Thinking allowed

St Peter and St Paul: 29 June 2025

Read­ings: Acts 12.1–11; Psalm 125; 2 Timothy 4.6–8, 17, 18; Mat­thew 16.13–19

May the words of my mouth
and the med­it­a­tion of my heart
be accept­able in your sight, O Lord.

I won­der if you’ve ever been to Rome.

It’s some­where I’ve been sev­er­al times,
and one of the things I have done each trip
is vis­it the Vatican
and climb up the dome of the great basilica there.

It’s a bit of a slog,
some 500 steps to the top,
but when you get up there
you are rewarded
with some won­der­ful pan­or­amic views across the city.

And you can also access the gallery
that runs around inside the dome.
From there
you get some really impress­ive views of the interi­or.

One thing you can see close up, for example,
is a Lat­in inscription
that runs full-circle around the dome.
In giant let­ter­ing it begins: “Tu es Petrus …”.
I’ll come back to these words in a moment.

Look­ing down from the dome of St Peter’s. [Photo: Simon Ker­shaw, 2004]

But first
– if you’re not too bothered about the height –
per­haps you can look straight down.
It’s a rather dizzy­ing couple of hun­dred feet
but there beneath you
is the high altar,
with its great bal­dachino or can­opy by Bernini.

And right in front of that altar
there’s a semi-circle of steps
lead­ing fur­ther down,
down beneath the floor of the church.

Now these steps aren’t access­ible to the public.
But if you could go down them,
and under the high altar,
you’d find yourself
stand­ing among the remains
of an ancient Roman cemetery.

Because those steps take you down
to the site of the tomb of St Peter.
Of course, the church we see today
was com­pletely rebuilt
some 4 or 500 years ago,
in the flam­boy­ant baroque style.
But they rebuilt it
on exactly the same site
as the pre­vi­ous church,
with the high altar
in exactly the same place as before.

Sec­tion show­ing the vari­ous altars and floor levels and their rela­tion to the tomb of St Peter. [Litur­gic­al Arts Journal]

That first church had been built
over a thou­sand years earlier,
in the 300s,
as soon as Chris­tian­ity had been legalized.
It was built
– with con­sid­er­able difficulty –
right on top of this ancient Roman cemetery;
and awkwardly,
on the side of a hill;

Cross sec­tions through St Peter’s. [From The Tombs of St Peter and St Paul, by Engle­bert Kirschbaum, 1959]

Interi­or elev­a­tion of St Peter’s show­ing also the floor level of the Con­stantini­an basilica, and the nec­ro­pol­is or buri­al area beneath. [From The Nec­ro­pol­is under St Peter’s Basilica in the Vat­ic­an, by Pietro Zander, 2009]

all care­fully positioned
so that the high altar
was dir­ectly over
one par­tic­u­lar tomb*.

And next to this cemetery
there had been an arena,
the Cir­cus of Nero,
and that’s where many early Christians
had been put to death,
accused by Nero
of caus­ing the great fire of Rome.

Peter him­self was among those executed,
said to have been crucified
– cru­ci­fied upside-down accord­ing to tradition.
Paul was a Roman cit­izen though,
so he was spared crucifixion
– he was beheaded
(and buried)
else­where in the city.
Oth­er Chris­ti­ans were roun­ded up
and put to death in the arena:
torn apart by wild beasts,
or forced to fight to the death as gladiators,
burned alive,
or killed in some oth­er bar­bar­ic Roman spectacle.

And it is
this first great persecution
– the mar­tyr­dom of Peter and Paul and many others –
that we are remem­ber­ing today.
It is those mar­tyrs, Peter, Paul and the others,
that we commemorate
and hold in great honour.

It was prob­ably around the year 64,
so just 30 years or thereabouts
after Jesus had walked around Galilee
and come to Caesarea Philippi.

And we heard a bit about that
in today’s gos­pel reading.
Peter,
Simon Peter,
at Caesarea Philippi
acclaim­ing Jesus as the Messiah.
You can sort of ima­gine him blurt­ing it out, can­’t you?
The first per­son to put into words
what he, and per­haps others,
had been thinking.

And Jesus recog­nizes the leap that Simon Peter has made.

This is when Jesus gives him the nickname:
“Rock”, which of course is what “Peter” means.
“You are the rock,”
he says to him
– “you are Peter”.
Remem­ber that inscrip­tion around the dome at the Vatican?
This is the verse that it quotes, in Latin:
“Tu es Pet­rus”, “you are Peter”.

