The Holy Innocents (First after Christmas, 28th December 2025)

1st after Christmas, 28th December 2025

The Holy Innocents

Wolf Kirchmeir

Isaiah 63:7-9; Psalm 148; Hebrews 2:10-18; Matthew 2:13-23

May the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts be ever acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today, December 28th, we remember the Holy Innocents.

Today’s Gospel is grim. This will be a grim meditation.

Herod had asked the three Magi to report back when they found the boy born to be King. But they were warned in a dream, and left by another way. Joseph was also warned in a dream, and took his family to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath. After some years, after Herod died, an angel told Joseph to return to Israel. Herod’s sons were in power, so Joseph did not return to Bethlehem, which was too close to Jerusalem. Instead he took his family to Nazareth.

When the Magi did not report back to Herod, he was furious because he didn’t have the name of the child. He ordered the murder of all male children two years and under in Bethlehem and the surrounding country. He figured that way he would eliminate the one that was a threat to his throne.

What are we to make of this story?

Let’s look again Matthew’s Gospel:

He says that the flight into Egypt was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt have I called my son.”

He also says Joseph’s decision to settle in Nazareth was made so that what was spoken by the prophet was fulfilled, “He shall be called a Nazarene.”

Herod was unable to find the infant Jesus, so he ordered the murder of hundreds of children expecting that one of them would be the rival that he feared. And that was prophesied too: A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more.

So according to Matthew, young children were killed so that an ancient prophecy could be fulfilled. That conclusion about what the story means is fairly common.

It prompts the question of how a loving God could have allowed the murder of innocent children.

Or how a loving God can allow this and all the other evils that infest our world.

There is no good answer to that question. The logic of the question is that God knows the evil that will happen, and so he could stop it. And a loving God should stop it. But to say that God should stop the evils of the world is to demand that God should act according to our wishes. That God should act to calm our pain. That God should act to soothe our sense of outrage.

It’s a demand that God should do what we want him to do.

That’s not how it works.

The underlying question is about evil. Why is there evil in the world? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do people get away with doing bad things? Why do bad people enjoy the same rewards as good people do, and sometimes even more? Why are evil acts often rewarded while good ones are punished?

In other words, why is the world not perfect?

I don’t know of any simple answer to these questions. I have however come across many ways of dealing with them. In the rest of this meditation I will talk about some of the things I’ve learned.

I’ll do this be telling three stories.

The first story is about how the world became imperfect. Genesis tells us about Adam and Eve living in the Garden of Eden. God told them they could have anything they wanted, except the fruit of the two trees in the centre of the Garden, the Tree of Knowledge, and the Tree of Life.

The Tempter in the form of a snake persuaded Eve that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was good to eat, and would give her the knowledge of good and evil.

So she ate some.

And then Adam ate some too.

And when God came to the Garden for his evening walk, Adam and Eve hid themselves, because now they knew they were naked. When God demanded how come Adam and Eve knew they were naked, Adam admitted he’d eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and he blamed Eve. Eve also admitted she’d eaten the fruit, and she blamed the serpent.

Neither Adam nor Eve accepted blame. It was all someone else’s fault. That began the habit of blaming someone else, of refusing to accept responsibility. That refusal causes a lot of evil, both directly and indirectly. Directly when we manage to get someone else blamed and punished for what we did. And indirectly when we refuse to accept the chain of cause and effect that leads from our actions to some evil down the line.

Herod was a tyrant. That makes this part of Matthew’s Gospel an comment on tyranny.

All tyrants know that nobody loves them. Most people obey because they fear the tyrant. Some may envy him. Some may enjoy the power they wield as his minions. Some simply put up with him. Some want to take his place. But most want him gone.

So tyrants look for signs of disloyalty or of plots against them. They want to eliminate any and all competition. The result is murder. And the tyrant will claim that it’s not his fault. He was just protecting himself from all those who want to remove him.

That’s what we see in the murder of the Holy Innocents.

You might think that by this action Herod stepped over some line, and there was an attempt to remove him. There wasn’t.

Then there’s the Holocaust, the systematic murder of more than 6 million people, mostly Jews, by the Nazis during the 2nd World War. When the trains of cattle cars loaded with Jews ran through towns and villages, most people averted their eyes. After the war, the people who lived near the death camps claimed they didn’t know what was happening there.

So another cause of evil is our unwillingness to see it. We’d rather look away. We’d rather feel that all’s right with the world. We want to believe that there’s nothing for us to worry about. Because if we did pay attention, we would have to do something. We would have to accept responsibility.

I’ve mentioned three stories: Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, blaming the serpent for their choice to eat the fruit on the Tree of Knowledge.

Herod on the throne in Jerusalem, a puppet king desperate to hold onto the little power that the Romans allowed him.

The death camps of World War Two, where millions of people were killed while ordinary folk refused to see what was happening.

Three examples of what I called the blame game. The unwillingness to do the right thing. The avoidance of responsibility.

I think you may see a theme here.

Let me tell you another story. 

Some years ago, I listened to a discussion of the death camps. The panel included historians, camp survivors, and clergy of several faiths. They finally came to the big question: How could a loving God allow the deliberately organised murder of six million people? Why did he not stop it?

One of the panel members was a rabbi. He held up his hands and said, “These hands are God’s hands. If I do not use them to do God’s work, the evil will not stop.”

These hands are God’s hands. If I do not use them to do God’s work, the evil will not stop.

Those words are an indictment.

They are also words of hope.

The indictment is obvious. Evil happens because we don’t do enough to stop it. Not that stopping it easy. At best, you will annoy people. At worst, you may lose your life.

But asking why God did nothing to stop the evil is a version of the blame game: We’re blaming God for not doing what we ought to do.

These hands are God’s hands. If I do not use them to do God’s work, the evil will not stop.

These are also words of hope. Even of comfort. Because they remind us that we are here to do God’s work. They remind us that God’s work will be successful.

When we pray that God will relieve suffering and bring justice, we are praying that we will do that work. When we pray that God will heal sickness and comfort the bereaved, we are praying that we will do that work. When we pray that God will bring peace to our world, we are praying that we will do that work.

And God will answer those prayers.

What’s more, God will be with us. The work will often be hard or dangerous. He will give us the will and the strength and the courage and the skill we need. He will comfort us when we come close to giving up hope. He will give us tasks within our strength or ability. He will surround us with a community that supports us. And our support of that community in return will give us the joy of knowing we are loved.

That love is God’s love. It will sustain us to our life’s end, and we will know that what we have done with his help is better than what we could have done on our own. It will be the best that we could do because God will push us to our limits. That is the ultimate success in this life.

