port and spending several weeks at sea before returning with their catch – mainly haddock and cod. My grandfather was a trawler skipper captaining one of these vessels.  On their return to Grimsby, he and his crew would be well rewarded with a percentage of the money from the sale of the fish, but if either there was a glut which kept the price low or a poor catch they would receive little if anything.  It was literally feast or famine.  For the most part they did well, as attested by the plethora of smart shops in the town at that time, but if not their only hope was to go back to sea and hope for a better catch and, indeed, return with their lives too!

These fishermen were tough and sometimes quite rough characters and I have no reason to suppose that Simon Peter and his brethren were any different.  We know from the direct way Simon Peter often spoke that he, like his counterparts in Grimsby, would get straight to the point.  I would see all the fishing nets strung out on the dockside for repair or for returning to their ships and every time I read or hear this passage the sights, sounds and smells of my home town come flooding back to me. Unfortunately it is pure nostalgia now as there are only a handful of vessels still sailing out of Grimsby and then only for a few days at a time into the shallower waters of the North Sea.  Most of the fish processing which still occurs is mainly using fish imported from overseas and not directly landed in the port. The town itself has lost its main reason for existence and can be described as a deprived area of the country.

I am using this example, not to make any political statements, but as a reminder that when Jesus chose his first disciples, his first followers, he was not choosing theologically learned people as most “rabbis” would have but ordinary hard-working men just as he might have found in one of the pubs along Freeman Street in Grimsby. These were men who probably drank hard, partied hard and swore frequently – they were as far from the Pharisees and Elders of the Temple as you could get.  They probably laughed at this “preacher-type” who had used one of their boats (probably at a price) to preach to the crowd. When he told them to go out and fish on the lake, Simon responded that they had had no luck despite their superior knowledge of where the fish might be. However they did humour him, (or did they find something special in the way he had preached?} and put out to sea and were astounded by the catch they had – so many fish that other boats had to come to their assistance. If they had been sceptical about Jesus and his ministry, they were no longer because he had, effectively spoken their language – the language of fishermen – the catching of fish.  Jesus then went on, in inviting them to join him, to use “fishing” as a metaphor – “From now on you will be catching people” or as some translations have it “You will become fishers of men”.  And so, here we have a most unlikely scenario – rough and ready fishermen becoming disciples – ministers of religion if you like.  But, as we saw, this had happened before.

Our reading in Isaiah is one of those pieces of scripture which is most often read at services of ordination and licensing – especially the phrase “Whom shall I send?”. There is a hymn – “I the Lord of Sea and Sky” which I had hoped to have today but couldn’t find it in either of the church’s hymn books. I am sure you all know it. Once again we have a situation where the writer feels totally unprepared and unqualified to take on the role of prophet.  He says, perhaps pre-empting the thoughts of the fishermen several hundred years later after hearing and listening to Jesus – “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet I have seen the King, the LORD of Hosts!”  We read that Isaiah’s lips were touched with a hot coal from the Altar of the Lord and his guilt departed him such that he then felt ready to offer his services in ministry.

Our third reading again touches on this theme.  Paul was always conscious that he had never been an actual disciple of Jesus – living and working with him – but only met him after Jesus’s death and resurrection on the road to Damascus where he was going to persecute Jesus’s followers. Accordingly we find throughout his writings his need to justify his authority – especially on those occasions when he comes into conflict with Peter, Andrew and James (those self-same fishermen).  In this passage though, he humbles himself for once and describes himself as “the least amongst the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because he persecuted Jesus’s church.  But he recognises that inspite of this he has a story to tell which makes his testimony all that stronger because he was chosen by Jesus despite his appalling antecedents.

What I really love about all three of these readings is that in their individual and collective way, they remind us that whatever we might have done in the past, however educated or uneducated we are, we are all qualified to be disciples.  Indeed, Paul went even further in reminding us of the concept of the priesthood of all people. It shows us that to know Jesus is not necessarily about knowing about him intellectually, it’s about having a personal relationship with him. It also reminds us that God will meet us where we are.  He met Isaiah in a Vision of Heaven whilst Isaiah was contemplating the destruction of the Temple and the Exile; He met Paul through Jesus on the road to Damascus on his way to officially persecute Jesus’s followers, and he met the fishermen in their workplace – on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

And today he continues to meet people in their everyday lives.  We hear reports that thousands of Muslims have been converted to Christianity after seeing visions of Jesus. In the Bible too there are many instances of people being called to service from where they are.

As Jesus’s modern day “fishermen and fisherwomen”, I guess I should now say “fisherpersons” we should recall the instructions he gave to his first disciples in the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel :

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age”.

 

Let us pray

Father God, we remember your call to those first disciples

by the Sea of Galilee

who left their occupation and followed you without question.

Grant that when so called, we too may have the courage to answer

with the words of Isaiah :“Here I am, send me”

so that the Good News so much needed may be spread throughout the world.

We ask this through your Son and our Saviour, Jesus Christ our Lord

 

 

Amen                                                                                       MFB/169/04022022


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