SERMON - The Third Sunday Before Lent

When I was reading through this morning’s gospel (Luke 5:1-11), I was struck by the similarities that could be drawn with the Church.

Jesus is standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, the crowds were pressing around him listening to all he had to say. Jesus then saw two boats close to the bank with the fisherman washing their nets after finishing their fishing for the night. Jesus got into one of the boats and told them to cast away from the shore. Then, we are told, he sat down, and carried on teaching from the boats.

The first similarity is that if we think that this excitement about Jesus is something that doesn’t happen in this day and age we would be wrong…. I believe today there is a great hunger for faith, statistics suggest that more people are interested in spirituality than ever before - almost everyone wants to believe in something.

If we as a Church are failing to find the people in need, or failing to reach those who are searching then we need to look at the way we are delivering our message. We may not have speakers with the charisma of Jesus, but we have his message, and it is a powerful message of hope and salvation, and peace and love and joy.

The second similarity to the Church comes a little earlier in the gospel reading – the fisherman, we are told, had been out all night and they had caught nothing. As a Church we so often bemoan the fact that we have little success, or we worry about the lack of money and so on, and when we look more closely at what we are doing we realise we are trying to get by without relying on God.

One of the easiest traps we can fall into is failing to rely on God – we can do it in so many ways. We must trust that as a church, God will show us the way, the tasks to be done, and then he will give us the tools to do the job. The Bible tells us that in all things we should seek the support and guidance of God. God wants us to share our problems as a church community with Him.

Like the fisherman who caught nothing all night, we will ultimately get nowhere without God.

And the third similarity follows on from this when Jesus tells the fishermen to go out again and cast their nets into the water. You can imagine how these men must have felt – they were tired, they were probably not in the best of moods – they had caught nothing… but they listened. Whatever it was that led them to listen, it was an amazing display of faith and it was a faith that was rewarded with a huge catch of fish.

As a Church I think there is a time for us to cast down our nets again, to occasionally do something that looks a little odd, even stupid. There is a time for us to trust more, and expect the results.

In the gospel we hear of Simon Peter who was terrified when he saw the huge catch of fish. He saw the power of God right up close and realised how unworthy he was… The reaction wasn’t just about fish. He realised that he had seen something that was proof of all he wanted to believe.

Today the Church needs to regain that vision of a powerful and transforming God – a God who forces a response from us.

Today, we are faced with a challenge too. To react to God and his interaction in our lives and the life of the church. To look closely at our church and our lives so that we can truly to proclaim the gospel we have promised to proclaim…

And that is the final similarity we can find from this reading. At the end we are told the fishermen dropped everything and followed Jesus. There is no lesser call on us today. As Christians we are called to follow Jesus. We are called to commit ourselves to him and to his work on earth. It’s not a part time calling, it may not always be an easy calling, but it is our calling… And it is the most exciting and the most privileged calling we can ever follow.

So the lessons are simple – firstly, without Jesus, just like the fishermen, we will fail, by ourselves we will never find complete fulfilment, and we will never transform our Church, however hard we may work. A strong Church will always have a healthy prayer life.

Secondly it is the faith of those fishermen, those fishermen who, as we know went on to become some of Jesus’ closest followers. They included Peter, the rock upon which the Church was built. They dropped their nets again, and were rewarded, probably against their own expectations.

And the final lesson we can pick up is that the people who listened 2,000 years ago were ready to listen – and so are the people we will talk to in 2007.

St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians (1 Cor.15:1) saying, ‘I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you… because the gospel will save you only if you keep believing exactly what I preached to you.’

Paul spoke of grace, the grace of God. However the Corinthians had begun to argue amongst themselves – some had become over ambitious for power in the Church, there was disunity, sectarianism and so on. The message of God’s grace was gradually being pushed further and further into the background.

I suppose with all the changes in the benefice, many are worried about the future, but God is a transforming God – turning water into wine and fishermen into disciples.

It is a transforming power that can and will transform this Church when we follow the lead of Jesus. It is not about rejecting the past, but it is about looking to the future, and making a commitment to living out that future by following Christ as our guide.

God always listens when we call, and more than that, he always responds. As this church looks to the future, pray and ask God for whatever you need and he will hear your prayer, and he will answer.