May God give us the grace to do his work as witness to his love, which redeemed us and all humankind. We pray in the name of that Love Incarnate, that lives with the Creator and the Guide, now and forever. Amen.

Creation (18th After Pentecost, 4 October 2020)

18th after Pentecost

October 4, 2020 Wolf Kirchmeir

Creation

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Psalm 19; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46 

May the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts be ever acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today I want to talk about both the psalm and the gospel. The psalm is about the heavens, and some very interesting things have happened in astronomy this past month. The gospel is the parable about the vineyard. I think what links them is the idea of God the Creator, and I’ll offer a few thoughts about what that means for us.

The psalmist says, 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.3 There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. 4 Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, 5 which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. 6 It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat.

Psalm 19 is one of my favourites, because of this wonderful opening passage. It expresses the awe we feel when we look at the night sky and see the stars. It expresses the comfort of seeing the sun rise and set day after day.

Our history as humans begins not with writing, which is a mere 6,000 or so years old. It begins with the stone circles and stone tombs set up to capture the rising and setting sun at the spring and winter solstices. We don’t know how people kept track of the sun, and figured out this astonishing regularity. But somehow they devised a calendar. Calendars are older than writing.

We still look at the skies with awe and wonder. We know more about the universe than even our parents knew, and we want to know more. We want to know what knowledge the heavens display. We pay astronomers to record and interpret the data that their telescopes deliver.

About three weeks ago, a team led by Jane Greaves of Cardiff University announced that they had probably found phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus. Phosphine is a gas. They had not expected to find traces of it. Phosphine, as far as we know, is made only by living organisms. That includes us humans, who make it and use it for some industrial processes. But phosphine is made naturally only by certain bacteria, who produce it when they eat dead things.

The astronomers who found the phosphine traces are scientists, so they are cautious. Very cautious. Perhaps there is no phosphine after all. Perhaps there is some unknown inorganic process that’s making phosphine. That would make this discovery an interesting addition to our knowledge of chemistry. [Update Dec 2020: there’s likely no phosphine]

But if there is no other way to make phosphine on Venus, it would be a totally unexpected discovery. We may have found ET, and it’s a microbe.

The psalmist of course knew nothing of this. He didn’t know how huge the universe is. His description of the sun’s passage across the sky probably means he didn’t know that the Earth moves round the Sun.

But when he looked at the sky, he felt awe and wonder. What’s up there testifies to the creative energy that brought the universe into being, a creative energy that we believe comes from God.

Our indigenous brothers and sisters refer to God as the Creator. I think the Psalmist would have felt total sympathy and agreement with this emphasis on God’s creative power. One reason I think so is that in the second half of the psalm we read, The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul.

The psalmist connects the knowledge of the heavens with the knowledge of God’s law. For the heavens show regularity and order. The sun rises and sets every day. The moon grows from nothing to a bright disk and then shrinks to nothing again. The seasons follow a cycle marked by the Sun and the Moon and the stars. It looks like the heavenly realms obey God’s law. That obedience makes for order, for beauty, for certainty.

The obvious thought is that we too should obey God’s law.

Which raises the question: What is God’s law? We’ll come back to this question later.

The Gospel tells us of a man who bought a vineyard, dug a winepress in it, and rented it out for a share of the crop. When the grapes were ripe, he wanted his share, so he sent some servants to collect it. But the tenants beat the servants, and drove them away. So the owner sent more servants, but the tenants beat them too. So he sent his son, thinking that the tenants wouldn’t dare to lay a hand on him. But they did. In fact they killed him.

Then Jesus asked the chief priests and the Pharisees what will happen to the tenants. “They will be arrested, tried, and executed,” they said. Jesus then alludes to a passage in the Talmud that speaks of righteous punishment. The Pharisees know he means them: They are the tenants working in God’s vineyard, and they have not been faithful stewards of the crop entrusted to them.

It would be easy to point fingers at them, and interpret this parable as one more piece of evidence that the Pharisees were in the wrong. But it’s not just the Pharisees who are bad stewards of the vineyard. We are bad stewards, too.

The vineyard is a symbol. It’s been interpreted many ways. I think the key to understanding it is to pay attention to what the tenants want. They don’t want to pay the rent. They don’t want to share the crop. They want the whole crop for themselves.

This may remind us of Jesus’s cleansing of the temple, where he charged the priests with profiteering instead of serving the people by performing the sacrifices as required.

Or it may remind us of the televangelists who use their preaching skills to get money from their audience.

More generally, this parable may remind us of how people who have responsibilities of care and nurture instead exploit and abuse the people in their care.

More generally still, it may remind us that we are stewards of God’s creation, but instead of nurturing the Earth, we destroy it with our heedless greed and selfishness.

Most generally, it may remind us that to obey God’s law means to be faithful stewards of his vineyard.

It’s that last reminder that connects Psalm 19 to Jesus’s parable. The Psalmist sees the heavens, and they remind him of the Creator. They remind him also of the Creator’s Law, which he loves. And that in turn reminds him of his sin, his repeated disobedience. He pleads for help: Keep your servant also from wilful sins; may they not rule over me. 

The first reading this morning tells of how Moses brought the Law to the people. Try this experiment: Look at the commandments as reminders of what to do and what not to do in order to live together peaceably.

Start with the prohibitions. Don’t steal, don’t murder, don’t lie, don’t commit adultery, don’t covet – these are all reminders that selfishness and pride destroy our relationships with each other, for if we all did those things, our community would fall apart pretty quickly. If you can’t rely on each other to keep the peace, what’s the point of living together? Yet each of us alone is a naked wretch, with very little chance of living a long and happy life.

Then there are the exhortations. Keep the Sabbath, for our communal life depends on communal celebrations. Honour your father and mother, for they brought you into this world, nurtured you, and taught you their hard-learned wisdom. Respect those who built our community.

Then consider the commandments relating to our spiritual life, that part of us that yearns for meaning and purpose. Don’t make idols because focusing on the wrong things will lead us astray. Don’t swear reminds us that there is no magic formula to make things happen the way we want.

Make God the centre of your life, and everything else will fall into place. Even when you don’t fully understand, God’s presence will comfort you with the assurance that your life has meaning and purpose. When you gaze at the night sky and wonder at the stars, when you feel the warmth of the sun, you will know that there is order and harmony in the universe, and that you are part of it.

Like the Pharisees, we too often focus on the customs and traditions of our religion as if they were what it’s all about. In doing this, we neglect to tend God’s vineyard. We don’t nurture and care for his people. But his people is all humankind. For Jesus came into the world save us all.

Nor do we nurture and care for his creation, instead arguing about how to balance the needs of the environment against our own whims and desires. As if nature were some theme park that we are obliged to maintain. As if we could exist without nature. For we too are creatures, and like all creatures, we depend on each other and on an intricate web of connections with the rest of creation.

