Two strong themes emerge in the readings this week. All contain the story of God’s call – to different people, in different periods, in different places and circumstances and of different social backgrounds. Women and men are called to follow an alternative way of being and share that life with others. Connected with this is that of grace which is about loving mercy, kindness, compassion and strength in weakness and vulnerability. These readings have caused many to view God’s call in terms of conversion, domination and saving the world. It also engendered a certain superiority where people unlike ‘us’ were ostracised, judged, or even physically harmed. God’s grace is where we model an alternative, sustainable, loving, serving way of life, and inviting others to join this way of being for the betterment of the world, a way that ensures a better and more sustainable life for all. Grace is revealed in God’s deep concern for the very real challenges of our world and is revealed in the way God chooses to actively work in this world by calling us to become co-creators of a world that can continue to evolve into greater beauty, deeper truth, and stronger goodness.
We are invited to find ourselves in the gospel story today. Like Peter, we might find that allowing Jesus into our space, could mean wrecking what we have always believed and thought. Despite our awareness of inadequacy and sinfulness, we may be captivated and discover how even our little faith and tiny hopes can grow into extraordinary and miraculously realistic expectations. It means being caught up in Jesus’ net rather than other nets within our culture such self-centredness, prosperity and consumerism. Being caught up in God’s own net where life with its faults, holds out a promise of goodness, acceptance, and hope.
Opening ourselves to God’s love, being caught up in God’s net, has nothing do with perfection or feeling adequate. We see from this week’s readings that the measure of a ‘church’ or community is not its buildings, its faithfulness to certain doctrinal or political ideologies, or its size and wealth, but how it integrates into the community, and how it becomes the hidden, subversive, influence for grace, bringing greater care to the broken, accessible and sustainable resources to the needy, more companionship to the lonely, and unyielding opposition to whatever robs a person from the abundant life Jesus sought to bring. Edwina Gateley refers to this as ‘living on the prophetic edge.’ It means being put in the position to learn to see and look for the hidden and the lost and carry within ourselves a vision of peace, justice, and transformation.
We can do this if we enter those deep waters that Jesus invites us into and discover the riches and beauty that lay hidden below the surface of our lives and the lives others. It is to discover the sacred in the everyday which does not just happen in churches or in nature but in trains, buses, kitchens, shopping aisles and commitments made and kept. Edwina Gately tells of the mole, a little furry underground creature, which though blind has a strong sense of smell. It can make its way anywhere even in the dark. Can we be like that mole in the world, sniffing in the darkness of sin and injustice searching – or fishing - for the unloved and unwanted and bring them into God’s embrace. Caring for people and making growth possible. Like Isaiah, like Simon Peter, and like all the others who go before us, we are called to serve in God’s mission for the world amid our daily lives. We find that this is more about attracting others to share a vision of life rather than about forcing it upon them. The church has not always been good in welcoming people who do not fit in with its strict expectations. How many people have been hurt, embarrassed, and angered at the condemnations that caused so many to leave the community and not share in the Eucharistic table? We have seen this with people who have been living together outside of marriage. We have seen this with people who are LGBTIQ+ and it is still happening. We have seen this with people who have been in marriages that failed. Francis reminds us that Jesus came to seek out those who do not always make it and bring them home.
Jesus continues to reveal love and invites us into God’s embrace of loving mercy. The message is that all are invited. No one is excluded. What is captivating is the extraordinary news that God is a loving and caring God, and we are to make that love present and incarnate in our lives.
Let us companion Jesus. We do not know where it will lead but hope that change will come to our world when we proclaim the good news of God’s unending, inclusive and unconditional love. Jesus showed this by loving his enemies, those who tortured him and put him to death. This is the power of love that reaches out and touches those who hurt us, who oppose us, who do not think and act as we would. This is the love that changes the world. This is the love that catches people in Jesus’ net.