4 before Lent - Notices
- Church
- Feb 5, 2022
- 8 min read
6/2/22
News from the Benwell & Scotswood Team
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Mohan Samant, Midnight fishing party, 1978
Paper, oil paint, acrylic paint, gouache and ink on canvas, Tate, London
Dates for your diary
16 Feb - MAP group meeting
7pm, St Margaret's
Sun 20 Feb - services in all churches
Times TBC
Sun 27 Feb - 'Carnival' experimental service
11 am - Venerable Bede
Wed 2 Mar - Ash Wednesday
Services TBC
News
Don't forget the service time is now 11am!
The time of our 'hub' service at the Venerable Bede will begin half an hour later at 11am.
We hope this will make it easier to hold worship in all our churches on Sundays and reach more people in our community.
This will last until Easter when we will review whether the new timings have been successful.
Worship Texts
The 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.
Amen.
First Reading
1 Corinthians 15.1–11 Now 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 Once 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
Both of our readings this morning tell the story of someone encountering miraculous and glorious proof of God’s presence and responding with repentance. Isaiah was given an extraordinary vision of God, enthroned on high, attended by seraphs crying ‘holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts’. Peter and the other fishermen, by contrast, have a more down to earth but no less extraordinary encounter. Jesus instructs them, after a long and fruitless night of fishing, to cast their net on the other side of the boat, producing an enormous catch of fish.
Now, it is pretty obviously what is amazing about Isaiah’s vision, a miraculous vision of God’s heavenly splendour, but the extortionary nature of Peter’s experience might benefit from some explanation. As we heard, Peter, James and John had been fishing all night with no success. These were professional fishermen who knew what they were doing and yet they had caught nothing. Jesus, who has no expertise in fishing tells them to let down their net on the other side of the boat, surely a pointless exercise – why should there be fish on the other side? Moreover, Peter would have been using nets made from linen, a material that would have been visible to the fish during the day, hence they were fishing at night.
So, Jesus, who has no reason to know anything about fishing, tells them to pointlessly move the nets a few feet, and in the morning, when the fish are more able to avoid the net. Yet, it is a success and the catch is miraculously large. It makes no sense: a whole night of waiting and watching over inert, unyielding waters and now, suddenly, the whole sea is boiling with fish.
Is Jesus demonstrating his power over nature? Or his intimate knowledge of nature? In any case, Peter is overwhelmed by the experience and his response is one of repentance. He falls down before Jesus and says, ‘Go away from me Lord for I am a sinful man.’ In meeting Jesus and witnessing his miracle, it seems that Peter is convinced that he has encountered something that exposes him, that leaves him nowhere to hide, he is acutely aware of who he truly is and can only respond with total honesty: ‘I am a sinful man’. And in this moment Peter wants Jesus to go, he can’t bear to be seen, to be so fully comprehended.
It is the same experience as that of Isaiah. Upon witnessing God in his majesty, Isaiah cries, ‘I am man of unclean lips… yet my eyes have seen the King!’ Like Peter, Isaiah seems to feel that witnessing the power of God leaves him with nowhere to hide, his sinfulness cannot be denied. And so, like Peter, he feels undone by the experience: ‘Woe is me! I am lost.’
The experiences of both Isaiah and Peter are, I think it’s fair to say, quite extreme. They are both feel so convicted of their sinfulness that they despair and want to escape from God’s presence. But I wonder if you can identify with their experience? You may not quite have been moved to cry ‘woe is me!’ but perhaps you have had those moments when you know that you have made mistakes, that you have hurt others, that your view of the world is insular and ill-informed, that your actions too often seek what is best for you and consider too little the needs of others, you know, in short, that you are a sinner.
To know that we are sinners and to desire repentance is an important part of our discipleship, we are called to work to see ourselves as we truly are and to endeavour to follow Christ more closely. Yet it is important to understand that repentance is not the same as feeling guilty, or bad about ourselves, or full of shame. It is all too easy to fall into shame, that feeling that we our worthless because of the mistakes we’ve made, that other people would think terribly of us if they only knew the truth, that we must hide our deep imperfections from God who is perfect.
But shame has no place in true repentance; shame only distorts our vision of ourselves and so makes it harder to become the people God is calling us to be. In fact, far from being the right response to God’s perfection, shame is what God wants to take away from us, to heal in us. In response to his cry of ‘woe is me!’ God’s seraph says to Isaiah, ‘your guilt is taken away.’ When Peter begs Jesus to go away from him, to leave and not see his sinfulness, Jesus says, ‘do not be afraid.’
You see, God doesn’t want us to feel guilt or fear, he doesn’t want us to hide away from him in shame. He wants us to know that he knows everything about us and doesn’t reject us, that he accepts everything we are. Indeed, God wants to take away from us those feelings of shame that hold us back. He wants to do this for us because he loves us and doesn’t want us to despair or hide.
In fact, far from rejecting them, God responds to Isaiah and Peter’s repentance by making them part of what he’s doing; he has jobs for them. God has a message for his people but no one to send and, after Isaiah has been touched by the burning coal and cleansed of his sin, he says ‘here am I, send me,’ and so Isaiah becomes God’s prophet. After Peter has fallen before Jesus and Jesus has told him not to be afraid, Jesus tells him that he is to become a fisher of people, carrying the Good News to all those who will receive it.
Both Peter and Isaiah, after recognising their sinfulness and receiving God’s forgiveness, receive a commission, they are sent out to do God’s work. This is the marvel of God’s forgiveness, we are not only freed from our sin, guilt and shamed, we are freed for something greater. We are given this wonderful gift of freedom and we are called to use it to rise to our full potential, to become the people God created us to be.
All too often as Christians we imagine that being forgiven by God means feeling bad for the things we’ve done and promising not to do them again. Isaiah and Peter show us that God wants much more for us than this. We were made to live full lives, knowing the pleasure and freedom of living in God’s love. It is in order to free us for this life that we are forgiven. A life of love and service, free from our sin.
Shame is a burden many of us carry and, I suspect, many of us would act like Isaiah and Peter were we confronted with such an amazing revelation of God’s power: we might well fall on our knees, genuinely feeling unworthy. But be assured that this is not what God want’s from us, he only wants to pick us up, show us we are loved and set us back on our feet again, ready to continue in all the wonderful things he has for us.
Intercessions
To add names to the prayer list please email church@benwellscotswood.com
Prayers for others:
Joyce Cuthbertson
Dominic, Frances, James, and Isaac
Donna Krol
George Irving
Alistair
John Nicholson
Alan Robson
Peter Wilson
Michelle Wilson
Esmaeel
Liz Holliman
Joan Finley
James, Christina, Anastasia, and Xavier
Ali Zareie and family
The Riches Family
Jill Sorley
Joyce Phillips
George Snowden
Claire Mozaffari
Herbert Agbeko
Edward Fraser
All those who are struggling at home or in hospital with Covid-19
Rest in peace
Colin Bell
Post Communion prayer
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.
Amen.