Intro:  Our New Testament lesson is from the fifth chapter of Luke.   Jesus has just begun his ministry of teaching and people are beginning to notice him.  They are starting to follow.  Word is spreading, not only is he a great teacher, now we discover he also knows how to fish.   Let us listen for God’s word to us.   (READ)    

Fish stories amuse us.   My in-laws used to fish a great deal, and they are part Irish so I’ve heard some good ones.   I’m sure in every family, or set of friends, there is someone who can tell a good tale of “the one that got away”, and describe in great detail the wild adventure that was the last fishing trip.   When it comes to “tall tales” I’m not sure which holds first place, fishing or golf.   It seems like there are all kinds of “almost miracles” that happen everyday.   I almost made this putt, or I almost caught the biggest trout in the lake.   I’m not a fisherman, but I do love to listen to fishing tales once in a while, there is such passion and animation in the telling, even if the facts may trouble one’s logical and rational side.   It is fun to hear of an “almost miracle” no matter how unbelievable it may be.   We can listen, laugh and then we keep going on with life as usual.  

But that’s not the kind of miracle story we have in Luke.  Jesus has just begun his public ministry.  He is going about the countryside teaching and preaching.  It is early in the morning and he already has a crowd following him.  He comes to the shore.  You can hear the tired and frustrated chatter of the fishermen coming in from fishing all night.  It’s been a worse than average night of work.  You hear the gravel as the boats are pulled up on shore—the nets tossed on to the beach to be sorted and stored.  They should smell fishy but they don’t.  The breeze is still from the land towards the lake.

Jesus needs to find a way to get a little distance from the press of the crowd so that he can share his message with all who want to hear.  Jesus asks Simon to let him teach from the boat.  It is an inconvenience.  Simon and his coworkers are tired.  They fished all night.  They did not catch anything.  Nothing makes a person more frustrated than to work all day and get nothing accomplished.  Now Jesus interrupts ending of their day.  Take me out a little way so I can see the crowd and the crowd may see me better, Jesus asks. 

We do not know how long Jesus preached.  We do not know the sermon.  Maybe he was working on an early version of the Sermon on the Mount.  Maybe he was refining his series on the Lost Sheep, the Lost coin, and the Lost Son.  But when Jesus finishes he tells Simon and the workers to let down their nets.  Now Simon shows some frustration.  Look, we are the fishermen.  We know what we are doing.  We fished all night.  Nothing.  Now you come meddling, asking for favors and telling us how to run our business.  They may have had no interest in listening to him at all.  When you are tired and frustrated at your work, the last thing you want is some upstart stranger telling you how to do it right. 

Yet for some reason Simon and his workers obey.  Who knows what it was about how Jesus talked with them, or what he said, but they go ahead and set out with their boat and net.  And the catch is magnificent.  So great that Simon and his workers have to call for help from the second boat.  Simon and his friends are really lucky.  This will make them rich for the day.  This is a dream catch, breaking nets, that almost sink the boats!  It is the hope that kept him going out day after day, that one day there would be more than he could ever pull in.  It would be like winning the lottery.  But Simon doesn’t react with joy.  This is not a little miracle story.  Simon knows that he is in the presence of the mystery and power of God and in that presence everything in his life is up for grabs and Simon begs Jesus to leave.  Get away from me, for I am a sinful man.

Little miracles are enjoyed.  The ones that come by and say hi, that don’t shake things up too much.  But if the truth be told, we may not really want the great miracle of the presence and power of God which suddenly makes everything you ever thought you knew about the world, everything you thought you knew about fishing, the invasion of the Holiness of God which makes everything you thought you knew about yourself, suddenly inadequate, and incomplete.  Here in this boat suddenly Simon was face to face with the moment which forced him to have to make a decision about whether or not to really believe in the presence and power of God involved in our lives or to deny what had happened to him, return to shore and pretend that it never happened and forever to live the rest of his life trying to pretend it never happened.

