Once again, our Honorary Assistant, the Rev. Can. Cathy Laskey, has gracious stepped in this week to lead our In-Person worship service, as Rev. Rob has still been under the weather.

This week, we are all challenged to pay particular attention to the Gospel reading from Luke 6:27-38. These words from our Lord Jesus Christ make clear the only way forward for those who seek to trust in and follow Him, which is the way of God's rescuing, redeeming, and reconciling love that our Lord Jesus Christ Himself revealed and embodied, especially at the cross, where He graciously gave up His life to save us sinners.

Take time throughout this week to read, and re-read, and wrestle, and pray with these words in mind, asking for the Holy Spirit's help so that we can put these words into practice in our lives.
 
Our At-Home service of Morning Prayer and Bulletin this week can be found here:

​And our Songs for this week can be found here:

​Our Honorary Assistant, the Rev. Can. Cathy Laskey, gracious stepped in this week to lead our In-Person worship service, as Rev. Rob was under the weather.
 
Our At-Home service of Morning Prayer and Bulletin this week can be found here:

​And our Songs for this week can be found here:

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 6:1–13 | Psalm 138 | 1 Corinthians 15:1–11 | Luke 5:1–11

“But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”… Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’” (Luke 5:8, 10b).

Have you ever felt particularly unequipped to do the task before you?

It’s a horrible feeling. Literally the stuff of nightmares. I mean, has anyone here ever had that dream where you’re about to take a test you hadn’t studied for? Or give a speech you’ve not prepared? It’s not so fun. You feel exposed. Panicked. Paralyzed. And hopefully it doesn’t drag on too long before you wake up and realize it’s not real.

But then again, sometimes in life, we really might find ourselves in those kinds of situations… ones we never planned for, and feel completely unqualified to tackle… for whatever reason… leaving us scrambling, or maybe just tempted to run the other way.

If you’ve ever felt this way, you’re in good company. And reading through the Bible, again and again, we witness stories of people who find themselves drawn into circumstances they never imagined, or prepared for… and feel completely ill-equipped to handle. In fact, our Scripture readings this morning all touch on times when the Living God calls on some pretty unlikely agents to take part in His Kingdom plans.

In our first reading this morning, we heard an account of what happened when the prophet Isaiah was granted a vision of God’s heavenly throne room. Suddenly finding himself surrounded by the glory and holiness of the Almighty One, Isaiah feels overwhelmed with guilt… deeply conscious of his own sins, and the sins of his people. 
Isaiah 6:5 “Woe is me! I am lost,” he says, “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!”

Now sin is indeed a big problem and obstacle in our lives… distorting our desires, and undermining our ability to love God our Creator, and to love our neighbours all created in His image. Suddenly faced with the incomparable goodness of the Living God, Isaiah becomes keenly aware of how unholy he and his people are… and how utterly unworthy he is to be so close to the Lord of All.

But what happens next? Does an angel announce to Isaiah: “Hey it’s no big deal… you’re only human… give yourself some slack!” 

Not quite. We hear instead that a seraphim, a spiritual servant of God reaches out and takes a burning coal from God’s alter, and touches the coal to Isaiah’s lips.

Now I’ve never kissed a live coal, but I can’t imagine that it was a pleasant experience. But then the seraphim says to Isaiah: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” (Isaiah 6:7).

Can you see what happened? The LORD knew Isaiah’s situation, that he and his people were of unclean lips. But God makes him clean! God doesn’t ignore, but rather deals with the guilt and sin that stood in Isaiah’s way from being a part of God’s Kingdom work in the world, and among his people. The process was painful perhaps, but it did prepare Isaiah to participate in God’s mission… which in this instance meant speaking on behalf of God to offer a profound warning and word of judgement against his proud and wayward people.

What about our own sins and guilt? Those distorted desires at work in our hearts, and minds, and our choices that take us far from the holy ways of the Living God? We know that God won’t ignore them, but do we believe that they are too big for the LORD to deal with? 

Isaiah’s story reminds us that God really can make us clean, no matter our baggage or background. The question is, will we trust Him and humbly draw near so that He can do so? 

