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4th Sunday before Lent

31 January 2025

9 February, Proper 1: Isaiah 6.1-8 (9-end); Psalm 138; 1 Corinthians 15.1-11; Luke 5.1-11

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IN THIS Gospel, Simon responds to Jesus as he does, not because of a realisation at that moment (15.8), but because of things that happened earlier. He heard Jesus teaching at the Capernaum synagogue and afterwards invited him home, no doubt hoping to hear more. There, he has witnessed the healing power of the man whom he now calls “Lord”.

Editors disagree on whether this first use of the name “Peter”, here at verse 8, is original or was added later. Luke does not refer to the bestowing of the name until 6.14, which is one reason that I suspect that it is a later addition, not what Luke originally wrote. This matters, because of the question whether we can link Simon’s recognition of Jesus’s identity (“Lord”) with Jesus’ recognition of Simon’s (“rock”).

Before this, though, we must think back to what happens after Jesus’s proclamation of Isaiah, recounted in last week’s Gospel (Luke 4.14-21). The lectionary omits a linking passage, in which Jesus — after being expelled from Nazareth for making offensive claims (4.28-30) — moves on to Capernaum, where he first heals a man possessed by the spirit of an impure demon (4.33) and then cures Peter’s mother-in-law.

Luke wants us to see 5.1-11 against the backdrop of the hostility that Jesus experiences in his home town, and alongside the objective reality of his power to heal people. He brings someone with an impure spirit back to his right mind. He cures Simon’s mother-in-law of fever. No distinction is made between mental and physical illness. These events trigger a flood of pleas for help, driving Jesus to withdraw in search of solitude. But the crowd follows, and its demands elicit his declaration that he has a mission to other towns, and not to this locality only.

With all this in mind, we can better understand Simon’s actions in this Gospel. Only moments ago (reading continuously), Luke told us that Jesus left Capernaum synagogue and went to Simon’s house, where he cured his mother-in-law. Without this context, Simon’s actions in this reading make no sense, and we are left to wonder why he is co-operative and obedient. The answer must lie in his already having witnessed (unlike the crowd) the power of this man Jesus, who has commandeered his fishing-boat.

Words are cheap. Plenty of people who are persuasive public speakers have not a scintilla of morality about how they weaponise their rhetorical skill. Perhaps a lack of guilt about using words to manipulate people is a positive advantage. Power over nature is another matter altogether. So the crowd is right to be more impressed by a miraculous catch of fish than by Jesus’s teaching.

The chasm between saying and doing is a wide one. Had Jesus left us nothing apart from a metaphorical body of ethical teaching — wise and inspiring as it is — it could never have an impact akin to that of his real, physical, body nailed to the cross. “By their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7.16, 20); not “by their words“. Words are too often camouflage, hiding our true selves from the world.

When we meet someone in whom words and actions form an integrous whole, their eloquence and goodness, once united, become more than the sum of their parts. Jesus himself is a paradigm of integrity. In this Gospel, he begins with words, getting into the boat and teaching. But he understands that words alone are not enough. I struggle with Jesus’s saying in Matthew that “an evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign”; for what else are these miraculous healings for, if not to encourage people to put their faith in God’s power over their lives?

Part of the answer, no doubt, is that Jesus performs healing miracles because he sees before him a person who needs help. In other words, he does not respond to their need because they are a means to some supposedly greater good (such as spreading the message, or converting others).

Perhaps, then, the miracles are a shorthand for what a mere three years of earthly ministry cannot accomplish; for the preachers and teachers who make the greatest impact on congregations are not those parachuted in for some special occasion, but the ones who live as part of their community. Only then is it possible for that community to make a judgement about whether they practise what they preach.

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