Right then, he would be shaking.  His muscles overtaxed with the demands of hauling in this huge catch.  But more so his soul shaken with the awareness of God that was standing right there before him in the person of Jesus Christ.  This was more than the best catch ever, it was a very real sign of God’s abundance and overwhelming action in his life right then, right there before his eyes.  This miracle was for Simon Peter, the fisherman.  There were more fish there than he ever imagined.  He could do things he never thought possible, if he followed Jesus’ word.  When he thought all his efforts would bring up nothing, Jesus says “go out again”, against what makes sense, against what all your training and experience might tell you, go where I send you says Jesus, and wait with your nets, you will be surprised and shaken. 

Little miracles of strange and delightful events which allow us to go on about our daily lives comforted with the thought that maybe our world really is surrounded by a greater power, love and mercy.  We enjoy those.  But the great miracles which come to confront us with the majesty of God, those are more troubling because the stakes seem so high.  Follow me and I will make you fishers of people.  And Simon and his coworkers left everything and followed.

Little miracles we like, but big miracles which suddenly change the whole way you look at your life, at the way you look at how the world treats you, changes all your plans for the future, which come to you and has all the feel of being compelled by something in a new direction, we don’t really want those miracles very often.  We don’t want them or if we suddenly begin to tremble with excitement at the adventure of being called into this whole new world, saying yes send me, there are others who will not celebrate with you.  Most of us are used to how things are and it’s Ok to keep it this way. 

Little miracles, like even Jesus turning water into wine, we like them, we don’t have to change much.  The wedding party can keep going.  When the party is over we can all go home and get on with our lives.  What happened to Isaiah and to Simon led to a lifetime of change.  Maybe we put so much attention on the little miracles because we are not sure what we would do with the bigger one.

Sometimes we can see things with our own eyes and still miss the reality of what is before us. Sometimes we can be so bound up with our expectations of what is, or focused on what we think is important, that we can be caught off guard when the bigger picture comes into focus.  God gets out of the temple and into the world where the deep need is.   Into each of our lives Jesus comes at some point, calling to us saying “come into the deep water come out a little further than you are used to going, take a few risks and throw out your nets.  See what is out here.  Go, do what you already know how to do, but do it in a new way, in broad day light, and out where the water is deep.   This call may cause us to shake, and awaken to new possibilities and realities as we become a loving and beloved community of faith.  Amen.  

 “Love is  NOT”  (1 Corinthians 13:1-13)

Intro:  Chapter 13, in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, is probably the most famous statement about love in the world.  As we try envision what the city of Corinith is like.  Think Las Vegas.  Let us listen.//

The thirteen verses of first Corinthians chapter 13, are probably the best known words Paul ever wrote.  This chapter is to the New Testament what the Twenty-third Psalm is to the Old Testament.  It is known, loved, enjoyed, and memorized by many people.  Everyone is familiar with at least some of the rhythms and some of the imagery of this passage.  One often hears it read at weddings and we feel the sentiment of it and we enjoy the beauty of it.  It is perhaps one of, if not the most, popular portions of the New Testament.

Too often, this passage is read in isolation from its broader scriptural setting.  All or part of the reading is lifted up and taken out of its original context.  We don’t have to go far to see some of these words written in fancy calligraphy put up on a wall somewhere.  In offices or in homes we see in big print, LOVE IS, patient, kind and does not boast.

Because the words are soaring and beautiful, they seem to point beyond the ordinary and possible. The problem is that just holding the beauty of the words in a picture frame obscures the practical, exhorting force that Paul intends.  If Paul heard how people say “Love is patient, love is kind and does not boast”, with a soft dreamy look in their eyes, I think he would get really cranky.  (As Paul was want to do). When the words are taken from the whole, and the understanding of the Corinthian situation is left behind, the transforming power is weakened if not lost.

The letter he wrote was in response to questions the Corinthians raised about what they should do in response to some of the issues they were facing.  Paul is not writing a philosophy paper about some abstract ideal of “what is love”.  The discussion of love comes in practical terms as he speaks to their concerns.  He is writing to a conflicted congregation, caught up in a distorted spirituality, and engaged in intense power struggles.  These people were trying to live out their Christian faith in the midst of a city where many more people thought the “God of love” was Venus.  

