5th Sunday after Trinity St.

5th. Sunday after Trinity St. Luke 5:1-11

It is often said that a nurse has a calling due to her devotion and care of the sick.

But what do we mean when we say that someone has a calling?

We think of a Priest and I would like to read to you something that was translated from the Greek for me which sums up a priest calling.

“What art thou, O Priest

            Not from thyself

        For of nothing wast thou made

Not for thyself

        But Set between man and God

Not to thyself

        But to the Church the Bride  

Not thine own art thou

                                But slave of all mankind

Not thyself art thou

                                But servant of God

What art thou then, O Priest

                                Naught, yet all”

A monk or nun like a priest also has a calling, but live by a rule of life and usually in a cloistered environment.

The Rule of St Benedict which a monk’s or nun’s rule of life is based.

Was written by St Benedict one thousand five hundred years ago and is still in use to day in varies forms by the different orders of monks and nuns in the world.

The monks and nuns of the Benedictine communities through the world celebrate his life this coming week.

As Christians we are all called to do our part, it may be that we are a church organist, someone who reads a lesson or bring others to church we all play our part and fit together like pieces in a large jigsaw puzzle.

In today’s Gospel we read about the call of three Jesus Disciples.

The scene is set with Jesus on the sea shore being pushed more and more towards the sea by a large crowed who wish to hear what he has to say.

So Jesus gets in to one of the boats and asks Simon whose boat it was to go out a little way so that Jesus can preach to the great crowed that gathered from the safety of the boat.

After Jesus has fished preaching he tells Simon to go out in to the deep water to catch some fish, which Simon does and he has a very large catch of fish.

The catch was so large that James and John have to go out in their boat and help Simon.

We see described for the first time the three men who were to be closest to Jesus in his ministry, Peter, James and John.

These were the three which Jesus took with Him, at especially critical times.

These were the three who alone were permitted to enter with Him when He went into the house of Jairus, where Jairus’ little daughter was lying dead.

It was the same three who were His companions on the Mount of Transfiguration.

One or the other of these is frequently conspicuous in the narrative of the Gospel, and the names of two of them at least stand at the top of the roll which Christendom remembers.

First there was Simon Peter, in the Gospel of John there is a striking sentence which reveals as a flash of light what Jesus did for him.

Jesus, when he first saw him, said to him; “So you are Simon the Son of John, you shall now be called Peter”, which means Rock.

The swift understanding of Jesus recognized the manner of Simon who was, eager and outgoing, but unsure, with great possibilities in him still undeveloped.

Jesus saw also what he would make this man become, and he began to call him already by the name that henceforth should continually remind him of what by the grace of God he should some day be.

Peter was to become the rock, upon which Jesus built His Church.

If in after years someone had asked Simon Peter what his ministry had meant to him, he might have replied;

“I was a rough man, knowing nothing much except the rough life of the fishing fleet.

I wanted something better in life, but I never had much confidence in myself.

I had hot impulses, but I never seemed to carry them fully through.

I had as much courage as most men, but even so, I could not always count on it to last.

Nobody would have ever expected of me that I would do anything that mattered much;

But Jesus came one day and called me, He made me a friend.

The one thing I began to want then was not to disappoint him.

I said I would stick to him through think and thin, and instead of that, I left him and denied him.

But even at the worst I knew he loved me.

I felt his love so much that it seams as though the hands of God himself had hold of me and would not let me go.

And in the end that saved me, made me know that I could be the sort of man that from the beginning I knew he was expecting me to be”

The other best know of the three who were called from the fishing boats was John.

He and his brother James in temperament appear to have been much alike.

It was these two brothers who wanted to call down fire from heaven on to the Samaritan village which would not receive Jesus.

It was these two who wanted places of honour one to sit at Jesus right hand and the other at His left hand in His

Kingdom.

Together they were called the “Sons of thunder”

Perhaps both of them were transformed by the spirit of Jesus.

Certainly according to the tradition of the early Church, John was.

On down the years he has been remembered not only as the Beloved Disciple but as one whose supreme message was that God is Love.

If later John had told his own story, it might have been something like this.

“I was a very different sort of person once, hot-tempered, proud, and quick to pick up a grudge.

Then came along Jesus, I saw him deal with people in a different way, I saw what love could do.

One day I wanted to get God to curse a village which rebuffed us and to burn it up with a lightning bolt.

But I learned from Jesus that that is not the way God works.

He does not come as lightning but as love, love that gets inside a man’s heart and melts his stubbornness, shames his pride, and awakens his own love in answer.”

We will never be a St Peter or St John, but Jesus still calls us, and will only ask us to do what He knows we can do.