Sermon St Eustachius 9.45 6 February 2022 4th b4 Lent Year C P1 Have Faith
Isaiah 6v1-8                  Psalm 138         1Corinthians 15v1-11         Luke 5v1-11
Let us Pray:
It is so lovely to hear how our Lord Jesus calls people to follow after him. I wonder how God spoke to you and called you to start along the path of your Christian life and pilgrimage, a life of change and adventure that never stops. A life of transformation as by his Holy Spirit God is changing each one of us to become like our beloved Lord Jesus. Well, certainly the live of Jesus four friends, Peter and Andrew, James and John were never going to be the same after he called them to ‘follow him’ and to ‘become fishers of men’.
Each of the three Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, relate that story, but our reading from Saint Luke today gives much extra detail.

Jesus was just embarking upon his Galilean ministry following his time in Jerusalem and Judea during the spring and summer of AD 28. Peter, Andrew and John had been with him then, but had now clearly returned to their business and occupation of fishing in the lake, when they saw Jesus walking by the shore. I guess John had related all that had previously occurred to his probable elder brother James, who like the other three were prepared to leave all and to follow the Lord immediately when he called.

I wonder what the Lord may have asked you to ‘leave behind’, what changes he may have asked you to encompass, when he called you to follow after him? I trust that in retrospect, and with hindsight, although they may have seemed a struggle at the time, like me you can often look back and see the good hand of the Lord at work in what happened.

As Jesus walked by the lake there was a crowd of people on its shore who were anxious to hear the message of this new young Rabbi. So many in fact that Jesus saw one of the boats Peter and Andrew had left to wash their nets, and jumped in and asked them to push off from the shore a little. Of course Jesus Physics was far better than mine, after all he had spoken the Universe into being, and knew that his words would be very effectively reflected off the water’s surface so that the people would hear his words much more clearly.

Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus used this opportunity to start to teach the people in parables although we do not have them recorded from that occasion. There are so many tantalising gaps in our Lord’s teaching that are not recorded by the evangelists, but that gives you an opportunity.
An opportunity to ask the Lord many questions when you finally meet him face to face. I hope you are looking forward to that time with anticipation. I am sure that none of us here are like some in Corinth whom Paul feared may have come to believe in vain, and may no longer have been holding fast to the message of the gospel. Let us all stand firm in the faith as we are being saved for that time when we shall finally be with our Lord.

We also read how Jesus, when he had finished his teaching, asked Simon to push out into the deep and carry on with his business of fishing. I wonder how many times Jesus has asked you, he has certainly asked me, to ‘push out into the deep’, another way of saying ‘trust me’, Jesus does  have our best interests at heart.

Did Jesus not know that Peter had been fishing all night and caught nothing? The evidence was clear, they were washing their nets and not rushing off to market to sell their catch. But clearly Peter had learnt something in the months he had already spent with Jesus at Cana, Jerusalem and on the way back to Galilee. He knew that Jesus word could be trusted. So he replied, “but at your word I will let down my nets”. Peter’s faith in Jesus was beginning to grow stronger.

And to help Peter’s faith grow, we read that, ‘they enclosed a great shoal of fish’. And not just a ‘great shoal’, but so many that their nets began to break, and what does that tell us? Jesus always has an abundance of blessings in store for us if we will but ‘put down our nets at his word’, if we will but put our faith in what Jesus asks us to do.
Obedience is one of the greatest delights we can give to God our Father.

And those blessings, that abundance of fish, is something God looks for us to share with those around us, to make known to them also the blessings he has, not just for us, but for them as well. So Peter and Andrew beckoned to their partners, James and John, to come alongside in their boat, and to share in the catch and to get it safely to shore.

Such was Peter’s realisation of that abundant blessing Jesus had just given to him in response to his obedience to Jesus word, that he fell down at Jesus knees saying. “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord”. And that should be true for us also, when we receive God’s abundant blessings, we are to recognise him and to give him our worship.

The words that Peter used, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man’, very much echo the words of our reading from the Prophet Isaiah. The passage from Isaiah 6 describing the prophet’s vision of God’s presence in the highest heaven, is not just one of my favourite scriptures, it is one of such amazing insight into the very presence of God himself. We have few such passages that describe God in his highest heaven.
But what this passage shows is that in the presence of Almighty God, even such a great prophet like Isaiah, who was given many wonderful revelations from God, we all recognise that, ‘we are lost, we are people of unclean lips’, and so it is for all of those around us. How we like Isaiah need ‘our guilt to be taken away and our sin blotted out’.