Turning now to our Gospel reading, and St. Luke’s account of Jesus calling His first disciples. After teaching the crowds gathered on the shore from Simon’s boat, Jesus tells them to head out a bit deeper and cast their nets again for a catch. 

Now, this might seem a bit strange: an itinerant teacher telling some professional fishermen how to catch fish. I mean, this was their livelihood. This was the work they knew best. Fishing was what they were the most prepared to do.

But even with all their experience, and skill, they had come up empty. And now, Jesus tells them to try once more. “Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’” (Luke 5:5)

Simon Peter set aside his pride, and listened to Jesus… and witnessed a miracle. They ended up catching more fish than two boats could handle… far more than anything they had expected… convincing Simon that this teacher Jesus was somehow in touch with the power of the Living God… and like Isaiah, this filled Simon Peter with a deep sense of his own unworthiness. 

Luke 5:8, “But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’”

But rather than distance Himself from Simon Peter, this self-confessed sinner… Jesus does something far more drastic: He invites Simon to follow Him, and take on a whole new mission: “Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’ When they [that is, James and John] had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.” (Luke 5:10-11).  

Think about this for a moment. Simon Peter, and James and John had their own lives going already. They had their own hopes, and dreams, and plans. And in an instant, Jesus disrupts all of that, and invites them to join Him on a completely unknown journey.

These fishermen… are called to become fishers of men… and eventually to become key leaders within His Kingdom movement… drawing many other people into the story that Jesus was unfolding before them.

Talk about ill equipped! They had absolutely no experience as rabbinical students… or in group management, or public speaking, or anything like it! And as Simon Peter makes plain, they weren’t even particularly pious or holy. And yet Jesus calls them to follow Him… and they do! They drop everything and discern in Him something much more important than they had imagined for themselves. After all, someone who could help them catch that many fish… what else could this Jesus do?

It’s easy to forget, when we hear these familiar but distant stories, that the very same Jesus who called Simon Peter and the others that day by the sea shore, is the One who has also called you and I today… open to disrupting our hopes and plans, while inviting us into something far greater than we could have ever imagined for ourselves.

And like Simon, we often feel ill equipped for this… that we don’t have the right disposition, or training, or time, or whatever else we think might limits us. But these things don’t really seem to bother Jesus all that much. He constantly calls the ill equipped, the humble, the hurting, even the lost into His Kingdom work, and He is constantly accomplishing far more than they could ask or imagine in and through them.

That is because Jesus Christ the Risen Lord empowers us to accomplish whatever He calls us to accomplish. He is the One who makes us able to do what He calls us to do. Not with some magic wave of His hand… but most often through a journey with Him of discovery and trust… and of letting go of all the things we think are important, but that keep us from sharing in the work of His Good Kingdom.

And what is that, exactly? What is it that Jesus is calling us all to do? What are we signing up for when we say yes to following Him, not just once, but always?

One way to sum it up: is to live in and share His story… the Good News of Jesus Christ, God’s beloved Son who gave His life and rose again to cleans and reconcile the world to Himself.

This is what we heard in our second reading this morning from First Corinthians, the centre of St. Paul’s understanding of what the Good News is all about: 

1 Corinthians 15:3-8, “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 one untimely born, he appeared also to me.” 

This is the story! The Good News for our world articulated in the ancient Creeds of the Church… the climax of the entire narrative of Scripture, and the anchor of God’s people, keeping us bound to our loving Saviour in the midst of our world’s vicious storms.

Jesus really came to us in our moment of weakness… bound by sin, and ill equipped to live God’s way. And Jesus really died for us, taking our cross onto His own shoulders, and bearing the burden of our sins, in order to make us clean, and to set us aright again. And Jesus really rose again from the dead, snapping the power of sin and the grave, and opening up the way for us to share in His eternal life. 

And Jesus really appeared, more alive than ever before to the apostles, and many others after His resurrection. These everyday, ordinary people He had called to follow Him long before, had now became first-hand witnesses to the power of God’s saving love, by raising Jesus from the dead. 

