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.
or
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.
Post Communion
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.
Readings
Old Testament – Isaiah 6.1–8 [9–13]
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said:
‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.’
The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said: ‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!’
Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.’ 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!’
[And he said, ‘Go and say to this people:
“Keep listening, but do not comprehend;
keep looking, but do not understand.”
Make the mind of this people dull,
and stop their ears, and shut their eyes,
so that they may not look with their eyes,
and listen with their ears,
and comprehend with their minds,
and turn and be healed.’
Then I said, ‘How long, O Lord?’ And he said:
‘Until cities lie waste
without inhabitant,
and houses without people,
and the land is utterly desolate;
until the Lord sends everyone far away,
and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land.
Even if a tenth part remains in it,
it will be burned again,
like a terebinth or an oak
whose stump remains standing when it is felled.’
The holy seed is its stump. ]
Psalm
1 I will give thanks to you, O Lord, with my whole heart; ♦
before the gods will I sing praise to you.
2 I will bow down towards your holy temple and praise your name, because of your love and faithfulness; ♦
for you have glorified your name and your word above all things.
3 In the day that I called to you, you answered me; ♦
you put new strength in my soul.
4 All the kings of the earth shall praise you, O Lord, ♦
for they have heard the words of your mouth.
5 They shall sing of the ways of the Lord, ♦
that great is the glory of the Lord.
6 Though the Lord be high, he watches over the lowly; ♦
as for the proud, he regards them from afar.
7 Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you will preserve me; ♦
you will stretch forth your hand against the fury of my enemies; your right hand will save me.
8 The Lord shall make good his purpose for me; ♦
your loving-kindness, O Lord, endures for ever; forsake not the work of your hands.
Epistle – 1 Corinthians 15.1–11
I should remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain.
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to someone untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace towards me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.
Gospel – Luke 5.1–11
While Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. 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. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.’ Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’ When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. 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. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’ For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; 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.’ When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.
Sermon on Fourth Sunday before Lent
We read this morning “and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God.” – Is this something we can say about any crowd today? Who today presses in to listen to anyone else, let alone anyone in a pulpit speaking about the word of God?
These are hard questions. These are questions which we have to ask about ourselves. Do each of us come to church to open our minds and hearts to God’s word? Do we hear that ineffable echo of conscience when we still ourselves and wait patiently with the Quakers and Shakers in silence? Or does the word of God assault us in the majesty of the liturgy as bells ring out reminding us of the incarnation and incense rises with our prayers to the heights of heaven in our ancient and beautified cathedrals and grade one listed churches?
Where is “the crowd” this morning? Have we failed to bring to life the word of God as the prophets of old did? Have we not enlivened our lives so that the crowds would come to join us as people did in the camp revival meetings of a Wesley or a Billy Graham? Does the crowd even want to raise its consciousness of the created world around it and how the crowd affects the environment? There are so many questions the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church must raise in each person, but does the crowd feel interrogated by such silent enquiries which the churches of the world pose?
These are questions which must assault us as believers of the Word of God. These are the doubts which I think should be at the forefront of our minds as we consider our lives in the world, as we show our care for our neighbours.
When I let my conscience have control, I despair – I realise that I have not loved my neighbour as myself, and consequently I have not loved God perhaps at all. My sinfulness is ever before me, accusing me of a greedy selfishness at every moment. However, I do not feel I belong in the crowd which presses against me, keeping me away from the word of God. Today there are no crowds pressing ahead to listen eagerly to anyone who purports to speak for God. I begin to wonder, are there no prophets today? Do our leaders only speak words the crowd wants to hear, are our preachers only anodyne mouthpieces of the crowd. No one stands firm on the edge of the world pointing to the sacred and rejecting the profane. Is there no one to confront the stultifying comfort of a life without conscience?
I could wonder if our bible verse is actually a reflection of the reality of the time when Jesus dwellt among us. This thought may be outrageous for many, but they it does occur to everyone at some point, doesn’t it? Just as we wonder about the accuracy of news reports today, was reporting of events any better two thousand years ago?
Did the crowds really press in upon him as the gospels described? Did they fill the plains waiting to be fed with the word of God, or is it only the bread and fish they wanted? Did they really follow him all around Galilee to listen to what he had to say? Did they really force him onto that lake in order they might hear him speak? Or, you might ask, did they gather in the temple and synagogue to listen to him speak about God his Father? What about those words from Isaiah – did they truly understand they were fulfilled in Jesus the Christ? Do we?
I wonder whether we take on those words Jesus spoke as if they were our own? Do we really try to get as close as possible to the word of God as we go about our everyday lives? These are all questions which perplex me every moment of the day. I think they are the sort of questions which provoke cold chills in the dead of night, in those hours when our conscience really does raise its head and ask those very real, and very difficult, questions about ourselves and the way we live.
However, there are those among us who do seek the word of God in their lives – they do want to change the world, to bring heaven to earth and earth to heaven. Don’t we ourselves do so? Don’t we pray daily “thy kingdom come, thy will be done”? These are our best moments, when conscience and action are united into the single entity of faithfulness. Each of us can, and do, call upon God and press forward to listen to those ineffable words which give us life, words of meaning – the message conscience repeats whenever we listen to it.
This is what conversion really is, when we listen and act on, and for, the word of God. Conversion can be a steady state of being, if we let it, if we strive for it.
But that “crowd” is all around us and bullies us into sometimes very inappropriate behaviour. The crowd deadens our senses. We do not see and we do not hear, even though Jesus has hope that those who have ears will hear and those who have eyes will see. – Jesus knows they will know what truth reveals, that they will understand that love is the only motive we should have, getting back to that one commandment Jesus gave us – if you truly love me, you will love one another.
I think, generally, we are living in an age devoid of care for one another. There are also, I believe, the odd examples who do care. – There are Mother Teresa’s in the world. They surround us with their love, but they are not public figures (we need only look at our public leaders, don’t we?). These privately-living saints do not have days named after them, do they? You may know of saint, cloistered away behind their houses’ walls, sending out their parcels of love. We have experienced this, haven’t we? So, I think, we do live in the hope which Jesus had for the world.
While we do live in faith, in that hope Jesus had, we often fail to be publicly accountable for the love we actually want to share with everyone. I am convinced that it only takes practice to become more loving. The love I want to share is what I have experienced. My wife has taught me what true love is, for I am loved. My parents taught me about care because they cared for me. I have made my own mistakes in sharing the love, but they are mine and I repent of these most grievous faults. The love I have been given does inform my life. This is the love Jesus talks about in his parables, especially when he depicts God as the loving father.
We may have experienced all this love imperfectly, just as we try to care and fail. We must admit that fact to ourselves and the world, the fact of our missing the mark of love. I think we all know what we want to accomplish. – I think even the crowd longs for the openness of a true, open friendship, what Paul describes as αγαπη.