Is it not a cause for much rejoicing that we Christians actually know that is true for us, our guilt has been taken away. What other faith or philosophy gives such a hope and assurance? All we have to do is confess our sins and put our faith and trust in Jesus. And in this seventieth jubilee year of our Queen, let us pray for a revival of faith for this our country.

We have the promise that God himself has dealt with the sin of each one of us, just as the seraph dealt with Isaiah’s sin and blotted it out by the fire of the coal taken from the altar. God has removed our sins as far as the east is from the west; God has buried our sins in the deepest sea; because Jesus was obedient to the will of God the Father, and died for us all on Calvary’s tree.

Isaiah responded by answering the call from God to be sent, ‘here I am send me’. How are we to respond to God’s call to us? I trust that we have responded by openly confessing the sin that so easily besets us, and by putting our faith and trust in the same person that Peter did. If we put our trust in Jesus we are promised that he will forgive us all our sins, and will send his Holy Spirit to abide within us and sustain us as his disciples.

What an amazing Gospel of good news we have to tell to all peoples. What an amazing gospel of hope, of eternal joy, that we have as God sends us out to be ‘fishers of people’. It is the same call that all Christians have received since Jesus first called Peter and Andrew, James and John, and to which we respond in the same way by following after him.
Let us pray: God of heaven, you send the gospel to the ends of the earth and your messengers to every nation:
send now your Holy Spirit to transform us by the good news of everlasting life as we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Sermon St Eustachius 9.45 9 January 2022 Epiphany 1 Year C Baptism of Christ
Isaiah 43v1-7         Psalm 29         Acts 8v14-17         Luke 3v15-17, 21-22
Let us Pray:

We have read how the prophet Isaiah could say to the people of Israel the words he heard from God, ‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine’. Let me ask you, do you feel that God knows and calls you by name? That God knows you as a special individual, one who is unique to Him, just as you know each one of your children or family as special and unique individuals.

Like those people of Israel, if we know that we are so loved by God, and have been redeemed by him through the death of our Lord Jesus, then we can be assured that God knows each one of us by name, and He is with us no matter what we may have to pass through. In fact the prophet Isaiah assures us that God knows us so intimately that he has craven, written, each of our names on the palm of his hands (Is49v16a), clearly God, metaphorically, has some very large hands. And for the nation of Israel God was even with them as they passed through the testing’s of fire or water, as when they crossed the Red Sea or the river Jordan, and eventually entered into the land that God had promised to them.

Isaiah was convinced that the people of Israel were precious in God’s sight, that God loved them, for like everyone, God has created us all for his glory, and to walk with him all the days of our lives. So let me ask, ‘how can we be assured of God’s love’?.. The answer is in our celebration once again of the birth of our Lord Jesus. Celebrating the unimaginable, of God breaking into his very own created universe, of God becoming incarnate to dwell with us. And why? Because God so loved us and gave his only begotten Son to become one with us humans through his great grace, mercy and love. We Christians are so blessed to know that love of God, and to experience God’s love deep in our hearts.

God in His love come to dwell with us in His Son Jesus so that through Jesus’ death at Calvary we may indeed know and experience his  redeeming grace. A grace long promised of reconciliation for our disobedience to our Hoy God; a grace promised to each one of us who will believe and put our trust in him. It is then that we become restored as God’s ‘image bearers’, restored to declare the glory of God’s coming kingdom to this our present and needy world.

But first before Jesus redeeming death and glorious resurrection, in great humility, Jesus subjected himself to baptism by his cousin John. John however was somewhat reluctantly to baptise Jesus with all the others who came to him just below Jericho at a place called bethabara. A place shown very clearly on the ancient Madaba map on the shore of the river Jordan, and probably in the early months of AD 28.
That site has only recently been reopened to tourists in 2010 following the clearance of many land mines along this sensitive border with Jordan.

It was there that John saw the Holy Spirit of God descend upon Jesus like a dove-the symbol of peace and of the Holy Spirit. In St John’s gospel (1v31-34) we read of John the Baptist’s mission, ‘For this purpose I came baptising with water, that he-the Messiah-might be revealed to Israel’. God had said to John, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptises with the Holy Spirit’. After seeing the Spirit descend and remain on his cousin, John could testify, ‘this is the Son of God’. ‘Following his baptism Jesus was then immediately driven by the Holy Spirit into the nearby Judean wilderness to be tempted for forty long days by the evil one.