That creation includes the heavens. We now know that when a star explodes into a nova, that explosion creates the elements of which we are made. Carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, iron, phosphorus, and the rest. Our very existence as living beings on this planet depends on the heavens above us. 

The heavens that declare the glory of the Creator.

The Creator whom we recognise not only as the source of our being, but the source of the love that sustains us.

Let us pray.

Lord God, Creator, when we look upon your creation, give us the grace of knowing its order and harmony, that we may perceive in it the love that you bear for us and all your creatures. Give us the grace to know how to nurture it, and how to take our proper place in it, that we may be good and faithful stewards of the bounty you have granted us. We pray in Jesus’s name, the firstborn of all creation, whose life and death and resurrection assure us of your love. Amen.

Moses and the Prophets (16th after Pentecost, 28 September 2025)

 16th Sunday after Pentecost

September 28, 2025

Wolf Kirchmeir 

Moses and the Prophets

 Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15; Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16;  1 Timothy 6:6-19;  Luke 16:19-31

O Holy Spirit, assist us we contemplate your word, that we may be enlightened by your truth. Amen.

Dear Friends in Christ,

When I read the Gospel for today, I realised I had a rather hazy memory of the parable about the rich man and Lazarus, the beggar at his gate. This time, I noticed the last part of the dialogue. I paid attention, and my thinking took a sideways jump, and I thought, Who do you trust? That’s what this is about.

I suspect that many of us, perhaps most of us, focus on the rich man with his fine clothes and his good food. And then Lazarus, the beggar at his gate, covered in sores, grateful for the scraps from the rich man’s table. The dogs came and licked Lazarus’s sores.

I think that this vivid image of self-centred indifference and undeserved suffering makes a strong impression us. Such a strong impression that when we hear of the rich man’s suffering in Hades, we may well feel, Yes, that guy deserves his suffering. And we may think that the lesson is simple: Help whomever is there for you to help, or you’ll be sorry when you burn in hell. Abraham’s words reinforce that idea:

“Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.”

And if the parable ended there, that would be all the lesson we would take from it.

But it doesn’t end there. The story continues. The rich man wants to warn his brothers, so that they may escape the punishment.

“Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father’s house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.”

Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.”

“No, father Abraham,” he said, “but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.”

He said to him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” (Luke 16:27-31)

“If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” That got me thinking about trust. I’ll share some of my thoughts with you.

What does it take to convince you of something you didn’t believe? Whom do you trust to tell you the truth? Especially a hard truth? How do you know whether to trust advice? What rules do you use to separate nonsense from wisdom? Or useful knowledge from balderdash?

And so on.

I went online to find jokes about trust. Most of them were puns, like this one:

Trust me, you should never punch rocks. I found out the hard way.

Well, OK, that’s not exactly a prize winner, and the few stories weren’t much better. Here’s one that I think may amuse and perhaps instruct:

Last night at the pub my friend told me he doesn't trust doctors.

When I asked why, he said, "About ten years ago I developed a limp and a pain in my leg. I went to the doctor and he told me that the problem was that one of my legs was shorter than the other, and that I would need to wear special shoe inserts to even them out."

I replied, "That doesn't sound crazy. Why would that make you distrust doctors?"

He said, "Well, I wanted a second opinion, so I went to another doctor and wouldn't you know it, he told me I had the exact opposite problem! That proves that you can't trust 'em, they're just making wild stabs in the dark."

"So what did the second doctor tell you the problem was?"

"He said that one of my legs was *longer* than the other!"

Well, so maybe that one wouldn’t win a prize either, but it does illustrate something about why we may not trust what people say. It depends on how well we understand them. If they say something that doesn’t make sense to us, how likely are we to trust them?

I think it’s fairly obvious that when it comes to knowledge and understanding, we are expert in a very, very small part of all there is to know and understand. Most of what we think we know we don’t actually know at all. We just know that someone else knows, and we trust them, and take their word for it.

And anyhow, do we really need to know all the details of how something works? For example, how many of us could explain how a thermostat senses the temperature so that it can turn the furnace on or off?

Fact is, we don’t need to know all the details of how something works so that we can use it as intended. However, we do need a fair measure of trust in the people that make the gizmos we rely on.

Which brings us back to question, Who do you trust? Why do you trust them?

Abraham’s answer to the rich man implies that the rich man’s brothers think they know all they need to know. They weren’t ready to believe someone who came along and told them they did not know something that they should know. Especially if that something required a change in how they lived their lives. In other words, their trust in the messenger in large part would depend on what the messenger told them.

I think it’s fairly clear that we all tend to behave that way. Why trust someone who comes along with some outlandish claim, especially if that claim means we should change the way we do things? Why change what works just because someone says it will end badly?

So who do you trust? Why do you trust them?

Most of us are on some social media platform. We use email and texting. Many of us still watch the news on TV or listen to it on the radio, but many of us also get our news online. The Millennials and Gen Z live on TikTok and Instagram. Then there’s X, which was once called Twitter, and a variety of other places where anyone can subscribe and post whatever they like.  You can find a website for anything that interests you.

How trustworthy are these sources?

The short answer is, not very. There’s a saying, We used to think that the cure for ignorance was easy access to the facts. Then we got the internet.

We are born trusting. When we were children, we believed just about anything that grown-ups told us. We did figure out fairly early what’s make-believe and what’s real, and we loved make-believe. We spent a lot of time figuring out how things work. That started pretty early too, when we put just everything in our mouths. If it tasted good, it must be food.

And so on. Around age two to three, we learned not only that we can make-believe, we learned that we can lie. I think that’s the beginning of mistrust. By the time we got to middle school, we had a healthy skepticism of outlandish claims, but we also had a fascination with the possibility that those outlandish claims were true. Maybe there really were ghosts in the graveyard. Better not get too close at night. Better to walk or run past it.

But all in all, we grew up trusting each other. And we still trust each other. Without that trust, we couldn’t live together. Trust is the foundation on which our common life rests. When trust erodes, when we start suspecting each other of lies or worse, that foundation begins to crumble.

So who do you trust? Why do you trust them?

It seems to me that trust is fundamentally personal. We trust those with whom we have a personal relationship. When we trust people we don’t know personally, we do so because they are part of a web of personal relationships that connect us to them. Somewhere along the line we learned to trust what they say, because people we know trust them. We trust them because they are part of the web of relationships that forms our community. 

Trust is personal in another sense. We trust our own personal experience of what works. What we’ve learned works is the centre of a web of knowledge which connects with what other people have learned. We will distrust any claim that doesn’t easily fit into that web. The stronger the mismatch between some claim and what we think we know, the more we resist accepting it. And the more we will distrust anyone who insists on its truth.