And in the 30 years or so
since that moment at Caesarea Philippi,
first Peter, the rock, and then Paul
had built the early church
from tiny beginnings
to some­thing that was start­ing to be noticed
– even in the heart of the Roman Empire.

Because these Chris­ti­ans were a bit different
from your every­day Roman.
They did­n’t join in things
that good Romans were sup­posed to do,
like … sac­ri­fi­cing at the temples,
or con­sid­er­ing the emper­or to be a god.
And although a few of them were wealthy,
many were slaves or ex-slaves
or very def­in­itely among the poor and oppressed.

Because it was often among
the poor and the oppressed
that Peter and Paul
and others
preached the good news of the king­dom of God.
“Blessed are the poor, the hungry,
the sick, the persecuted”
Jesus had said
– that’s def­in­itely good news when you are poor and oppressed.

Per­haps this mes­sage of hope
(and – dare I say it? –
social revolution?)
was already caus­ing a stir in Roman society.
There must have been some­thing they were doing
that attrac­ted the atten­tion of the rul­ing class
– of the Emper­or Nero,
when he was look­ing for someone to blame
for that dis­astrous fire.

And I won­der to what extent
this mes­sage of hope
and social revolution –
can still cause a stir in our mod­ern society.
Or have we made it so bland,
or so other-worldly,
that it simply does­n’t impinge
on the thoughts of our fel­low citizens?
Most of them have not just giv­en up believing,
they have even giv­en up dis­be­liev­ing
– they just don’t care.

But as Christians
it is our job to care.

Peter and Paul,
as we have heard,
were mar­tyrs,
a Greek word mean­ing wit­nesses.
In their life
and
by their death
they and oth­ers were witnesses:
wit­nesses to the recon­cil­ing love of God,
wit­nesses to the good news
of the rule of God that Jesus had proclaimed.

And just like Peter, just like Paul,
we too are witnesses.
We are God’s witnesses
here in St Ives in 2025.
We are the ones
tasked with rep­res­ent­ing God –
rep­res­ent­ing God
to the world in which we live.
We are the ones
who are called to bear witness
to what God has done in our lives.
To bear witness
to what Jesus means in our lives.

Now I trust and hope that none of us
will be called to bear witness
in the face of per­se­cu­tion and viol­ent death.
So we will not be martyrs
in the way that the word is used nowadays.
We will not be mar­tyrs like Peter and Paul.
But we can be God’s witnesses
among our friends and family,
our acquaint­ances and colleagues,
and those we meet.
Does that sound a daunt­ing task?
Well, maybe it does, yes!
So, let’s start with something
any of us can do.

Let’s think for a moment.

Do you have a ready answer
when someone asks
what do you do on a Sunday morning?
Do you have a ready answer
when someone asks why do you go to church?
Do you have a ready answer
if someone asks you about Jesus?

If I’m hon­est, I’m not sure I do.
So my chal­lenge to each one of us is this:
find time this week to spend a few minutes
con­sid­er­ing how you would answer those questions
– in just a short sen­tence or two.
How you might answer those questions
in a way that encour­ages engage­ment and fur­ther interest.

And little by little,
per­son by person,
we will,
like Peter and Paul
and all the saints before us,
help to build God’s kingdom
here on earth
as it is in heaven.

Amen.


* This is a slight over-sim­pli­fic­a­tion. In the first Church, as ori­gin­ally built under Con­stantine, the tomb was vis­ible. It was Gregory the Great (in about 594) who raised the floor of the sanc­tu­ary by sev­er­al feet and placed the altar over the tomb. That altar was at a level sev­er­al feet below the floor of the rebuilt basilica that we see today.

 

 

 

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Nicaea and the date of Easter

This art­icle was first pub­lished in the June 2025 issue of Trans­form­ing Wor­ship News (formerly Prax­is News of Wor­ship).

The date of East­er is often regarded as rather com­plic­ated, too com­plic­ated for nearly every­one to worry about. But it links us with the ori­gin of the annu­al fest­iv­al, and the way the early Church cel­eb­rated the resurrection.

When the Emper­or Con­stantine decided that Chris­tian­ity was the best hope of uni­fy­ing his empire, he found dis­agree­ment on sev­er­al top­ics, includ­ing the nature of Christ and the date on which to hold an annu­al cel­eb­ra­tion of his resur­rec­tion. The Coun­cil of Nicaea in 325 attemp­ted to resolve both issues, agree­ing a state­ment of belief and form­al­iz­ing the date of Easter.

