Sermon preached by Ryan Austin-Eames Epiphany 3 Sunday, 22nd January 2017 Christ Church St Laurence May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. Last Sunday we heard from the Gospel of John as Our Lord issued his invitation to Andrew to “come and see”, and today we have heard as Andrew and Peter respond to Jesus’ call to make them, in the words of the Authorised Version, “fishers of men”. There is, of course, a certain tension between the two accounts if we are to assume that they are competing depictions of the same historical occurrence. In Matthew’s depiction John the Baptist has been arrested, and Jesus has taken up residence at Capernaum. In the Gospel of John, on the other hand, Jesus is walking by the River Jordan, and John the Baptist is not only present, but plays the crucial role of intimating at Jesus’ Messiahship when he declares “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”. It is precisely this apparent lack of narrative harmony which led many 20th century biblical scholars to conclude that the content of the canonical Gospels is largely mythological – reflections of the faith of the early church, rather than of the life and work of the historical Jesus of Nazareth. This view has been seized upon by many sceptics, particularly the voices associated with the movement known as New Atheism, and used as an intellectual weapon against Christianity; presenting the Gospel narratives as ahistorical and fictitious in the effort to denigrate Christianity and present its world view as antiquated, illogical and entirely unsuitable for the 21st century. Some Christians have responded to these challenges by suggesting that “it does not matter whether these things actually happened”, insisting that it is the moral, or philosophical, or metaphysical meaning which is really important. N.T. Wright has noted that within the English speaking world, such a response has little to do with German existentialist theology of the last century, but is rather a reflection of a susceptibility to the spirit of the age of late modernity.1 We each, I am sure, have found ourselves in social situations where we have been outnumbered by sceptics, whether at work, with friends or perhaps even at gatherings of our own extended families. As C.S. Lewis’s literary creation Screwtape counsels his nephew Wormwood, we mortals are also particularly susceptible to feeling that to not laugh at the blasphemous jokes over coffee or cocktails in such situations would be priggish, intolerant, or puritanical.2 We fear that if we affirm our belief in the miracles and signs, our belief in the virgin birth, our belief in the resurrection and the ascension, that we will be regarded as intellectually immature, gullible, deluded – that we will be pushed to the margins and socially isolated, as occurred to Lewis himself as he was repeatedly passed over at the post-war University of Oxford.3 Biblical scholar Richard Bauckham of Ridley Hall, Cambridge, has devoted much time and ink to restoring the authority of the canonical Gospels as eyewitness testimony.4 If Bauckham is correct in his assertion that both depictions of the calling of the first disciples in Matthew and John, respectively, are based on eyewitness testimony, then it would seem that rather than our Gospels presenting contradictory accounts of one and the same event, that the account depicted in the Page | 1
Gospel of John belongs to a chance earlier meeting between Jesus, Andrew and Peter, and possibly John Son of Zebedee, around the time of Our Lord’s baptism5 – possibly while the later three, at least, were disciples of John the Baptist. While it is ambiguous as to whether Our Lord was ever himself a disciple of John the Baptist, the presence of Andrew and Peter in both Matthew and John, suggest that Jesus may well have been known to the fishermen when he arrived on the shores of the Sea of Galilee at the commencement of his own ministry. Traditionally, the response of the fishermen, to drop everything and follow Jesus without so much as a second thought, has been taken as indicative that they perceived in Him a revelation of divine glory. But perhaps it was less dramatic. Perhaps the response of the fishermen was the result of a convergence of circumstances. Our Lord was undoubtedly charismatic, but charisma alone does not a Messiah make. Though they were fishermen, scripture attests that Andrew, Peter, James and John knew the Torah and the Prophets. They would have doubtless been aware of Isaiah’s prophecy that a great light would emerge in “Galilee of the Nations”, and the Baptist’s declaration of Jesus as the “Lamb of God”, so heavily evocative of Passover, Exodus, and sacrifice, could not have failed to arouse their interest. Furthermore, the Baptist, their Rabbi, had also testified that he had seen “the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove” and that it had rested on Jesus, which also must have significantly influenced their view of Him. The arrest of John the Baptist also meant that the fishermen were without a Rabbi, and it is not inconceivable that they may have regarded Jesus as a natural successor