Finally, there’s how we feel. We don’t like feelings of uncertainty, or of risk. We don’t like feeling that we’re not taken seriously. We don’t like feeling that maybe we’re being fooled. We don’t like feeling that we’re wrong. We have trouble trusting people that arouse these feelings.

"If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

Imagine you’re one of the rich man’s brothers. You’re well off. You enjoy good food and lots of it You enjoy the company of people like yourself. You have servants to do the grunge work. You’re well respected in the town. You have a reputation for canny but fair dealing among your fellow business people. You have more than enough. You feel secure.

And now this figure appears. He looks a lot like that beggar Lazarus that used to lie by your door and attracted dogs. But it can’t be him. Lazarus is dead! Besides, this person looks a lot better than Lazarus did. He wears clean clothes and has no sores. He has a good complexion, and moves easily as he walks towards you. Nothing like Lazarus!

He stops in front of you, and says, “I am Lazarus come back from the dead to bring you news of your brother!” You think, this can’t be true! Lazarus is dead! This is some kind of scam.

This figure goes on, “Your brother is in great torment as punishment for his idle ways.”  What’s this? News from my dead brother? Not possible!

Lazarus goes on, “Your brother says, Repent your idle ways! Share your good fortune with the poor!”

Really? Share what I’ve worked so hard for? As if those lazy layabouts deserved a share of what I’ve earned? No way. This is some kind of scam. He’s trying to scare me into giving away what’s rightfully mine. Nice try! I bet this scammer will be the first in line for a handout. And he’ll come back for more!

There’s no way you will trust this person who claims to be Lazarus returned from the dead.

So who do you trust? Why do you trust them?

At the core of trust there is faith. Basically, we just believe that the person can be trusted, that what they say can be trusted, that their promises can be trusted, that their testimony of personal experience can be trusted. Trust and faith are really the same attitude to life, the universe, and everything.

We too have Moses and the Prophets. We have the Gospels and the letters of Paul and others to the early church. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. We believe that 2000 years ago a man born in an obscure village was the Son of God, and that he died a cruel death on a cross, and three days later appeared to his followers, assuring them that their wrongdoings were forgiven, and that they too would taste eternal life. By the grace of the Holy Spirit we trust that these and many other claims are true, and we pray that the same Spirit will guide and strengthen us so that we may reshape our lives as a testimony to the truth of what we believe.

May all that we have contemplated today increase our trust in the God who made us, who redeemed us, and who guides us. Amen

Prayer (7th after Pentecost, 27th July 2025)

7th  Sunday after Pentecost

27th July 2025 Wolf Kirchmeir

Prayer

Hosea 1:2-10; Psalm 85; Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19); Luke 11:1-13

May the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts be ever acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Dear Friends in Christ,

“Teach us to pray”. That’s what the disciples asked, and Jesus gave them what we call the Lord’s Prayer. We use the longer version as recorded in Matthew. There are also several modern versions of it. They aren’t strict translations, but paraphrases. They are intended to make the intentions of the prayer easier to understand, so that we may pray it more mindfully.

But what exactly are we doing when we pray? What is prayer?

“Teach us to pray.” A simple request, wouldn’t you say? Just four words in English. And such a simple answer, just a few sentences. What’s the problem? Just repeat the words that Jesus gave the disciples, and problem solved, right?

No problem at all, until we start to think about it. Then we may see a puzzle. We know that merely repeating the words isn’t enough. The disciples were asking for more than the words.

I think it’s the context that points the way. Usually, Jesus went off by himself when he prayed. The disciples didn’t know how he prayed, but they clearly thought there was something worth learning. After all, the Jewish tradition is public prayer, out loud,  in the temple or in the synagogue. So when Jesus went off to pray by himself once again, the disciples wondered what was going on.

And we should wonder, too.

So let’s start at the beginning: What is prayer? That looks like an easy question. So let’s try out a few ideas.

Is prayer asking for some blessing? If so, does that mean that you won’t be blessed if you don’t ask? But then what about the people who don’t ask, and receive the same blessings you enjoy? Or what about the ones who don’t ask and receive even more blessings than you do?

OK then, is prayer asking for some personal favour, something just for you? Doesn’t that sound as if you believe that you deserved more or better things than other people? That seems to go against Jesus saying that the last shall be first and the first shall be last.

Well then, is prayer just talking to God? Moses talked to God a lot. Their talk was mostly about God’s plans for the Israelites. That sounds like a conference, not prayer.

Maybe we should ask a different question. What is prayer for?

We are supposed to engage in prayer, praise, and thanksgiving. I think it’s fairly obvious that we should praise God and give thanks for all the blessings we enjoy.

But then, what’s prayer? Aren’t praise and thanksgiving forms of prayer?

I think you can see where I’m going with this. In any simple answer to what prayer is, there’s something missing. I have a few ideas, which I’ve cobbled together from what wiser heads have said. I’ll share some of them with you, and pray that my words will help us not only to understand better what we think prayer is, but will also help us to accept the guidance of the Spirit in our practice of prayer.

One of the things we learn as children is to pray for what we want. Here’s a story about little Johnny. You know, the kid who figures in all those jokes about sassy answers, or awkward questions, or mischievous pranks.

The family was staying at grandma’s house. It was bed time and Johnny was saying his prayers. “Bless Daddy and Mummy and Suzie. And bless Nana,” he said quietly. And then he shouted out loud, “And please send me the red bike from Smith’s hardware store.”

“You don’t have to yell,” his mother said. “God isn’t deaf!”

“Yes, but Nana is,” said Johnny.

Many people pray for a miracle. It seems that some people think of prayer as some kind of magic spell. The rule for magic spells is simple: You say the right words, and perform the right actions, in the right place, at the right time, and in the right order, and the magic happens. Make even one little mistake, or forget even one word of the spell, and the magic won’t work. But do it right, and God will do what you want.

To me, that looks like trying to control God. And if there’s one thing you can’t do, it’s to control God.

Little Johnny knew better. He may not have been able to say it, but he knew that God works his miracles by using whatever is handy. Usually that’s people. For Johnny, it was Nana. Johnny wanted God to help her decide to give him what he wanted.

For us, it’s usually us. When we ask God to do something, we’re asking for God to help us decide what to do and to do it. That’s a thought I will come back to.

Well then, if asking for what we want, and using the right words, is not what it’s about, then what is prayer about?

Look at Jesus’s example of prayer again. He lists a series of petitions. So at first glance it does look like praying means to ask God for what we want and need.

But the three first petitions focus on God. Listen.