The story begins with the Jew­ish fest­iv­al of Pas­sov­er, held at the first full moon of the spring, when the moon lights the sky all night. In the Jew­ish lun­ar cal­en­dar this day is 15 Nis­an, and the pre­vi­ous day, 14 Nis­an, is the day of pre­par­a­tion. In the late after­noon of that day, until the Temple was des­troyed, Pas­sov­er lambs were slaughtered in the Temple pre­cincts. They were then roas­ted and eaten at the Pas­sov­er meal that began with the full moon at sun­set, the start of 15 Nis­an. In the fourth gos­pel, the cru­ci­fix­ion was on 14 Nis­an, and in the syn­op­tics on 15 Nisan.

There is no expli­cit evid­ence in the New Test­a­ment of a yearly East­er. The focus in the early Church was the weekly cel­eb­ra­tion of the resur­rec­tion on the first day of the week, every Sunday. Although it is not entirely clear – and there may have been a cov­er up – it seems that Chris­ti­ans in Jer­u­s­alem and the Jew­ish dia­spora did keep an annu­al fest­iv­al, but Gen­tile Chris­ti­ans prob­ably didn’t. The former group kept an annu­al cel­eb­ra­tion of both the cru­ci­fix­ion and resur­rec­tion on 14 Nis­an, whichever day of the week that fell on.

Per­haps influ­enced by this annu­al feast kept in the dia­spora, oth­er Chris­ti­ans began to observe it and a fast on the pre­vi­ous day. But rather than keep­ing it on 14 Nis­an they cel­eb­rated the fol­low­ing Sunday, the day of the weekly com­mem­or­a­tion of the resur­rec­tion. Per­haps just as today, it was more con­veni­ent to trans­fer week­day fest­ivals to  Sunday.

These two groups co-exis­ted until at the end of the second cen­tury, Pope Vic­tor I con­tro­ver­sially excom­mu­nic­ated those who kept 14 Nis­an – the Quar­to­de­cimans (or “four­teen­ers”). A cen­tury later the dis­pute had not ended although the Quar­to­de­cimans were a dis­tinct minor­ity. So when, com­manded by Con­stantine to agree a com­mon date, the bish­ops assembled at Nicaea it was not sur­pris­ing that major­ity opin­ion, favoured by Rome and oth­er major sees, pre­vailed. The Coun­cil ruled that the annu­al paschal feast, cel­eb­rat­ing the resur­rec­tion, should be observed on the Sunday after the first full moon of the spring, the full moon after the equinox.

The Coun­cil did not pre­scribe how this might be determ­ined in advance, and ini­tially it was per­haps left to dir­ect obser­va­tion. Com­pet­ing tables of dates soon emerged, fre­quently based on a 19-year lun­ar cycle that had been known since at least the Baby­lo­ni­ans. The date of the equi­nox, which in the first cen­tury had fallen on 25 March, had by the fourth cen­tury drif­ted to 21 March. Tables from Alex­an­dria were gen­er­ally regarded as the best, and the declar­a­tion each year from that see of the date of East­er was usu­ally fol­lowed, though for many years the see of Rome used dif­fer­ent tables so occa­sion­ally East­er would fall on anoth­er date. Even­tu­ally the tables com­piled and exten­ded by the sixth-cen­tury monk Dionysi­us Exiguus were accep­ted as defin­it­ive. These con­tin­ued in use through­out the Church, across the schism between East and West. As the middle ages wore on it was recog­nised that both lun­ar and sol­ar com­pon­ents of the tables were increas­ingly inac­cur­ate, but it was not until after the Reform­a­tion that Pope Gregory XIII uni­lat­er­ally intro­duced a mod­i­fied cal­en­dar with self-cor­rect­ing lun­ar tables. Although these were gradu­ally accep­ted by the churches of the Reform­a­tion they have not been adop­ted in the East, at least not for determ­in­ing Easter.

In the twen­ti­eth cen­tury there were some moves to fix the date of East­er, but at the end of the cen­tury the World Coun­cil of Churches pro­posed abol­ish­ing cal­cu­lated tables based on the approx­im­ate 19-year cycle and instead using accur­ate astro­nom­ic­al cal­cu­la­tions of the equi­nox and the full moon as observed in the time zone of Jer­u­s­alem. They sug­ges­ted this might be adop­ted in 2000 when both East­ern and West­ern cal­cu­la­tions coin­cided on the same date. There was some sup­port for this from Rome, from Anglic­ans and vari­ous churches of the Reform­a­tion and some Ortho­dox churches, but it was far from uni­ver­sal. In this 1700th anniversary year of Nicaea, when East­er dates again coin­cide, the WCC has re-iter­ated its pro­pos­al. Once again, it seems unlikely to gain enough sup­port to be brought in.


