New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
Year C: Fourth Sunday before Lent, 6 February
2022
In the gospel that we have
heard or read today (Luke 5:1-11) we are invited to consider the call of Peter
and the other disciples. We are also
reminded that we, too, are called to follow Jesus every day of our lives. The idea of a call is echoed in the first
reading from the 8th century (BC) prophet, Isaiah (‘Here am I; send
me!’” (Isaiah 6:8).
We begin with a boat. Peter
had a boat because he was a fisherman.
And he did not fish alone. He worked along with other family members and
friends in Lake Galilee.
Jesus must have spotted
Peter some time previous to the story we have heard and identified him and his
fishing boat as a good place to begin. He didn’t call Peter himself initially,
he just asked him for the loan of his boat because Jesus needed to address a
crowd that was pressing in on him to ‘hear the word of God’. “The crowd was pressing in on him to hear the
word of God”, the text says, (Luke 5:1). ‘Pressing in on him’! One can only
imagine what it was like in the early days of the movement in Jerusalem after
the resurrection of Jesus Christ – when many, many people were pressing in on
Peter, James, John and others to ‘hear the word of God’. A fire had been lit
just as it was, according to tradition and folklore, on the Hill of Slane by
Patrick in the 5th century. A fire was lit in Jerusalem and then in Antioch,
Alexandria, India and possibly China in the forgotten history of ancient
Christianity. And, finally, it was lit in Ireland where centuries of monastic,
missionary and church planting would ensue at a dark time in Europe.
Times are dark right now
on so many fronts and it is far from clear that the bright light of that
initial fire is still visible in Ireland. There is just you, me and us. If not
us who? And when and how?
I suggest that you and I gathered
here today have four clear callings:
Each of us is called to
follow Jesus: to seek his face and his will day by day no matter who we are or how
we find ourselves.
Second, we are called to
love and serve others whom God sends us.
It is in the ordinary business of life that we follow Jesus: praying for
others, cooking, cleaning, talking shopping, dropping an email to someone or
lifting a phone, listening fully to a family member, driving a family member
somewhere, taking time to be still at times, doing whatever work we have to do
and doing it well and doing it with love and so on.
Third, in the life of the
Church we each have a sacred duty to deepen our faith, join with others in
worship and taste the goodness of the Lord in sacrament, Word and joint
activity for the good of the church and the whole of society. Many have special ministries in and outside
church. Perhaps one of the most important ministries is to smile when
appropriate and to mean it as well as to share with many who are going through
all sorts of difficulties (com-passion=suffer with). The task of telling out the Good News of
Jesus Christ is not the exclusive reserve of the ordained, the commissioned or
the vowed. Rather by virtue of the sacred duty entrusted to us in Baptism and
reaffirmed in Confirmation we are to tell out the Good News with our very own
lives spent, given and offered on the altar of daily living.
Finally and most
crucially, we are called by God, today, to live life to the full as he meant us
to. Some day – and who knows it could be
today or it could be tomorrow – we will be called to let go of this life that
we might embrace even more beautiful life in eternity.
“Then I heard the voice of
the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here
am I; send me!’” (Isaiah 6:8).
Indeed. Here am I; send
me! Amen.
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