Paul was trying to bring a new way of thinking to the anxious and fractured members of a specific group of early Christians.  In the chapter immediately preceding this, the passage, Paul addressed the Corinthian concern over proper beliefs and the distribution of spiritual gifts.  In chapter 12 he used the analogy of a human body to try and get the Corinthians to views gifts of the spirit with a new perspective, as parts of a unified body of Christ.  Now Paul adds the single most important component necessary for that “spiritually gifted body”, the lifeblood of love.  Just as the individual organs of the body can not function without blood flowing through them, humans are nothing without love flowing through us. 

Paul uses the first person throughout his letter as he writes about love.  He is talking about himself as an example for them. Without love, speaking in tongues turns him into a noisy and incoherent nuisance; he or anyone with profound theological insight and total faith amount to nothing, if love is not present.  Even extravagant gifts to the poor or those who suffer to boast of gain, have nothing, and have done nothing if there is not the backdrop of love as the motivation for everything. 

He is not saying that spiritual gifts are useless, or that dramatic sacrifice is to be disregarded.  The exercise of gifts, and the practice of sacrifice in themselves simply do nothing for the doer.  It is love manifest in the person that makes these actions meaningful.  

While Paul is giving ideas and advice, he avoids offering a complete and comprehensive definitions of love.  Reading about love or defining it, Paul says is like looking into a dim mirror.  You don’t get the full picture.  The real thing happens only face to face, with one another, with God.  It is in the searching for, the seeking for God’s love that we find it, on the journey with one another.  That’s what Paul is saying.  Look at me, and what I do.  Love is as love does.  Here is an example of love.  Christ is the perfect example of love in action.  It is in the doing that love is manifest and real. 

As human beings we are created in the image and likeness of God.  In the Hebrew Scriptures, faith finds God showing “steadfast love.”  Always present.   In the New Testament, while love is not God, God is love.  So love is part of our basic make up, or stuff.  It is the lifeblood of a relationship and connection to God.
 
Paul write “So faith, hope, love abide, these three: but the greatest of these is love.” It is the meaning of life. Or at least the first hint of a whisper of a clue of finding it. As we look at these familiar words that Paul wrote, an interesting idea I’ve seen is for us to put ourselves into those verses and see how our love and lives reflect what Paul speaks of.  For instance, starting at verse 4, if we substitute the word “I” for “love”, the passage reads like this: “I am patient; I am kind; I am not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. I do not insist on my own way; I am not irritable or resentful; I do not rejoice in wrongdoing, but I rejoice in the truth. I bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things. My love never ends.” How true are those sentences for each of us? How well do they match up with the way that we really are?  (Don’t answer for anyone else sitting next to you.  But think it through sometime.)    Since God is love try it with God as well, God is patient God is kind.  See if that shifts your perspective on God at all. 

What those words show us is that love is something we do. It’s not just some feeling.  In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus praised a group of people by saying: “I was hungry and you gave me food.” Notice that Jesus didn’t commend the people by saying: “I was hungry and you felt sorry for me.” No, I was hungry and you gave me food.  Love means doing what’s necessary, what’s needed. But really love means even more than that.  It is a disposition, a way of living life.  Paul brings this in at the end, Faith hope and love abide, these three and the greatest of these is love.  Hope expects what faith believes.  Hope holds on because it has faith in the strength and persistence of God’s love for us. 

Faith and hope never stand alone.  They are all fulfilled in love.   As Paul writes the Corinthians with their very real very human problems and temptations.  He says their task is to take that truth of God’s lasting love that is present now.  To take it and make it ever more real in their lives.   That is our call as well.  The table is here to enfold us God’s in  perfect love that came to us in Jesus Christ, to feed us and to give us a glimpse of love that endures forever.  God’s love.  Amen.