Simon Ker­shaw remem­bers try­ing to cal­cu­late East­er from the tables in the BCP while endur­ing long ser­mons as a young chor­is­ter at Even­song. He has con­tin­ued to cal­cu­late and write about the date of Easter.

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Ascension Day: 29 May 2025

Read­ings: Acts 1.1–11; Daniel 7.9–14; Psalm 47; Eph­esians 1.15–23; Luke 24.44–53

May the words of my mouth and the med­it­a­tion of my heart
be accept­able in your sight, O Lord.

Did you ever watch I, Claudi­us?
Or per­haps you’ve read the books?
I sup­pose I was about 15 when I first read them,
shortly before the BBC made that won­der­ful adaptation.
Remem­ber – Derek Jac­obi in the title role,
and a host of oth­er stars?
I well recall our Lat­in teach­er back then
telling us that the books were so good
that occa­sion­ally he would forget
wheth­er some incid­ent was actu­ally historical
or had instead been inven­ted by the author, Robert Graves.
And cer­tainly Graves did include
a host of real his­tor­ic­al inform­a­tion in the books.

For example, Graves relates
that a few weeks after the emper­or Augus­tus died in AD 14,
the Roman Sen­ate declared him to be divine.
They built an offi­cial state temple,
and spe­cial coins were minted
show­ing the emper­or being car­ried up to heaven,
per­haps in a chariot,
accom­pan­ied by wing’d figures.

So you see there’s some history
of great rulers being declared gods
when they died
or even whilst still alive.

And a few years after Augustus,
around AD 40,
the emper­or Caligula declared him­self a god.
Claudi­us was next,
declared divine imme­di­ately he died in 54.
Even his neph­ew, the infam­ous Nero
who ruled until 68,
was wor­shipped as part of the divine imper­i­al family.

I’ve men­tioned these dates,
not to try and give a his­tory lesson
– there’s no exam later –
but because they remind us
that this is exactly the time
when the events of the New Test­a­ment took place
and when much of it was written.
This is the context
in which Jesus was first pro­claimed by Christians
as the Son of God,
and described as being taken up into heaven.
We might well won­der what the rela­tion­ship is
between the descrip­tions of Jesus’s ascension
and the tra­di­tion of emper­ors and others
taken up to a pagan heaven.

Let’s think about what we heard earli­er in our readings.

The Old Test­a­ment les­son from Daniel draws on traditions
sev­er­al hun­dred years before those Roman emperors,
Claudi­us and Co.
It’s a vis­ion of a human figure
“com­ing with the clouds of heaven”,
com­ing to the throne of God and receiv­ing etern­al kingship.
Clearly Jesus’s ascen­sion sits in this tradition.

And we also had two accounts of that Ascen­sion of Jesus.
Our ser­vice began with the open­ing words of the Acts of the Apostles.
It’s rather the defin­it­ive account,
the one we think of when the Ascen­sion is mentioned.

And our gos­pel read­ing had the ascen­sion story again,
this time from the very end of Luke.
Did you notice any dif­fer­ences between these two –
one from Acts and one from the gos­pel accord­ing to Luke?

Did you?
Because they aren’t quite the same.

In the gospel
the Ascen­sion hap­pens at the end of East­er Day itself,
but in Acts it’s forty days later,
just as today is forty days after East­er Day –
remem­ber I said it’s the Acts account we gen­er­ally recall?
And it’s only in Acts that
“two men in white robes” appear
and explain to the dis­ciples what’s happened,
telling them Jesus will return in the same way.

Now don’t for­get Claudi­us and those oth­er emperors.
I’ve sug­ges­ted that the New Test­a­ment descrip­tions of Jesus’s ascension
have a parallel
in the con­tem­por­ary Roman emper­ors being declared divine.
But at the time, of course,
the stor­ies of emper­ors were much bet­ter known
than the story of Jesus.

