Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 7, 2010, Solemn Mass

By the Reverend Stephen Gerth

Year C: Judges 6:11-24a; Psalm 85:7-13; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

I tend to think of Luke’s Jesus as the kindest and gentlest of the different Jesuses, if you will, that we meet in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Luke has the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the Finding of the Lost Sheep, the Good Samaritan. It is in Luke that Jesus says to the thief, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”[1]

In a 1986 essay, the late Raymond Brown wrote that while in Matthew there is an earthquake and a rending of the temple veil after Jesus dies, in Luke’s gospel, the temple veil is torn into two pieces while Jesus is hanging on the cross – before he dies.[2]  Brown notes that in Luke, “only acts of grace will follow the death of Jesus.”[3]

Surprisingly to me, in Luke’s gospel and in Luke’s second book, The Acts of the Apostles, sin and repentance are by far more prominent themes than in the other gospels, or the letters of Paul or any other place in the New Testament.

In my mind, I associate a narrow perfection model, if you will, of Christianity with Matthew’s gospel, especially because of the famously beautiful – and in my experience famously unreal – Sermon on the Mount.[4] I don’t even attempt to work on being perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect.[5] It sounds beautiful, comfortable, reassuring to hear Matthew’s Jesus say, “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them.”[6] But none of us lives as Jesus did, following the rules of association, not to mention diet, dress and prayer, of Jesus’ Jewish community.

Again, in Luke, the question of sin and repentance is far, far more prominent. It really is Luke’s Jesus who has come to call sinners to repentance.[7] This will be Jesus’ ministry until he rises from the dead; Luke’s second book will begin with Peter’s sermon and his admonition to the crowd, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.”[8]

The Sunday lectionary has omitted Jesus’ first acts of ministry after his teaching in the synagogue and being rejected in his own town. He’s been casting out demons, healing the sick, and, in particular, in Luke’s sequence, he has been to Simon’s house and healed his mother-in-law.[9]

Jesus is not a stranger to Simon in today’s gospel lesson. He has seen a healing in his home; today he is told by Jesus he will be “catching human beings,” – or more literally, he will be “taking human beings alive.”[10]

In Mark and Matthew, the parallel phrase in traditional English is “fishers of men.”[11] Luke’s “catching men alive” has a certain energy that I like, even if it does damage to my literary sense.

Back to sin and repentance. I’m not sure why I’ve missed this theme in Luke, but working on this gospel passage has gotten me thinking afresh about sin and repentance and also about forgiveness.

In the story of Zacchaeus the tax collector[12] and in the story of the Prodigal Son,[13] the sinner seeks out forgiver, and in both the forgiver seeks out the one who has been lost.

I’m pretty clear about reconciliation between us human beings and Christ. If we seek him out, we discover he is seeking us out. I expect my experience of God’s presence is much like everyone else’s. One has the sense that God is present, and not absent, in our lives – although his presence does not mean perfection or ease. If one has a criticism of this perspective it is that this presence allows so much that is wrong in this world to continue.

But what about reconciliation among us human beings, those whom Jesus has caught, and those whom he may never catch in a way that we will know. I think about difficult relationships with my family and people I no longer call friend.

John Henry Newman famously wrote that there are “wounds of the spirit which never close but which are intended in God’s mercy to bring us closer to Him.”[14] These wounds between parents and children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, partners, friends, may call us closer to God, but it still seems very hard for us who wish things to be different in our lives and the lives of others now.

There is, of course, at least one more side to this, and, that is the mystery of how the future may change. Doors may open in all of our lives that we didn’t think were there. Certainly Peter and the others didn’t expect Jesus to be with them, for them to be catching much of anything, much less catching people alive.

You can’t of course push the fishing thing too far. You catch fish alive to kill and eat them, usually. But in Jesus, God comes to pour out the Holy Spirit, his life, on those who turn to him. I think there is a great mercy in that.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.