And this Risen Jesus really calls you and I to believe this story. And not just to believe it, but to live it out in our own contexts. To live as people set free from our sin and guilt by His precious blood. As people invited to take part in His story, and journey, and Kingdom work all around us. To become His witnesses today, helping those around us catch a glimpse of God’s power and saving love. To trust in Him to provide what we need to accomplish His will for our lives, and get to it.

Maybe you’re still feeling ill equipped to answer this call. To trust that Jesus has really dealt with your sins at the cross, and that He has a place for you in His Kingdom.

If that’s the case, then take a moment to remember St. Paul’s story. No one would have thought that Paul would one day become a herald of Jesus, proclaiming to the world that Jesus really was the Messiah that Israel had been longing for, and also the hope for all nations.

Now unlike Peter and the other disciples, Paul actually was pretty well equipped: he was trained in rhetoric and skilled in communication, at least in writing, which were very valuable and useful skills in the ancient world. Paul had a deep knowledge of the Scriptures too. He studied under an esteemed rabbi, eagerly learning the significance of his people’s history. 

And Paul was an effective man of action, and leadership. An entrepreneurial spirit, we might say… taking it on himself to defend the faith of his ancestors. He was a devout keeper of Torah… the teachings and law of Moses, as well as the traditions of the elders, set up to keep people like Paul as far from sin and guilt as humanly possible.

With so much to Paul’s credit, why did I say he would be the last person that anyone would imagine being an ambassador for Christ’s Kingdom, sharing the Gospel all around the ancient Roman world?

Because, as we know, despite everything he had going for him, Paul was also an ardent enemy of the Church. He believed Jesus of Nazareth to have been a false teacher, and that Christ’s followers were a plague on his peoples’ efforts to stay true to the Living God. And so Paul passionately persecuted them. He had them arrested and thrown in prison, and even sought to chase after those who had fled Jerusalem and arrest them too.

That is, until Jesus called him too… Stopping Paul in his tracks, and confronted him… changing his path forever, and drawing him into the Kingdom of God for good.

Now it was a years long process for Paul to go from persecutor to preacher and then apostle of the Gospel. But sure enough, Jesus called even His passionate enemy to be a part of His good Kingdom.

And if Jesus could call someone like Paul… and deal with all of the obstacles standing in Paul’s way… and do far more than Paul ever imagined… working through him to share the Gospel story, the Good News of Jesus the Risen Lord with the world… what’s stopping our LORD from working in your life? Or in my life? In the life of our parish family?

There’s a lot of challenges facing us these days. Lots of pressures, and fears, and struggles that we and our neighbours are having to face. And we might be feeling pretty ill equipped at times to tackle them, unsure of how people like us could help bring God’s healing, and hope, and help to light in the lives of those around us here in Gondola Point.

But the fact remains: Jesus has called us. Jesus the Risen Lord has invited us to trust Him, and by His Holy Spirit, He really can make us able to do His work in our world today. And so, may God give us grace to draw near in faith to Jesus, the Risen Lord, that He may cleans us of our sins, and empower us to walk in His ways. Amen.

​And our Songs for this week can be found here:

Scripture Readings: Jeremiah 1:4–10 | Psalm 71 | 1 Corinthians 13:1–13 | Luke 4:21–30 

“And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13).

Last Sunday, as we explored the first part of this episode in Luke Chapter 4… the story of Jesus’ first sermon in His hometown of Nazareth… we spent some time reflecting on the importance of remembering our story…the story of the Good News of God’s saving love in Jesus Christ our Saviour King… especially when we are facing times of great confusion and distress. And we looked at how, as Christians today, it is essential that that we keep the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and God’s saving love at the forefront of our minds, and that we stick to this story ourselves in our day to day lives. 

This morning, we get to see a bit more of the story of what happened that day in Nazareth: we see that this same Good News that Jesus announces offers us not only great comfort… but profound challenges as well… confronting all of those who will listen with the life-changing implications of God’s Kingdom, and what it means for us to share in it. 