Whatever it was that the dis­ciples witnessed,
what they are doing is assert­ing a cult
that is a rival to the offi­cial cult of the Roman state.
A cult, a reli­gion, in which their leader
mys­tic­ally ascends into the heav­ens in recog­ni­tion that he is divine.
And of course the dis­ciples, the early Christians,
assert that it is their story which is true,
and that the divin­ity of the emper­ors is bogus.
They use the well-known stor­ies about emperors
to pro­claim the truth about Jesus.

So what is it that they are try­ing to say?

Let’s con­sider two import­ant things.

First
these early Chris­ti­ans were abso­lutely con­vinced that Jesus was divine.
They hadn’t yet worked out the theo­lo­gic­al details,
but there’s no doubt that they had become con­vinced it was true.
They want the world to hear about Jesus;
and
they want the world to hear
that Jesus is divine.

And secondly:
what do the pas­sages say?
“you will be my wit­nesses in Jer­u­s­alem …  to the ends of the earth”
(that’s Jesus in Acts)
and “repent­ance and for­give­ness of sins is to be proclaimed …
to all nations, begin­ning from Jerusalem”
(that’s from Luke).
And this is surely the key les­son for us.
You’ve heard me say it before
and I make no apo­logy for say­ing it again.
The task that Jesus gives his disciples
is to tell every­one the good news about the king­dom of God.
We are to tell people about our hope:
hope in the recon­cili­ation that is God’s love –
hope in recon­cili­ation with God the creator
and
recon­cili­ation with God’s cre­ation, with all our fel­low creatures.

Recon­cili­ation with God the creator
and recon­cili­ation with our fel­low creatures.

What does that mean in prac­tice? What can we each do?

It means liv­ing at love and peace
with our fam­ily and our neighbours,
not get­ting into dis­putes, not bear­ing grudges
– “for­give us our sins as we for­give those who sin against us” –
and this applies to every aspect of our lives:

to per­son­al conflict,
to loc­al and region­al conflict,
to inter­na­tion­al conflict.
And it applies to issues of social justice as well:
to equit­ably shar­ing the bounty of this world –
food, hous­ing, healthcare,
fair employ­ment and fair wages,
end­ing unjust discrimination.
And to our stew­ard­ship of the world that we are called to live in.
It isn’t always easy, is it?
But all this flows directly
from Jesus’s mes­sage of love and reconciliation.

This is Jesus’s mani­festo of com­pas­sion­ate love.

What any one of us can do
may be quite limited,
but it isn’t zero.
In our per­son­al lives,
in our sup­port for char­it­ies, for campaigns,
in how we shop,
how we vote or sup­port polit­ic­al parties,
in how we speak and how we act,
we each of us make
a small but sig­ni­fic­ant impact.

And one final thought.
We’re not alone.
Church is the com­munity of people com­mit­ted to doing this together.
Here should be the primary community
where we care for each other,
and where we are strengthened for that ser­vice in the world,
strengthened by each other
and strengthened by our belief
in the God who loves and reconciles.
Col­lect­ively we help advance the king­dom of God,
where God’s love and com­pas­sion are shared with all,
and peace and justice flow like a river.

Amen.

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4 before Lent: 9 February 2025

Read­ings: Isai­ah 6.1–8 [9–13]; Psalm 138; 1 Cor­inthi­ans 15.1–11; Luke 5.1–11

May the words of my mouth and the med­it­a­tion of my heart
be accept­able in your sight, O Lord.

Over the last few weeks,
since the start of January,
we’ve been listen­ing each Sunday
to stor­ies about the begin­ning of Jesus’s ministry.
How Jesus was bap­tized by John the Baptist;
and about the wed­ding at Cana,
where ordin­ary water was turned into abund­ance
an abund­ance of the best pos­sible wine.
We heard how Jesus came to Nazareth
and him­self read the passage
where Isai­ah foresees
good news for the poor and the oppressed,
for the blind and the captive.

And today we have Jesus
gath­er­ing his first disciples.

In Luke’s account,
which is what we are mostly read­ing this year,
this is the first time Andrew, James and John have appeared,
though Simon Peter gets
a teensy men­tion in the pre­vi­ous chapter.
And yet they do exactly what Jesus says.

What’s going on?

Luke does­n’t really tell us,
but we can get a hint from John’s gospel.
You see, John tells us
that Andrew was a dis­ciple of John the Baptist;
that when Jesus was baptized
John the Baptist poin­ted him out to Andrew,
and Andrew then went and fetched his broth­er Simon Peter
and intro­duced him to Jesus.
Anoth­er dis­ciple with Andrew is not named,
but it is tra­di­tion­ally thought to have been John –
that’s the same John who was one of the fishermen
in today’s story,
the broth­er of James.