That symbol of a dove took on special significance when Joy and I stood in Jerusalem at the western, or wailing wall, and saw a dove nestled in the 2000 year old stones of the Temple mount. It seemed as if here was the Spirit of God hovering over the people of God, and like us all, longing for the peace which is still yet to come to that holy city.

Early theologians wrestled with the question as to why Jesus submitted to John in baptism, for John’s baptism was one of repentance from sin, and Jesus had no need of repentance for he was the ‘spotless lamb of God who was to take away the sin of the world’. True, Jesus had no need of repentance, but he did come to fulfil, or complete, the Jewish law, and so by submitting to this baptism Jesus enabled the people around him to recognise just who he was. St Matthew, like St John, also records this revelation to John the Baptist when he declares, “he who is coming after me is mightier than I, he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire”.

By submitting to baptism Jesus gave to us a number of images that enable us more fully to understand his mission. First is a call for us all to follow Jesus in our own baptism. As we do we identify as members of his body, the church, and we become like Him ‘a beloved son or daughter of God’.
Some believe that the words actually heard at Jesus’ baptism which St Mark records as “Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased”, are in fact a paraphrase of the words recorded in Isaiah 42, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him, he will bring forth justice to the nations”. And those words fit well with the mission of Jesus, a mission to bring justice and righteousness to the nations. Should it not also be our mission as followers of Jesus to do the same? To work for justice for all people. If we could but capture that vision, like William Wilberforce and other great Christians who have gone before us, could we not see a transformation in this war torn, famine stricken and oppressed world in which we live?

Do we have enough faith to think that we, you and I, can change things? The question is are we prepared to become the agents of that change? Do we want to? When was the last time you wrote to the news media in response to some anti Christian legislation, or asked your MP, I know ours has been notably missing, to make a stand in parliament for Christian values? Values that will benefit all of human kind no matter what their background. Remember it has been said, “all that it takes for evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing.”

Jesus baptism also creates for us a second image, that of the crossing of the Red Sea at the start of the journey of salvation for the children of Israel from the bondage of Egypt. That crossing symbolised a death to the old life in Egypt, and a resurrection to the new life ahead.
So in our baptism we are reminded that we were buried with Christ, that we have died to our old life, and have been raised to a new life. Raised to a life to be lived in the power and at the direction of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit who is God’s presence with us as comforter, seal and guide, who and comes to dwell with us to bring the fulness of life itself.

It is our sure hope that we have been once and for all redeemed by the death of our Lord Jesus, delivered from our sins once we put our trust in Jesus and commit to follow him. It is then that God sends the Holy Spirit to dwell with us as a guarantee of our new relationship with Him. A relationship that will extend into, and throughout, eternity as we follow God’s path for each one of us during our remaining time in this present world. Our life becomes a constant journey of salvation, of change and transformation, until we shall be finally united with Jesus in heaven, or remain to meet with him in the clouds when he returns in great glory.

This image of us as a new creation as we rise from the waters of baptism, as we rise to a new beginning brought about by the Holy Spirit of God, is so appropriate as we start yet another new year. In our prayers let us not be afraid to seek the change that God still has in store for each one of us as we deepen our walk with him.

It reminds us of the first creation that we read of in the book of Genesis, that time when the Holy Spirit of God brooded over the face of the earth and brought forth life. Now that same Holy Spirit brings about a new life in us, a profound transformation of our lives. A transformation so that we may experience the promise recorded by Saint John in his gospel (Jn10v10) when Jesus said that as Christians we are to have ‘a full and abundant life’.

That abundant life is what the world should see in us as God’s ‘image bearers’, an abundant life that attracts them to join with us on the adventure of our faith and walk with our Lord Jesus Christ.

After all that we have been through these previous two years, what better tonic could we ask than to experience God’s abundant life in the coming year.
Could there be any better adventure ahead as we start 2022?

Let us pray:
Heavenly Father, at the Jordan you revealed Jesus as your Son:
may we recognise him as our Lord, and know ourselves to be your beloved children; your ‘image bearers’, experiencing a full and abundant life, we ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour.                   Amen