Father, hallowed be your name. That sentence acknowledges God as the ruler of the universe.

Your kingdom come. That says that we know we have become exiles from God’s kingdom, and wish to return to it.

May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That is how God’s kingdom will be re-established, and it explicitly states that it’s God’s will that matters, not ours.

So the first three petitions make us aware that it’s not what we want, but what God wants that counts. Prayer is not like a magic spell, we aren’t trying to control God. On the contrary, we are reminding ourselves that God is in control.

With the first three petitions we give up control to God. We align our desires with God’s desires for us.

Having aligned ourselves with God’s will, we ask for the essentials. Listen.

First, we ask for the means of bodily life: Give us each day our daily bread.

Second, we ask for the means of spiritual life: Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.

And third, we ask for protection against the dangers that surround us: And lead us not into temptation.

Now, we don’t really have to ask for these essentials. God will provide them. So why does Jesus recommend that we ask for them? What’s the point of asking for what we will receive anyhow?

Well, I’m reminded that when I was very young I was taught to ask politely for a snack, to say “Please”. And then of course to say “Thank you”. I knew that I would get the cookie or the glass of milk, but asking and giving thanks for it made some kind of sense. What kind of sense?

The sense of belonging, of being part of the family, of being loved.

I think that’s a clue. I think prayer is like asking for the snack we know we will get anyhow. I think prayer is about belonging. It expresses our desire to be a child of God. It acknowledges that we are unable to be good children without help. It asks for those changes in mind and heart that enable us to be part of God’s family.

Prayer asks for that transformation that we cannot accomplish on our own.

That transformation has real life consequences. When we pray for the sick, the poor, the victims of crime and oppression and natural disasters, we’re not reciting a magic spell. We’re asking that the helpers have the skills and the resources and the compassion needed to carry out their work. We’re also praying that we will have the insight and the will to do what we can to help in that work. To be part of God’s family is to care for our neighours and the world around us.

To put it bluntly: To pray for others means to pray that we will act to help them.

Prayer may be expressed in words, but it is an action. It’s something we do. It’s spiritual exercise.

Its purpose is to connect us to the Divine in ourselves and in each other.

Its purpose is to make us aware of the creative and sustaining power that brought this universe and us into being.

Its purpose is to transform our relationship to each other and to the world in which we live.

So how do we do this praying thing? Listen again to the prayer that Jesus taught:

First and foremost, we begin by focusing our attention on that divine power that we label the Creator.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Second, we open ourselves to the guidance of that divine wisdom that we label the Spirit.

Thy kingdom come.

Third, we ask that we may amend our lives to practice the love that we label the Christ.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Then we acknowledge the source of our life by asking for the bread that sustains it.

Give us this day our daily bread.

We ask for renewal by asking for forgiveness.

Forgive us our trespasses.

And we ask for a loving relationship with each other.

As we forgive those that trespass against us.

Finally, we ask that the troubles which we will meet will not overwhelm us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

The prayer that Jesus taught his disciples covers the ground. It’s a model for us, not so much in the words, but in what those words imply, in what those words describe, in what those words say.

They imply that prayer connects us to the Creator.

They describe that connection as one of love.

They say that we are connected to each other by and through that love.

Let us praise God for the gift of life, and give thanks for his everlasting love. Amen.

Commitment (3rd after Pentecost, 29th June 2025)

 3rd Sunday after Pentecost

June 29th, 2025 Commitment

Wolf Kirchmeir

1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21; Psalm 16 ;  Galatians 5:1, 13-25;  Luke 9:51-62 

May the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts be ever acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today’s Gospel reading has two main parts.

There’s the Samaritan village that refuses to accommodate the disciples. They want to call down fire upon it, but Jesus rebukes them for their vengeful thinking.

Then we get some notes on what happened when Jesus attracted new followers. There’s the man who says he will follow Jesus wherever he will go. Jesus replies that “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

That doesn’t sound like an invitation to come along.

And then there are the two men that Jesus does invite to come along, but both have prior commitments that they must fulfill.

Well, which part of today’s reading would you focus on?

What stood out for me was the last sentence: No-one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.

That’s a hard sentence. It tells us that there are some things that matter most, and we had better not be distracted from them.

Distractions.

It’s never been easier for us to give in to distractions. That little electronic device in your pocket or purse vibrates or rings, and you answer, and talk to someone, and then touch End Call. But you don’t put the phone away. You open up some app and read somebody’s post about their latest experience with face cream or fish bait. Or you follow a link to a video showing a cat tippy-toeing through a maze of dominoes without touching any of them. Or a video of an ATV slooshing through a mud puddle and drenching its riders in muck.

Or whatever.

Distractions.

It’s not only humans that can be distracted. You can distract a cat by jiggling a piece of string in front of it. The cat can’t help itself. That jiggly bit of string attracts its attention and it swipes at it. If you have a dog, you will get its attention just by opening the fridge door. Because that’s where you keep the dog food, and the dog knows it.

It seems that anything with a brain can be distracted. You just have to figure out how, and it will work almost every time. That’s what the social media companies have done. As you may know, it works only too well.

Distractions.

They do have their good side. A wailing toddler can be soothed by distracting them. Offer them their favourite soft toy, and the wailing will likely stop.

Distractions can even change how we feel pain. Here’s an anecdote about that. I found it online.

As toddlers, whenever we'd fall down and start to cry, my dad would be like "OHMYGOSH! OH NOOO!! The floor!!!? Did you hurt the floor???" And we'd be shocked into forgetting we'd just fallen (and gotten scared-hurt).

It was hilarious seeing younger siblings do this –  to go from traumatized and in desperate pain to stunned in about half a second... guppy faces and wide eyes like- 'Oh no! I'm not the victim here at all, am I?' Maybe you'd have to see it to understand. Surprisingly, it really did make everything stop hurting.

Distractions.

They can also do serious harm. They are often used by politicians to shift attention from unpopular policies or decisions. I won’t give examples, there are enough of them in the news.

Political distractions are bad enough, but distractions can also interfere with commitments. Suppose you decide to read a book, or make a snack, or chat with a friend. If there’s no commitment to fulfill at that time, then these are not distractions. A distraction is doing anything at all when you should be doing something else. That means that even chores can be a distraction.

What I’ve mentioned are minor distractions, and we usually get back pretty quick to what we have to do. No real harm done. The serious problem is the distraction that is also a commitment. Then we have to make a choice. A real choice. One that makes a real difference.

That’s what the core of today’s Gospel is about. And Jesus does not make it easy for us. He demands 100% commitment.

Let’s hear again what Jesus says.

To the man who wants to follow him, Jesus says The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. That implies, If you choose to follow me, you will have to put up with all kinds of hardships.

To the man who wants to first arrange his father’s funeral, Jesus says, Let the dead bury their dead. That implies If you choose to follow me, you will live a life with radically different obligations.

To the man who wants to say goodbye to his family, Jesus says, No-one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God. That implies You must leave behind everything that you hold dear.

In other words, the commitment to follow Jesus is life-altering or it’s nothing.

Any commitment is serious business. To promise that you will do something may require more work, more time, more effort, more money, than you imagined when you made the promise. But that doesn’t excuse you from trying. External circumstances that you can’t control may prevent you from fulfilling your promise. Then you may be excused. But otherwise, you must do whatever it takes to keep your promise.

As I said, making a commitment, any commitment, is serious business. It looks like the prime take-away is Don’t promise more than you can deliver.

Now suppose that’s what you do. You never take on more than you can handle. You make sure there’s a back-up plan.  You always promise less than you could do, just to be on the safe side. You will say that you will try, you don’t promise delivery. And if in doubt, you don’t commit.

Sounds like a plan, right? A fail-safe plan. One that reduces risk to as close to zero as the Universe ever allows.

Somehow, I don’t think that’s what Jesus has in mind when he says, Follow me.

Commitment to service in the Kingdom of God is the most serious commitment of all. And Jesus repeatedly says it comes with a risk, it comes with trouble. The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

And that’s the least of it.

The history of persecution, of strife between Christians, of political hi-jacking of religion, of scams and worse in the name of the faith, these show us the risks and the harms are both physical and spiritual. They come from other people. They come from within ourselves. There is no escaping them. We are flawed creatures, and we will make mistakes.

Often we will make mistakes believing we are doing the right thing.

We call ourselves Christians. That means we’ve answered Jesus’s call. If you answer Jesus’s call, that’s a total commitment. You’re promising everything. There is no back up plan, there is no “I’ll try”, there is no guarantee that you can handle it.

You have signed up for an obligation that will take you beyond your comfort zone. Way beyond, out there on the open sea, where there is nothing to hold onto, no one to reach for you, no way to get back to shore.

Commitment takes courage. We are naturally afraid when we don’t know what’s coming. Or when we know the odds are that what’s coming won’t be pleasant. Or when there’s no way out.

We each have some fears that are worse than others. They are the ones that make it difficult or even impossible to do certain things. I recall as a child being afraid of the dark at the bottom of the stairs. I still feel a small twinge of something before I turn on the light. I’m glad I can overcome those twinges, though. Many people have fears they can’t escape. My little twinges help me imagine what it must be like to suffer from a phobia. And that gives me another twinge of fear, the fear of being afraid.

What if you are afraid of not being able to keep your promise?

Commitment takes resolve. It’s a promise to ourselves and others.

Commitment takes courage, because we may have to act despite some fear.

Commitment takes faith, because we may have to act with no guarantee of success, or even with the odds against us.

But we’re not alone.

Jesus promised us the Spirit, the Comforter. The root of “comfort” is fort-, which means strength. We see it also in the words fortress, and fortitude.

The Spirit will give us strength.

The strength to do what we need to do when we need to do it. The strength to face whatever makes the commitment difficult. The strength to face whatever fears make us shrink from doing what we know we should do. The strength to cut distractions short, and to avoid them altogether.

That’s the promise of Pentecost.

The Spirit is a Spirit of Wisdom. The spirit will give us insight, so that we know what to do, and what to say. The Spirit will give us skill, so we know how to do it and how to say it. The Spirit will give us understanding, so we know when to change what we do and change what we say.

That, too, is the promise of Pentecost.

Finally, the Spirit is love in action. It works through us when we commit ourselves to follow Jesus. We become God’s hands, doing his work. The Spirit unites us in the body of Christ. It is the Word made Flesh, living within us when we accept the Redemption offered us through the sacrifice on the Cross.

That, to is the promise of Pentecost.

We started with some thoughts about the relationship between distractions and commitment.

We went on to some understanding of Jesus’s the life-altering invitation, Follow me.

We have come, once again, to the mystery of the Love of God.

May we love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength; and each other as ourselves.

Amen.

Sin and Repentance (Lent 4, 30th March 2025)

Sin and Repentance

Wolf Kirchmeir

[Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32]

O Holy Spirit, assist us we contemplate your word, that we may be enlightened by your truth. Amen.

Dear Friends in Christ,

All our readings today are about sin and repentance and forgiveness. God tells Joshua that he rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you. The Psalmist meditates on the blessed gift of forgiveness of sin. Paul reminds Corinthians reminds that in Jesus God has reconciled sinners to himself. Luke records the story of the Prodigal Son, one of the best known parables.

Nowadays, sin is not a popular subject for sermons. Hellfire and brimstone sermons have gone out of fashion. Even the evangelical churches don’t preach sin and repentance as much as they used to. The emphasis nowadays is not on the punishment of sin, but on God’s loving forgiveness.

It’s in many ways a good thing that we don’t talk about sin as much in the past. We take a great deal of pleasure in thinking about the awful things that other people do. Enumerating the sins of the flesh can be a little too entertaining to be healthy. That may be why scandal has become a staple of the tabloids and YouTube videos, which enjoy a large audience, even though nobody admits to paying attention to them.

Well, today I’m going to talk about sin. I’m going to talk about what sin is, what repentance is, and what forgiveness is.

We’ve all heard the tagline, The Devil made me do it. That’s a common excuse, based on the notion that the Devil is the source of sin. He isn’t, you know. In the Bible, Satan makes three important appearances: to Eve, in the book of Job, and to Jesus.

In the Garden of Eden Satan doesn’t tell Eve to do anything. He just has a little conversation with Eve in which he plants the seed of a desire – the desire to become like a god. Eve doesn’t have to fulfill this desire – she chooses to do so. And Adam, faced with the same choice, makes the same decision.

When God comes to find out what Eve and Adam have been up to, Adam tries to shift the blame to Eve, and Eve tries to shift the blame to the Serpent.

Did the Serpent make Adam and Eve disobey God? No. It was their choice. Did the Serpent make Adam and Eve shift the blame? No. It was their choice.

In the story of Job, Satan talks with God, who is pleased with Job’s righteousness. Satan claims that Job is righteous only because he is a very fortunate, very rich man, with a loving family, many friends, and good health. Take those away, says Satan, and Job will curse God.

Well, God lets Satan take away all those things and more. And Job curses his fate. Whereupon God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind, and reminds him of his littleness and lack of understanding. Job repents, and submits to God’s will.

Last, we see Satan tempting Jesus. Jesus’s response to every suggestion and offer is to quote Scripture, and every quotation he uses underlines the same idea: that we are to obey the Lord our God, and to do his will.

What we see in these three stories is that Satan offers choices. The same kind of choices over and over again: just do what you want to do.

Sin is very simple to understand: it’s doing what you are not supposed to do, and not doing what you are supposed to do.

Supposed to do, not what you want to do.

Supposed not to do, not what you don’t want to do.

There may be some argument about what we are and are not supposed to do, but that doesn’t affect the nature of sin.

There may be doubts about whether we properly understand what God does and does not want us to do, but that doesn’t affect the nature of sin.

We may be mistaken about what is and what is not a sin, but that doesn’t affect the nature of sin.

Sin is what happens when we choose not to do God’s will. That’s it. It’s our choice.

It’s not what the Devil does, so don’t blame him.

It’s not what other people do, so don’t blame them.

It’s not what society expects you to do, so don’t blame society.

It’s your choice, and only yours. 

And that means it’s your responsibility, and yours alone.

Well, having gotten this far in our thinking about sin, we come up against an unfortunate fact. There are several names for that fact, such as original sin, or human nature, or moral weakness. Each of these names expresses a different understanding of this unfortunate fact. I won’t go into that part of the issue. For regardless of what we call it, the fact is that sooner or later we will make some bad choices.

What’s more, we will know that we have made bad choices. And we won’t like that knowledge one bit. The Psalmist puts it this way:

When I declared not my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of the summer. (Ps32:3-4)

No wonder that we will try to shift the blame. We will blame anyone and everything except ourselves. That’s not good, for trying to shift the blame prevents repentance. And repentance happens to be necessary if we want to get past that sin that we are blaming others for.

What is repentance? It’s accepting blame, no matter how painful that is. In fact, the word means feeling pain. Repentance begins with remorse, with feeling the pain of knowing you done wrong. It continues with declaring my sin.

It’s very fashionable these days to apologise. Politicians, hockey players, movie actors, anyone in the public eye – they fall all over each other apologising.

And what do they apologise for?

They apologise for making a mistake.

It was a mistake to say something that gave offense.

It was a mistake to act in the heat of the moment and clip someone with a hockey stick.

It was a mistake to get so drunk you lost control of what you were doing.

But these apologies strike me as rather odd. They all say or imply that it wasn’t me that did that bad thing.

It wasn’t me, it was a lapse of judgement.

It wasn’t me, it was my anger.

It wasn’t me, it was the alcohol.

And so on.

In all of these apologies the apologiser more or less obviously passes the buck. In all these apologies, there is a shifting of blame. Just like Adam shifts the blame: It wasn’t me, Lord, it was Eve, she gave me the apple.

It’s not how the Psalmist does it:

I acknowledged my sin unto Thee, he says, and I did not hide my iniquity.(Ps 32:5a)

He does not say, Sorry, I made a mistake.

But there’s more. Repentance, feeling the pain of knowing you have sinned, then acknowledging that you have sinned, is just the beginning. Now you seek forgiveness from those you have wronged, and from God. You want to make amends. Those you have wronged may demand restitution or compensation.

But God takes a different tack. He forgives without demanding restitution.

Now, the Psalmist is quite sure that God will forgive:

I said, “I will confess my transgression unto the Lord”; then thou didst forgive my sin. (Ps32:5b), he says.

That certainty that God will forgive is repeated many times in the Old and New Testament. One of the best known illustrations of this is the parable of the Prodigal Son. We all know it.

The younger son asked for his share of the property, and had a great time paying for what the Revised Standard Version calls “loose living.”

When a famine struck, he hired out as a swineherd, and he came to himself and realised that he would be better off back home as one of the hired hands. So he returned, and said to his father, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But his father had him clothed in a new robe, and ordered the fatted calf to be killed, and there was a party with music and dancing, because this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.

The older son was of course annoyed by this. The father says to him, Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It is fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.

Here we have the whole of the biblical teaching about sin. The younger son does what he wants to do, not what he should do. He comes to himself, and feels the pain of knowing he has sinned. He acknowledges his sin to his father, and is willing to do whatever he can to make amends. But his father rejoices and forgives him. And when his older brother, who obeyed the rules, complains, the father repeats his words of forgiveness: This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.

The father’s forgiveness of his wayward son’s waywardness is the point of this parable. Jesus intends that lesson to apply to us too. We too are wayward children who too often do what we want, sometimes thoughtlessly, sometimes through sheer cussedness, sometimes for reasons we don’t admit to ourselves but which are only too obvious to those who know us. And like the wayward son, we too may come to ourselves and feel the sting of remorse. And like the wayward son we may believe that we are no longer worthy to be a child of God, and must make amends.

But God doesn’t operate with our human notions of worth. God forgives. He forgives because we were lost, and we are found again. All we have to do is return to him and admit that we sinned. More, God had himself made amends for our sin.

In our Anglican tradition, we return to God in every worship service. We say the Confession, and receive the assurance of forgiveness in the Absolution. May we accept the promise that this part of our worship gives. Amen.  

Fish Story (5th Sunday after Epiphany, 9th February 2025)

5th Sunday after Epiphany - February 9th, 2025

Fish Story

Wolf Kirchmeir

Isaiah 6:1-8, (9-13); Psalm 138; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

O Holy Spirit, assist us we contemplate your word, that we may be enlightened by your truth. Amen.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today’s Gospel is about fishing.

It feels like everybody has a fish story.

Even people who don’t fish have fish stories.

Now, I don’t know whether Luke ever fished. The tradition is that he was a physician, and a physician’s apprentice was unlikely to be told to go fish. Maybe Luke fished when he was a boy.

Here we have a fish story told by Luke. I think it resonates, as we say these days. It resonates with me in many ways. I grew up next to a lake.

I watched the fishers morning and evening going out in their flat-bottomed boat haul and set their nets. They were a couple. She was short and round, and he was tall and thin. They pumped square shovel-shaped oars to move the boat.

They hung the nets to dry on frames made of spruce poles. The nets bleached in the sun, and waved in the wind. When the fishers mended the nets, they used a flat piece of wood to carry the line back and forth, and over and under to make the knots. I never could figure out how that worked.

I still can’t figure it out.

The fishers stuck the smaller fish on pine splints which they ranged in the smoke house. The smoked fish was a delicious snack, sweet and salty and smoky. Sometimes the fishers gave us children one or two to share between us.

In England, I saw fresh fish laid out on marble slabs at the fishmonger’s. They were bedded in crushed ice, which glistened even when there was no sun.

Fish was on the menu at least once a week. Granny had a limited kitchen repertoire, but what she cooked tasted good. I still think that fish should have as little added flavour as possible. Except for kippers, which should taste sweet and salty and smoky.

Fishing was and is important business all round the Mediterranean, and also on the inland Sea of Galilee. So I don’t think it’s much of a surprise to read that Jesus met up with fishers. He asked Simon to put the boat out from shore a little ways so that he could teach the people who came to hear him. Good choice. Sound carries over water, as anyone who lives on a lake knows very well.

Afterwards, Jesus asked Simon to set his nets again.

Simon wasn’t sure what to do. “We’ve been out all night, and caught nothing,” he said. “But since you say so, we’ll do it.”

Then, when the catch was almost too much for Simon and his partners to land on shore, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”

And Jesus answers, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men.”

I suspect that when we hear this story, it’s the miraculous catch that first attracts our attention. And when Jesus says that from now on Simon and his partners will be fishers of men, that seems to be the point of the story. Well, it is, and we’ll come back to it.

But first, I want to consider the exchange between Jesus and Simon.

When Jesus said, Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch, Simon answered,  Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.

Not exactly an enthusiastic agreement, is it. I mean, I recall when my mum asked me to do something I didn’t think was worth doing, or didn’t really want to do. But I did it anyway, because, well, because she was my mum. “Well, okaaay ....”

That’s Simon’s attitude.

Let’s pause a moment and think about that.

How often do we grudgingly agree to do something just because of who’s asking? Or because refusing would cause a problem? Or because, well, it’s just easier to agree? Or because we have this awkward sense of duty?

Too often, I think. But we sigh, and do what we’re asked to do, and we think that, well, we did it, so we should get some credit for doing it, and we should get some extra credit because we did it even though we didn’t really want to do it, which is a sacrifice, really, and sacrifice is good, really, isn’t it? So more points for us.

I’m not at all sure that this line of reasoning is, well, let’s say God-approved.

And what happens when we aren’t exactly enthusiastic about what we’re doing? I think we all know the answer to that question. Mistakes, and shoddy workmanship, and more.

Not good.

So Simon and his partner row out some distance, and set their nets, and then haul them in. And the catch is so large that their nets begin to break. When their partners on the shore put out to help them haul in the catch, the catch is so heavy that the boats ride low in the water and are almost swamped.

Simon’s reaction is I think a bit strange. You’d think he would be pleased at such a huge catch. A very profitable one, probably a week’s worth of fish. What’s not to like?

You might expect Simon to say something like, Well, that worked out better than I thought it would. Thank you very much! 

But Simon says Go away from me. And he adds, I am a sinful man.

When I first came to this point in today’s Gospel, I was puzzled. It was not obvious to me why Simon would say Go away from me. Admitting he was a sinful man, well, that seems easy. It amounts to saying something like I don’t deserve this bounty. 

But Go away from me?

Then, as so often happens, I was thinking about something else entirely, when a little voice in the back of my head said “Simon is ashamed.”

Shame is an unpleasant emotion. One of its effects is wanting to be invisible. To have nobody see you. To disappear. That’s why Simon wants Jesus to go away. It’s so Jesus can’t see him any more.

Shame is unpleasant, but it does have its uses. One use is to keep us in line. We are ashamed when we violate what the comment sections call “community standards.” The fear of shame, of being exposed, usually makes us behave better. 

At the least, shame prevents us from annoying other people, and it may prevent something worse.  You can see, I think, that a sense of shame is good for all of us.

But there’s also a more personal side to shame. I think that’s what is eating at Simon. I think he’s deeply ashamed by his ungracious acceptance of Jesus’s advice to set his nets again. I think it makes him feel that he has betrayed his sense of himself. He has not acted as he wishes he had acted.

That, I think, is why he says I am a sinful man. Or, I am not who I want to be.

I think we can empathise with Simon. We may grudgingly do our duty, but we don’t expect a good outcome. In fact, we may even hope for a less than perfect result, just to prove that we were right to have doubts. And when good things happen, we may look for the flaw that proves we were right. Instead of being grateful that things went well, we may carp and niggle and nitpick.

That’s ingratitude. It’s wrong.

Did Simon react that way? If so, he realized he was wrong. I am a sinful man, he says. I think we may read that as his awareness of the sin of ingratitude.  If we see Simon’s words from this angle, we can understand his anguish. Like Simon, we may feel the same shame when we realise that we’ve acted reluctantly, unwillingly, grudgingly. Because we felt we had to, not because we wanted to.

 But I hope we can also accept the grace that Simon received. For Jesus says, Don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men.

That is what this story leads up to, and there’s a lot to unpack.

Jesus says Do not be afraid. Afraid of what? What does Simon fear? I think he fears Jesus’s anger. But instead of imposing punishment, Jesus offers Simon forgiveness, and more than that, he offers the grace of working with him to redeem humankind. You will be fishers of men, Jesus says to Simon and his partners. And they leave their boats and follow him.

Jesus offers us the same grace. I came not to judge but to save sinners, Jesus says in another place. And he means it. Do not be afraid, he says to us. Do not fear punishment, but follow me. Do the work that I have given you to do.

Well, what is the work that Jesus has given us to do?  It is to proclaim the Good News. It is to catch men. It is to gather in the lost and the strayed, so that they too may be citizens of the Kingdom. It is to welcome the prodigal children, so that they too may be members of the family. That is what Simon and John and James went on to do when they left their boats and followed Jesus.

Today’s Gospel is one of several that tell how Jesus assembled the Twelve and gathered many others round him. There are two common threads in these stories. One is that Jesus didn’t seek out the respectable or influential people. True, some respectable and influential people sought him out, and some became his followers. But they had no special status.

Nor did Jesus look for moral and ethical qualifications. The Disciples, including the inner Twelve, were ordinary people. Simon and his fellow fishers made a decent living catching and selling fish. They knew their trade, and that was about as far as any qualifications went.

Several of Jesus’s followers were people on the margins of society, and some were despised. The respectable folk repeatedly wondered that this prophet, this truth-speaker, this insightful teacher of the law and the prophets, that this Jesus hung out with disreputable people.

But his followers did have something in common, and that’s the other thread. They knew they were sinners. Go away from me, for I am a sinful man, says Simon.

That self-knowledge, that confession, is what Jesus looks for.

For Jesus does not impose his redemption. He offers it. It’s up to us to accept it. And when, like Simon and James and John, we do accept it, we like them will become fishers of men.

We will do the work that God has given us, each according to our gifts.

And by so by word and deed, we will witness to the love that seeks out sinners, not to judge them, but to save them.

And that witness, by God’s grace, will draw people to that love.

Let us pray.

Creator God, grant us the grace so to follow Simon’s example that we may be faithful followers of our Lord, and like Simon be fishers of men, by our witness drawing people closer to your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.