So it seems Jesus already knew these four fishermen,
Andrew and Simon Peter, James and John.
But they had not yet begun to travel around with Jesus.
What changed?

Well,
what changed
was that John the Baptist had been arres­ted by Herod
and was now a cap­tive in Herod’s dungeons,
where he would soon be executed.
Can you ima­gine what it must have been like
for those who had flocked to hear him preach
and become his disciples?
It must have been a dark and dif­fi­cult time, mustn’t it?
Well, the gos­pels don’t tell us anything
about what happened to John the Baptist’s followers
when he was arrested –
but it’s easy to ima­gine, I think, that they all ran away,
away from the danger that they too
might be iden­ti­fied with his movement
and his cri­ti­cism of Herod.
Away from the danger
that they too might be arres­ted and per­haps put to death.
That they ran away
back to the anonym­ity of their homes
and their fam­il­ies and their every­day jobs.

And that’s where we find
Andrew and Simon Peter, James and John –
back in their fam­ily busi­nesses of catch­ing fish
and no doubt try­ing to keep a low profile.

And then – Jesus comes back too.

Per­haps he’s real­ized that his time has arrived:
that with John the Baptist silenced
it is his turn to pro­claim the word of God,
to pro­claim the good news about the king­dom of God.
And already people are listen­ing to him:
Luke, in our read­ing today,
says “the crowd was press­ing in on him”.
Why?
Luke tells us they wanted “to hear the word of God” –
Jesus preach­ing about the king­dom of God.

And in this mêlée,
there right in front of Jesus
are some people he knows:
Andrew and Simon Peter, James and John.
Was he look­ing for them?
Or did he just come across them?
What he saw though was an opportunity
to stop the crowd press­ing in on him
and to con­tin­ue to teach from the safety of a boat,
pre­sum­ably just out in the shallows.

And then
they put down their nets
and catch fish –
fish in great abund­ance,
fish almost bey­ond their capa­city to bring to shore.

And this mira­cu­lous catch of fish
provided the per­fect opportunity
for Jesus … to tell a joke.
To me that’s one of the things
that comes across so strongly
in the gos­pel stor­ies about Jesus.
He was just the most won­der­ful speaker –
a really skilled orator.
Jesus knows when to tell a story and when to argue;
he knows when to cross-ques­tion and when to debate;
and he knows how to use
exag­ger­a­tion and sar­casm and humor­ous one-liners
to great effect.

And that’s what he does here, isn’t it?
“Yes, you can carry on catch­ing dead fish,” he says,
“or you can come with me and we’ll fish for liv­ing people.”

Of course it’s not just a one-liner –
the punch­line to the teach­ing about the king­dom of God
they have just heard him deliver,
or the punch­line to the great catch of fish
they have some­how just man­aged to land.
No, it’s not just a one-liner,
it’s also a proph­ecy, isn’t it?
Because we know that’s exactly what these fishermen,
these ordin­ary people,
will become.

They start right here
becom­ing Jesus’s first disciples.
They will fin­ish,
bey­ond the end of Luke’s book,
bring­ing in a mira­cu­lous catch of people,
fol­low­ers of Jesus in great abund­ance.
They were frightened fishermen
who had run away
when John the Baptist had been arrested,
and they would do so again when Jesus is arrested.
And yet
Jesus inspired them and nur­tured them
and gave them what it takes
to be catch­ers of people,
mira­cu­lously so,
fear­lessly pro­claim­ing the king­dom of God’s abund­ant love.

Here we see the very first steps of that journey,
Jesus gath­er­ing together
this group of John the Baptist’s disciples,
who become the core of Jesus’s own disciples.
And it’s a jour­ney that has continued
down the ages and across the world,
right down to us,
to you and to me,
here today in this place
far from the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

Because it is our respons­ib­il­ity now.
We are the dis­ciples sit­ting on
– if you like –
the beach.
We are the disciples
who have heard Jesus’s mes­sage about the king­dom of God –
where the hungry are fed and the home­less housed,
the sick nursed and the stranger cared for,
the oppressed and the per­se­cuted set free,
and where peace and reconciliation
replace bit­ter­ness and war.

And our job,
our job is to share this good news,
to live as people who believe this good news
and to invite our friends and our neighbours
to come and live it
and to share in its great abund­ance.

Thanks be to God.

 

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