Words on the Word
5. Sunday C
Isaiah 6.1-8: Woe is me! I am lost!
1 Corinthians 15.1-11: Last of all, he appeared also to me.
Luke 5.1-11: Put out into the deep.
Christ’s words to Peter, ‘Put out into the deep!’, touches something deep in us. We all long at times for a new departure; we long to do something daring. But much holds us back. That is how it was for Peter, too.
In today’s Gospel he runs a risk. Throughout the night he has been fishing in waters he knew like the back of his hand: Lake Gennesaret isn’t large. It’s a pitiful business for a fisherman to come home at dawn with nothing. Then he is asked to put out again, this time in daylight, surrounded by a large, attentive public. Will he run the risk of appearing a gullible fool? Is it reasonable to have another go where repeated attempts have been fruitless?
Peter is a proud man. He will have thought twice before deciding: ‘At your word I will let down the nets.’ He risked acting, not calculatingly, but trustfully. Deliberately, having reflected, he made a decision based not on prognostics but on obedience. His gain was spectacular. The nets threatened to tear. Then the truly remarkable thing happens: The mass of writhing fish, silver-gleaning in the unfiltered sunlight of the south, the catch that confirms Christ’s authority and Peter’s guts, suddenly seems uninteresting. When Peter freely can claim that which, a moment ago, he most wanted, he no longer desires it.
He who set out at the Lord’s word cannot be satisfied, now, by anything other than the Word itself. He leaves his catch, his boat. Henceforth his work will be on land, at the Word’s side, filled with the Word, following the Word’s example even unto death.
A quarter of a century ago, when St John Paul II introduced the new millennium, he gave us Jesus’s words to Peter as a guide to life in the new epoch we were entering: ‘Set out into the deep! Duc in altum!’ The Pope wrote: ‘These words ring out for us today, and they invite us to remember the past with gratitude, to live the present with enthusiasm and to look forward to the future with confidence: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever”‘. His summons harmonises with that of our Holy Father Pope Francis who in this jubilee year bids us walk as pilgrims out of hopelessness into hope.
Hopelessness is the chief spiritual malady of our time. The more we are surrounded by promises of measures said to make life simpler (the automation of everything from bank transfers to health checks), the more we are left powerless over against systems we cannot understand. Hardly given a chance to interact with people, we are surrendered to inhumanly intelligent chatbots that, in helpless Norwenglish, volunteer intricate answers to questions we have not asked. The orientation of global politics is now defined so far away, increasingly by a clan of near-mythical Midas-men, that it seems pointless even to bother. All the while the Polar continents melt. The sea level rises.
It is tempting, then, to withdraw, each to his or her own comfy lair, there to seek security, predictability and customised escapism. Instead we hear the call: ‘Put out into the deep!’ It requires an instant response. All to easily we assume that we, in order to act in faith, must do a lot of preparatory stuff first. We think we must read a number of fat books, reform our lives, and ideally be less tired before we can get going. That is a mistake.
The call to Peter was made at the end of an exhausting, protracted night shift. Peter was not told to put out into new waters. No, it was in those he had already trawled that the proof of God’s gracious power awaited him. Peter was imperfect. He knew that already; Christ’s call made his consciousness overwhelming. What pathos in his cry: ‘Depart from me! Lord, I am a sinful man!’ Jesus simply says, ‘Fear not.’ Were we less fearful of our own betrayals, our own brittleness, God might work wonders through us. If God is God, almighty and merciful, why should he not be God in me?
The Lord, ‘who knows what is in a man’ (John 2.25), sees us without illusions. If we let go of our illusions about ourselves, he can act freely. Who knows what auroral catches are then made possible?
As if to stress this point, the Church lets the account of the call to Peter be accompanied by two other vocation stories. We follow Isiah into his vision of God’s glory, where burning seraphs sing their ‘Holy, holy, holy!’ Isaiah is inwardly tortured by the thought of his unfitness to see such a thing: ‘Woe is me!’, he cries, ‘I am lost! For I am a man of unclean lips.’ A single live coal from the altar before the Lord’s feet is all it takes to turn the unclean one into a prophet. An angel is at hand to perform the operation. ‘Your sin is taken away’, Isaiah is told, ‘your iniquity is purged.’ He is ready for deployment. Paul, meanwhile, was an enemy of Christ when God’s mercy cast him down from his high horse so that he, in the dust, might acquire self-knowledge and learn what it means to live by grace, a message he from then on proclaimed constantly, with singular passion.
It touches me to re-read these texts straight after our pilgrimage to Rome. Rome is, has always been, a place of contradictions. Blasphemy has there found terrible expression; nonetheless the city is holy ground. The Apostles’ testimony is tangibly present. On our pilgrimage we knelt before the chains that bound both Peter and Paul on the last leg of their vocational journey. In the New Testament we encounter the two of them as youthful, energetic men; their chains remind us that their initial ‘Yes’ was tested, purified over time. To put out into the deep is one thing. To remain there, faced with an absolute standard, is another. The Lord who calls us also gives us grace of perseverance, thankfully. It is by enduring fidelity that a life is transformed and rendered fruitful.
We rely solely, says today’s collect, on the hope of heavenly grace. Indeed we do. Thereby we have all the kit we need to accomplish our task, entrusted to us by God for our time. Put out into the deep, therefore. There is no point in sitting around.
Familiam tuam, quæsumus, Domine,
continua pietate custodi,
ut, quæ in sola spe gratiæ cælestis innititur,
tua semper protectione muniatur.