‘When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him’ (Luke 5: 11 … fishing boats on a shore at Mount Athos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent are less than four weeks away (5 March 2025) and today is the Fourth Sunday before Lent (9 February 2025).
Later this morning, I intend to be at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford. Once again this is an important weekend for Six Nations rugby fixtures. I watched yesterday’s matches between Italy and Wales (and England and France, and plan to find an appropriate place to see the game between Scotland and Ireland this afternoon (15:00). Before today begins, however, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
The Miraculous Draught of Fish (see Luke 5: 1-11) … a window by Heaton, Butler and Bayne in Saint Mary’s Church, St Neots, Cambridgeshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Luke 5: 1-11 (NRSVA):
1 Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, 2 he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. 3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. 4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.’ 5 Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’ 6 When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. 7 So they signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. 8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’ 9 For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; 10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’ 11 When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.
Between now and Ash Wednesday (5 March 2025), we are in what the Church Calendar calls ‘Ordinary Time.’
So often, our celebrations in Church ask us to identify with the great saints and martyrs, in contrast to the ordinary people who are so often the focus of Christ’s ministry in the Gospels: ordinary people who are poor or on the margins in society; ordinary people with everyday jobs like fishermen and tax collectors, or publicans and farmers; ordinary people in the villages and towns; ordinary people with a need for healing or who are hurt and broken by loss and grief.
Ordinary people, living ordinary lives in ordinary time. Not sinless people, but ordinary people, conscious of our weaknesses and our failings, humbled in and all too aware of our own sinfulness and flaws.
In the Gospel reading this morning, we hear the renewed call to some of the disciples, including Peter, James and John. These calls come not to people who feel they are worthy of this call, that the deserve this, that they have inherited a call, or who think they are entitled to speak on God’s behalf. They start off as very ordinary people, like you and me.
The three disciples, Peter, James and John, are called not only to speak on Christ’s behalf, but to do what Christ commands and to follow him.
Saint Peter expressed his feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness, yet accepts God’s call to speak in God’s name unconditionally and in faith.
This Gospel story (Luke 5: 1-11) is a story of commitment to Christ, to his message and to his destiny. Simon is named Peter for the first time in Saint Luke’s Gospel in this reading (verse 8). Christ calls Simon or Simon Peter to be a disciple, promising him he is to be a ‘fisher of men,’ and Peter, James and John leave everything and follow Christ.
Try to imagine the roles or the calls being reversed.
Can you imagine a Roman Governor accepting the call to work with the disciples in an ordinary fishing boat?
Had Pontius Pilate heard Christ’s call, would he have given up privilege, or paid heed to the inevitable obloquy that would follow his extraordinary use of power?
This Gospel reading opens us to the concept that God does extraordinary things with ordinary people, in ordinary places, in ordinary times.
This episode begins beside the ‘lake of Gennesaret,’ on the south-west shore of the Sea of Galilee. The crowd is pressing in to hear Christ, the Word of God, to hear the Christian message.
Jesus gets into the boat with Simon Peter. There are two boats in this episode, and James and John are also fishing in one of the boats.
Simon acknowledges Jesus as ‘Master’ or teacher. The disciples do what Christ tells them to do, and they are amazed at the consequences. Simon Peter responds by falling down before Christ in humility, pointing to himself as a sinful man, and calling Jesus ‘Lord,’ which becomes an expression of faith.
Peter, James and John are ordinary working men who make an extraordinary and total commitment to Christ; they leave everything, and follow him.
In traditional illustrations, the boat is often used as an image of the Church, while the fish is an image of Christ. In the Early Church, the fish came to symbolise Christ because the Greek word
Ichthus (ΙΧΘΥΣ), meaning ‘fish’, is an acrostic for ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour’ (Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ).
The Church is the boat, Christ is the fish, and God calls us as ordinary people, in ordinary places, in ordinary times, to realise that God sees us – you and me, each and every one of us – to work with him, where he finds us. God sees us in our everyday lives as his partners in the boat. And we are all in this boat together.
It is in being the ordinary people we are, in our ordinary lives, in our ordinary times, in ordinary places, that God calls us. And if we chose to respond, then, like Peter, James and John, we may find we are amazed at the catch Christ brings into the Church through us.
Are we brave enough to face this possibility? Or is that ordinary challenge too much for us? If we have any doubts, remember how Christ says to Simon Peter, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’
An icon of the Church as a boat, including Christ, the Apostles and the Church Fathers (Icon: Deacon Matthew Garrett, www.holy-icons.com)
Today’s Prayers (Sunday 9 February 2025, the Fourth Sunday before Lent):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Founders’ Day.’ USPG and SPCK are celebrating ‘Founders’ Day’ in Saint James’s Church, Picadilly, next week (Monday 17 February 2025). This theme is introduced today with a Reflection by Dr Jo Sadgrove, Research & Learning Advisor, USPG:
USPG has a complicated historical legacy which encompasses the most violent aspects, including involvement in chattel slavery. Founders’ Day poses acute ethical challenges to an organisation reckoning with such a past.
I was struck by the challenges of this when I attended Founders’ Day at Codrington College. At this event, held on the lawn outside the college, staff, students and community met to recognise the ‘good intentions’ of Christopher Codrington, who bequeathed the plantations to the fledgling SPG to found a theological training institution. How, I wondered, could the Barbadians present, descendants of enslaved Africans who laboured in the unthinkable death spaces of the plantations, stand and utter this man’s name? What cost did doing so pose to their spiritual and mental wellbeing? What was the personal price of this act of remembrance, which mentioned nothing of the economy of death which defined the Codrington Plantations under the SPG’s oversight for over a hundred years?
For USPG, commemoration must require a different imaginary and praxis: one that prioritises lament for all that has been lost and destroyed, and seeks justice through deep and painful self-examination of all that has followed.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 9 February 2025, the Fourth Sunday before Lent) invites us to pray reflecting on these words:
‘If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin’ (I John 1: 6-7).
The Collect:
O God,
you know us to be set
in the midst of so many and great dangers,
that by reason of the frailty of our nature
we cannot always stand upright:
grant to us such strength and protection
as may support us in all dangers
and carry us through all temptations;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Go before us, Lord, in all we do
with your most gracious favour,
and guide us with your continual help,
that in all our works
begun, continued and ended in you,
we may glorify your holy name,
and finally by your mercy receive everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Lord of the hosts of heaven,
our salvation and our strength,
without you we are lost:
guard us from all that harms or hurts
and raise us when we fall;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch’ (Luke 5: 4) … a fisherman at work at Torcello in the Venetian lagoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Scripture quotations are from the
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised 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