This story takes place, we are told, in Nazareth, our Lord’s hometown, where He would have been well known to many. This was where Jesus had grown up. Where He was surrounded by people who had known Him all of His life. And He knew them too. He knew their stories… what made them all tick, and how they saw the world, and their place within it.

And so, when Jesus stood up in the synagogue that day, He really knew His audience, and what they needed to hear… the Good News of God’s saving love that He had come to share.

Luke 4:16-22, “He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 
because he has anointed me 
to bring good news to the poor. 
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives 
and recovery of sight to the blind, 
to let the oppressed go free, 
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” 

They all spoke well of Him. They welcomed His words of comfort… reminding them that their pain and afflictions were well known to the Living God… that the Lord had not abandoned His people, and that the long awaited time of deliverance was at hand. He had given the hope and apparently greatly impressed His hometown crowd.
 
And if He had just stopped there… there would have been no problem that day, as far as the people of Nazareth were concerned. I mean, He had said what they wanted to hear… stirring up their hope, and reminding them of God’s great compassion and mercy. What a perfect place to stop. 

But Jesus didn’t stop there. He went on to seriously challenge their assumptions about God’s Good Kingdom… in short, that it’s not just for them!

Luke 4:22-23, “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” 

He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” 

Now this first part of Jesus’ response deserves a few words before we press on. I mean, what happened? We just heard that everyone spoke well of Him, and were greatly impressed by His words. One minute He’s talking about proclaiming Good News to the poor, then He’s putting words in their mouths. Why does it seem that Jesus suddenly turns on them?

The key seems to be that Jesus knew they did not really believe the words He had spoken… that is, His bold claim that Isaiah’s words were about Jesus Himself, and His mission. 

Sure, they had a place for Isaiah’s promises in their hearts, but even as they praised His presentation, and welcomed the comfort Jesus offered them, they only saw Him as Joseph’s son… the boy they saw grow up… one of their own. And as the old saying goes, “familiarity breeds contempt.” They thought they already knew all about Him, and so their hearts were not open to what Christ claimed God was now doing in their midst through Him. And so, even though they spoke well of Jesus, in their hearts they were already rejecting His message.

And again, Jesus does not stop there. No instead, He shines a big spotlight on part of the story of God’s people, that it seems they’d much sooner forget. 

Luke 4:24-30, “And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 

When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” 

Now I’m really thankful that none of you here at St. Luke’s have ever responded that way to one of my sermons… especially as there’s a pretty big river right over there that you could easily throw me into. But think of that for a moment. Think of how drastically… how violently these people reacted to Jesus’ words. Just a moment ago, they were all speaking well of Him. Now they were filled with rage, and ready to take His life! What in the world was going on in the synagogue that day?

Well, in a word, Jesus was challenging their story… their understanding of the world, and their place within it. But He was doing so by reminding them of two well known episodes from Israel’s past… from the days before the Exile, when many of God’s people had turned away from the Lord’s ways, and instead were following the desires of their own hearts.  

He reminds them of the widow from Sidon… whose son had been miraculously rescued from death by the prophet Elijah. And He reminds them of the story of Naaman the Syrian… an enemy general, struck with leprosy, but miraculously made clean again as he humbled himself, and heeded the words of the prophet Elisha.

These two stories were well known, and found in 1 Kings Chapter 17, and 2 Kings Chapter 5. But why did Jesus bring these stories up here? What was He seeking to show the people of Nazareth?

These two Gentiles, the Sidonian widow, and Syrian general, serve as clear representatives of the typical enemies of God’s people! They belonged to those ‘godless outsiders’… and were threats to Israel. And yet, God reached out to them both in mercy… touching and transforming their lives by His saving love.
 
Both received mercy, and healing, and hope, even though they were never a part of the people of Israel… even though they were the “so-called bad guys” of the story. 

But as all of Scripture reminds us, the Living God’s mercy and saving love cannot be bound by our borders, or walls, or divisions. Which is something that God’s people, including many of us Christians today, really struggle with.

