Thinking Anew:THERE IS a story told that shortly after his resurrection Jesus was asked what arrangements he had made for his work to continue on Earth. He acknowledged that while he had only a small number of followers in Palestine he had made plans to spread the good news. "I have asked Peter, James and John and a handful of friends and followers to tell other people and in time the whole world will hear." His questioner, concerned that Peter and the others might fail and that followers could become disillusioned, asked what other plans he had made if that did not work out. Jesus replied: "I have no other plans".
It is only a legend, of course, but a legend that reminds us that the most important news ever revealed to humankind was entrusted to a community of imperfect, and at times unreliable, men and women. The world at large has, understandably, high expectations of the church and its members and is critical when we fail to live up to the high ideals of the Gospel, but St Paul reminds us that “we have this treasure in earthen vessels”, that God has knowingly entrusted his mission to ordinary people who are not always sure of themselves or able to live up to their responsibilities. This is illustrated in three important biblical figures who feature in tomorrow’s readings.
In the Old Testament reading we are reminded of Isaiah, called to be a prophet. He is in Solomon’s great temple when he has a vision in which he is overwhelmed by the absolute holiness of God which exposes his own frailty.
“I am lost for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” Yet this is the man chosen and sent – despite his sense of personal unworthiness – to speak to the people in God’s name at a time of great national crisis.
In the Epistle reading, Paul, writing about his own calling, is equally self deprecating when he describes his conversion following an encounter with the risen Christ: “Last of all . . . he appeared also unto me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.”
And then in the Gospel we read about Peter, wonderful Peter, impetuous, unreliable, trying so hard to succeed and often failing. Confronted by the extraordinary presence of Jesus, he wants to give up: “Go away from me Lord for I am a sinful man.”
Brother Richard of the Taizé Community suggests that our human frailty can be a blessing. “Faith does not lift us above our human condition. It is the firm trust that God loves us even when we are weak and needy”.
The vocations of Isaiah, Paul and Peter bring together two apparent contradictions: a profound and proper sense of personal unworthiness to fulfil any holy function and extraordinary lives of faithful service to God.
Sheila Cassidy has written about the importance of being able to admit our frailty and unworthiness.
“More than anything I have learned that we are all frail people, vulnerable and wounded: it is just that some of us are more clever at concealing it than others! And the great joke is that it is okay to be frail and wounded because that is the way the almighty transcendent God made people.” We are reminded of that frailty in almost every act of worship when we make our confession: “we have left undone those things which we ought to have done and we have done those things which we ought not to have done and there is no health in us.”
In a strange way the glory of the church is not its perfection, but its many imperfections transformed by the recurring miracle that despite them God’s Spirit is active and present in ordinary lives doing extraordinary things. St Augustine of Hippo put it very simply: “We do the works but God works in us the doing of the works”.
GL