Epiphany 5(Year C)
On radio 4 on Friday morning I heard an interview with the now reformed Jonathan Aitken the former member of parliament who was jailed for his behaviour during the height of the sleeze allegations surrounding the conservative party in the latter years of John Major’s administration. His jailing was of course before the law finally caught up with that other notorious purveyor of mistruths Jeffrey Archer & long after Neil Hamilton & his quite infamous wife Christine had been lampooned & ridiculed by everyone for his justification of the cash for questions row. Yes, it was a sorry episode in our society & one the Conservative Party is trying desperately hard to put well & truly behind it. Aitken, it would appear however, is being touted for his old seat in Parliament now that his conversion from grandee with a penchant for shady deals to humble practicing Christian is firmly established. And by the way it is. Aitken has good track record since his wondrous experience in jail. It would also seem the party are trying desperately hard to keep him off the selection list in case the electorate remember that he was a man of unclean lips, & hands. Why is it an experience of the holy or very often conversion is looked upon with scepticism. As a student of politics I remember the whole Watergate thing particularly the alarmingly high rate of conversion to a very humble Christian faith by those who had been jailed in their part of the cover up. I was sceptical of those conversions along with just about everyone else at the time.
An experience of the holy leads to conversion. We all know of Paul’s dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus with its associated blindness & the voice calling out to him. Many of us have been in situations where we have heard a conversion experience recounted. I quite clearly remember hearing about one, which was so precise, it gave the exact time as well as the place & date. It was outside Sloan’s dairy in Partick just along from the underground station. Conversion happens not only at great rallies where people are encouraged to head on down to the front or in holy places just as Isaiah’s but in the ordinary places such as outside Sloan’s dairy in Partick & Galilean lakesides. Have you ever thought of the encounter by the lakeside in these terms.
The story from the gospel is one of the great classics which we can all remember from our childhood upbringing. I even remember singing a wee song which went along the lines of, ‘I will make you fishers of me, fishers of men, fishers of men…….’ It is a familiar story and like all familiar stories is loses something of its sharpness in the retelling. Why is it the familiar loses its bite & becomes for us the stodge of steam puddings because this is what happens to so much of the biblical material.
What is the story about? A whole host of things but let me concentrate on the person of Peter for the time being. Here was a man who was a fisherman, ordinary, & apparently hard working, a man who had encountered the power of Jesus in the healing of his mother-in-law. He had not become a disciple at the healing of his mother-in-law & I will resist the temptation to bad mother-in-law jokes but he had been impressed enough to oblige the request of Jesus to take him out a little from the shore that he might address the crowd without being hemmed in. This man, whom we know was not learned or sophisticated became the leader of this group of followers of Jesus by dint of many factors, not the least of which was Jesus saw in him something that had been nurtured in the work, hard work of the rough fisherman but which could be harnessed for the very gentle work of bringing people to faith. Peter proved himself as a follower because he wasn’t afraid of hard work & if you don’t believe me try after coming off a shift at work having to go out & try again on the say of a man who knows nothing about your line of work? Fishing was hard work because it involved the physical dragging of nets which were of considerable length a drawing them into a complete circle. It also demanded patience because they had to wait until shoals of fish swam in their direction altho’ they did sometimes help this along by having out men who played the equivalent of grouse beaters. Peter was prepared to do the work & he was prepared to obey the command of Christ, two essentials for any disciple if they are to be faithful. No doubt there would be plenty of hard work, plenty of frustration, loads of times when he would wonder am I making any difference & like the rest of us I am sure moments of resignation & despair. We know he made a mess of it at times because holy scripture tells us but he continued faithfully until his death. He was not part-time.
Discipleship for us today is similar in some ways & different in others. It is different in that we are not required to give up everything & leave even family behind to follow in the way of Christ. We are not in danger, or very few xians are, of being persecuted for our faith & facing dire penalties if we exercise that faith. We are, fortunately not required to give up all the things we take for granted in life & embrace some harsh regime of few possessions. Similar in that we are, no doubt, keen at times & a wee bit indifferent at others. Times of frustration & bewilderment occur. The real tragedy however is for those whose enthusiasm wanes and feel for whatever reason they cannot devote their energies to the cause of Christ. This is a shame because I believe that the cause of Christ is more likely to transform the world than any politicians dream unless of course the politician is inspired by Christ. The work of making it a better world is the task of the xian today. Not just a better world in that we have a better lifestyle & more possessions but a better world in which all humanity shares in the possession which God gave into the hands of man at creation. The ordinary xian can do this when the politicians seem reluctant: look at the seismic shift in policy in relationship to Third World Debt that took place after the Jubilee 2000 campaign, the concern over cloning research & the desire on the part of many within research to set ethical & moral parameters; the debate over nuclear armament & the debate over genetically modified food. Ordinary people, xians like you & me, disciples of Christ can make a difference in these big issues never mind in the smaller issues about quality of life for old folk in our community, the well-being & upbringing of our children, provision for the weak & the vulnerable thru’ ill health. Yes there is still much to do if Christ’s work is to be complete & it comes about once that conversion to Christ & his way of seeing the world happens. There is a lovely story about the composer Puccini & how his work was continued after his death. He was diagnosed as having cancer in 1922 when working on his opera Turendot. He asked his students, that in the event of his death before he finished it would they complete the work for him. He died in 1924 & his students after much research & study did complete the work as we know it today. At its first performance when they reached the point where Puccini had reached before his death, Toscanini who was conducting, put down his baton turned to the audience and said to them, “Thus far the master wrote & then he died.” No one moved or spoke for some minutes, then Toscanini picked up his baton smiled at them & with tears rolling down his face said, “But his disciples have finished his work”. Hopefully the same will be said of us, Christ’s disciples.
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