to leadership of the movement. The decision to follow Jesus, then, comes to appear less impulsive, less emotional; more calculated, more cerebral. I have come across no more practical an articulation of what it is to engage in a discipleship of the mind than that offered by Alister McGrath: …while the appeal of the Christian vision of Jesus of Nazareth to the baptized imagination and emotions must never be neglected or understated, we need to appreciate that there remains an intellectual core to the Christian faith…We must see ourselves as standardbearers for the spiritual, ethical, imaginative and intellectual viability of the Christian faith, working out why we believe that certain things are true, and what difference they make to the way we live our lives and engage with the world around us.6 This was certainly no less true for the first disciples than it is for us in the 21st century, and yet, as the Apostle Paul warned when he wrote to the Corinthians, too much “eloquent wisdom” may empty the Cross of Christ of its power – we are not saved by the powers of our own intellect, each of us is also called by name. We are called by, in the words of former Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, the God who “called the world into existence as Creator, and calls men and women to himself as Redeemer”.7 The initiative of the call is always with God, but it is our ability to comprehend and respond to this call which is informed by our knowledge of the scriptures and our openness the activity of God in our midst, even in something as seemingly mundane as the convergence of circumstances. While trends in church decline may tempt us to conclude that God is calling less than in times past, is it not much more likely that it is simply that fewer and fewer late-modern westerners are able recognise God’s call as such? Not every call is as clear as that experienced by the fishermen, or Page | 2
as dramatic an experience as Paul’s conversion on the Damascus Road. Archbishop Ramsey also observed that while some experience God’s call as “an overwhelming sense of divine imperative pressing on the conscience”, others experience it in softer, subtler, ways – a stirring of the mind to “deep and enquiring thought”, or simply as a feeling of compassion which is “shared with the compassion of God”.8 While it may seem rather “evangelical” to suggest that the ability to offer credible explanations to apparent disharmony in the Gospels one of the most effective apologetic techniques available to the Christian Church, I believe that this is especially the case in a church of this particular tradition. The walls of this church building are filled with windows and icons depicting scenes from the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, the Gospel book itself is treated with a reverence and dignity not often paralleled in this world, and we are gathered here this morning to break bread and drink wine in remembrance of Our Lord because it is recorded as his command in those same Gospels. Restoring to the Gospels their historical integrity as eyewitness testimony is the only way of restoring their authority in the eyes of those who may not yet believe. We cannot demand that those who do not yet know Jesus Christ as Lord simply accept the efficacy of the ecclesiastical doctrines of inspiration and Biblical inerrancy, but we can open the Gospels and share how all of this fits together. Our Lord’s call to Andrew, Peter, James and John to become “fishers of men” is equally a call to each and every one of us. But, just as it would be futile for a fisherman to set out without their nets and lines, so it would be futile if we set out without our spiritual, ethical, imaginative and intellectual tackle. If we are confident in God and in the Gospels, and attune to sensing God’s call in the convergence of circumstances, then when a family member, a friend, a colleague, an acquaintance or even a stranger entrusts to us their feelings of a troubled conscience, confides in us that they are all of a sudden finding themselves adrift in their own thoughts like never before, or shares a touching story of unexpected or uncharacteristic compassion, and they ask us, “what does this all mean?”, we will be prepared to reply, “come and see”. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
N.T. Wright, How God Became King: Getting to the Heart of the Gospels, (London: SPCK, 2012), c. 6 C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, (London: HaperCollins, 2009), Letter X 3 Alister McGrath, C.S. Lewis A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet, (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2013), 243 4 See Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, (Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans, 2006) 5 Compare the Baptist’s description of the Spirit coming to rest on Jesus in Jn 1.32 with parallels from the Baptism account in Mk 1.10, Mt 3.16 and Lk 3.22 6 Alister McGrath, Mere Theology, (London: SPCK, 2010), 5 7 Michael Ramsey, The Christian Priest Today, (London: SPCK, rev. ed. 1985), 100 8 Ramsey, The Christian Priest Today, 101 1 2
Page | 3