Jesus knew that His own people in Nazareth did not really believe in Him, and so they would not receive Him… just as their ancestors had turned from the Lord all those long years before in the days of Elijah and Elisha. And so, by reminding them of their whole story… of God’s great compassion and rescuing love, not just for them, but also for those they despised and saw as their enemies…  Jesus was intentionally challenging them to change… to repent, to believe, and to return wholeheartedly to God’s holy ways… which also meant to let go of their prejudice and hatred for their neighbours… even their hostile ones… and to learn to love like the Living God does.

The scholar and theologian Miroslav Volf makes this strong and challenging connection between receiving God’s grace and love, and sharing it, even amid the messiness of our all too often strained and broken relationships with our neighbours: 

“Inscribed on the very heart of God’s grace is the rule that we can be its recipients only if we do not resist being made into its agents; what happens to us must be done by us. Having been embraced by God, we must make space for others in ourselves and invite them in – even our enemies. This is what we enact as we celebrate the Eucharist. In receiving Christ’s broken body and spilled blood, we, in a sense, receive all those whom Christ received by suffering.” [Miroslav Volf, Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2019), 130.]

These words arise from Miroslav Volf’s considered commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in the context of his reflections on the devastation experienced by his fellow Croatians, and neighbouring nations as a result of the brutal 1990’s civil war in the Balkans. As a Christian, caught up in the very real conflicts tearing our world apart, learning how to live God’s way by loving our enemies is no minor thing. All too often, we might rather take offense, like the folks did in Nazareth long ago, at the mere notion that God might love “those people” too… whomever they might be… or even worse… that if we’re to follow Jesus, that He might just be calling us to learn to do the same.

Who is it that we find it hard to imagine God caring about today? Who are the people who shake up our stories? Who seem to see the world so differently, and act in ways that make us anxious, alarmed, or outright angry? How can you and I possibly begin to learn to love our enemies at a time like this? To not fall in line, and just pick a side, but to actively seek to share God’s love with everyone?

Well, it certainly won’t be easy.

Remember that Jesus’ friends and neighbours responded to the Good News of God’s love for everyone by trying to throw Him over a cliff. And His deep commitment to the Good News of God’s love for our broken, divided world would lead Him straight to the cross.

But remember as well that the same saving love of God changed everything when Christ Jesus rose again… revealing that true life flows from God’s self-giving love, through the power of God’s Spirit now at work in us… and that all of our sad divisions and hatreds don’t stand a chance in the light of God’s Kingdom. 

When we really remember our story… which is Jesus’ story…when our minds, and hearts, and actions are recentred around what He has done for us all, once and for all at the cross… it challenges us. It changes us. It calls us to repent of our prejudices… and hatreds, and hand over our hard hearts to the Lord, to be renewed and remade to be like His through and through.

And in our second reading today, in the famous passage from 1 Corinthians 13, we get a glimpse of the new way of life that the Risen Lord has opened up for us:
“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends… And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 13).

The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the crucified and Risen One challenges us to love those we find it really hard to love. To do good to those who make our lives so much harder. To bless those who deliberately vilify and even attack us. And to pray for those who seek to misuse and manipulate us. This doesn’t mean going along with what they are up to, or stepping aside while they hurt us or others in our world. Far from it. But it does mean that even when we have to stand up against others, we must remember that they too are beloved by God, who longs for us all to turn from our sins, and learn to love... to live alongside one another without contempt, suspicion, and hatred in our hearts… offering all those around us what we have all received at the cross: God’s great saving love. 

And when we struggle to do so, let us return to the story of Jesus Christ our Saviour King… and in prayer, let us remember that God’s own Holy Spirit is at work in us and that it’s Him that makes it possible for us to live and love like our Lord. 

I’ll end now with one more quick word from Miroslav Volf: “We who have been embraced by the outstretched arms of the crucified God open our arms even for the enemies – to make space in ourselves for them and invite them in – so that together we may rejoice in the eternal embrace of the triune God.” [Miroslav Volf, Ibid., 132] Amen.

​​​And our Songs for this week can be found here: