Thought for the week - 9 February 2025

It is a lifetime commitment that we make, here. Those who have gone before us have created new things, new buildings and furnishings, often pushing the boundaries of modern taste and architecture to create buildings, organs and furnishings to delight those who come after them, for us to add to, change and develop just as they added to, changed and developed what was left to them. We paused for a while as the money ran out after the Second World War and arguably never quite recovered the momentum, constrained as we were by the issues of secularisation, finance and changing tastes in all sorts of ways. So it was that we ended up preserving what we had, rather than creating things anew, and the popular imagination began to think that churches were, generally, Victorian and English looking, rather than the enormous majority in history and all over the world, and as Victorian taste began to be universally discarded and moved away from beginning in the 1960’s, a generation later we find ourselves here, in a perfectly beautiful place, somewhat worried about what we will do with it in thirty years or so.

It's an eloquent place, a church is itself a silent sermon, proclaiming our belief in God’s presence in our midst and our need to worship him. The building, its furnishings and the liturgy we celebrate appeal not only to our minds, but also to our imaginations and emotions. Sometimes these outward physical signs come alive for us. With the eyes of faith, we become very aware of what they signify, but we should never let our faith be constrained by the physical environment in which we meet.

This is something of what Isaiah experienced as he prayed in the temple in Jerusalem. He saw the temple as the throne room of God in his majestic glory, surrounded by his court and praised by the heavenly choir. In contrast with the majesty of God, Isaiah became very aware of his own unworthiness and lack of understanding, and that is, we should remember, how many people view churches today, and that lack of understanding is seamlessly translated into a lack of attendance.

The Gospel tells us that Simon, the fisherman, had a similar experience to Isaiah, a glimpse of the awesome majesty of Christ, who had enabled him to take a miraculous catch of fish. Like Isaiah, Simon was very conscious of his unworthiness in the presence of the divine. Falling to his knees, he exclaimed, “Depart from me, Lord. I am a sinner’, or ‘go away, I do not understand why you would come to me’.

Such a sense of unworthiness could be paralysing. Or it could be liberating – and that was the case with both Isaiah and Simon. As Isaiah recognised that he was a man of unclean lips, a seraph cleansed them with coals of fire. Far from being intimidated and reduced to silence by God’s majesty, Isaiah was empowered to become his prophet. His glimpse of the Lord’s presence and power became a source of hope and strength. God was in the midst of his people and would protect them, if only they would turn to him and trust him.

And it was only when Simon recognised his personal inadequacy that Jesus called him to be a fisher of men. By the incarnation, the Son of God has come among us partly to equip us to undertake the mission that Simon and Isaiah were called to, to bear witness and to speak uncomfortable truths, energised by their encounter with the divine, both in the Temple and on the lakeshore – we must do both, God is not confined here any more than we are and what we learn here we take outside and teach here, but it is not shaped by our building, but by He who it is built to serve.

Today’s readings are about the vocation of a great prophet and of the leader of the apostles. But Jesus calls each one of us to follow him and to work for him. The task can seem daunting and impossible – if we think only of our limitations. But when God calls us, he owes it to himself and to us to give us the strength to do his will. We are not acting alone and we inherit our surroundings from those who have done this work before us, who were called to make this new thing for us, as we are called to make new things for those who follow us.

We are told that the apostles left everything and followed Jesus, as Isaiah left everything and followed God, as the Saints and Martyrs did, as Abraham and Sarah left their home to follow God. They gave up their security and journeyed into a yet unknown future with. For us, leaving everything means abandoning our self-sufficiency and our trusting in God’s power, not our own. With him we can do great things for the Lord. If we waited until we thought we were good enough to do God’s work, nothing would ever get done, and this building would join so many others and find a new half life as flats or a warehouse. Following Christ is a lifetime commitment, not for us, but for the life of those who come after us, that they might carry on the god work we do here, as we carry on the work of Simon Peter.