5 Epiphany, 2022
Once, a crowd gathered at the side of a lake. Some people call it the Sea of Galilee, but it’s really a freshwater lake, substantial as far as Israel goes. It’s only a little more than half the size of Lake Simcoe but, most significantly, it’s a reservoir, and the main source of water for the country.
It was also at this time of Jesus a lucrative source of fish caught and dried and mostly sent off to other parts of the Roman Empire. It was a place of activity, a source of food and water, and also a place of great beauty. As the river comes down through the hills of the rift valley and spreads out to form a gleaming lake, the hills form a natural amphitheatre on the curved areas of shoreline. Ah the stuff of life: food and beauty. What a place.
It had been a normal day in a normal place The fisher folk have been out in their boats all day. It had not been a great catch today, but there are other days to come. Still, it weighs on them, but what can you do? It’s hard to make an honest living and it’s hard just keep on trying day after day to do the right and honourable things in life. But though they’ve been out all day and are visibly tired, folks are staying around. There’s an itinerant preacher in town telling stories about God and calling it good news for the poor. Well, that sure has our ears perked up! Jesus asks some folk to steer a boat out a little ways off the shore so he can take advantage of the good acoustics of the natural amphitheatre, and off they go.
Strangest thing, we don’t hear what he preached about but it was likely his usual, well, good news about the abundance of God’s love. It’s a love like what we know of love but so much bigger, so all-encompassing that this love eclipses sin, like this lake and the river flowing through it washing over and through our lives, setting us free to be able to love without fear, knowing, truly, that it is the grace and glory of God, whose power can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine, welcoming us to our true home that is the kingdom of God.
And just like that, even after or despite all our hard work on the fishing nets all day, after or despite all of what it takes day in day out just to live a good and honourable life, when the efforts seem so futile, Jesus points us to God’s abundance in a near comic display of the catch of the millennium. The fish and the excitement and the activity involved in hauling it all in, it’s all so overwhelming.
And in the face of it all, Simon is caught, as though in his own net. No. This is too beautiful, too much, too strange, it’s just much too much. So much so that all he can feel is the horror of being trapped in his own shame, all the ways in which he cannot measure up, all. And Jesus simply replies, don’t be afraid, from now on you’ll be catching people. Don’t worry, you’re in the right waters now, I’ve got you, come with me.
Yes, this really is overwhelming. That’s grace – it can’t be caught and contained and so it spills out of these nets. Don’t be caught in your own net. You’re free. Come with me and you’ll see more of what it is to walk a path of forgiveness, healing and peace. You’ll be contagious (in the good way). You’ll be catching people.
That’s all the story for today. But it’s our story, too.
Once, some people gathered in an old building in Kitchener. Some people call it a concert venue; others know it as a social service centre. Yes, the building is a concert venue. It’s also a place to feed and to teach people, and it has rich resources of talent and of musical instruments and meaningful beauty in the gleam of the wood and in the stories in stained glass. The human-constructed theatre holds a special reserve of something. Something called grace.
There are activities here every day – online or in-person – things that sustain life, provide nourishment, health checks, and friendship and things that engage us in the arts and cultivate beauty. And it’s a place of work, with overflowing cupboards and file boxes in the office, along with the necessary internet and administrative tools.
And there’s a lake here, too. It’s fed by a river that was flowing here long before there were bricks and a bell tower, and it flows out of here with us as we carry its refreshing waters with us wherever we go. That river of life is God’s grace, God’s presence with us in creation, and in the love and forgiveness, healing and reconciliation God made possible in Jesus. Symbolically, the lake into which that river pours, and from which we each and all take our life, is that little font over there. But it’s us, – the people of God, bathed, forgiven, and set free, who are carried along with those waters, bearing the power of those awesome healing waters in our own lives.
Even after or despite all our hard work day in day out, even after or despite all of what it takes day in day out just to live a good and honourable life, to protect others and care for the most vulnerable and wear our masks and get our vaccinations and restrict our movements out of love, when the efforts are mocked and challenged by tractor-trailer horns, here in this place, when my energies feel futile and I feel worthless and unable to contribute anything to make the world a better place, when all of this sludge backs up in our lives, here in this place, Jesus points us to the abundance of love and healing that is in God.
Where is it? Look around. Here’s just one place – among infinite varieties of places. If we really use the imaginations God has given us to bring to life the collective faith of real saints present and past, we can perceive something of that abundance of faith and loving service that has animated these walls and furnishings and instruments for 161 years. It truly is an overwhelming harvest – the beauty of grace.
In the face of this beauty I have frequently choked, like Simon, getting caught in a net of my own design, woven from residues of unworthiness and laundry lists of all the ways in which, in contrast to this beauty, I’ve contributed to ugliness by my self-centredness, or stinginess by my fear. I lower my head. I can’t do this. How can I even walk into this place of grace and beauty?
And Jesus simply replies, don’t be afraid. You can raise your head. Look, really look, at the abundance around you and see each one here and in your minds’ eye all the others connecting with us here today (look to the camera). Loosen whatever’s binding you into a posture of shame, look up and, especially, look around and know what it is to be able to sing from your heart, glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.
These words from our lips speak the same good news first heard by Simon, James, and John by the lake. They’re here, with all the saints with us. Freed from their nets, they could begin a new walk, with Jesus, from that natural amphitheatre of grace, trusting in the abundance of God’s love. We are in their same company as we, here, are again and again freed from whatever binds up our love. Like them we can begin a new walk with Jesus, out from this, our own theatre of grace. Like them we can trust in God’s love to light our way into those places where the need is greatest for that love. And what song calls more to be sung than, Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.
Eileen Scully
Church of St. John the Evangelist, Kitchener