Jesus saw James and his brother John, in the boat with their father, mending their nets,
and he called them (Matthew 4.21)
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
You may already know that we have in this Cathedral Church a representation of today’s Gospel reading: a representation in stained glass. It is to found in the Chapel known as the Fisherman’s Chapel, where Izaak Walton is buried, to the south of the Quire where we are now. That Chapel has a wonderful window made by Powell and Sons in 1914, which includes two images from this story.
In one panel the Artist presents this image of the calling of James and John, whom Jesus saw, with their father Zebedee, as they were are mending their nets, and He called them.
I find that the work of Stained Glass artists helps me to understand the scriptures, by focusing me on concrete details of the story which are significant. In this panel we see the two very young men, James and John, to the left and in the centre, with their father to the right, whom they are about to leave behind. We see also the nets which are now to left to their father to mend.
If we look closer up at the nets, we can see the hands of Zebedee, and the fabric of the net, which he will need to sew and weave back together in the places it has been torn. When James and John leave him, to follow Jesus and become members of that group of first 2 apostles with whom Jesus would found his church, they may have thought their net-mending days were over.
But in fact some of the most important fishing skills they would be taking into the new spiritual community which Jesus was founding were their skills in mending, in sewing back together and reweaving broken threads. But now they would be weaving back together the broken fabric of lives, of the life of each person they would be ministering to, and together would be mending the torn fabric of society and community. For that is what apostles do, what all followers of Jesus do, following the example of Jesus himself
When Paul writes about what it means for there to be unity in the life of the Church
– in the passage we heard read from 1 Corinthians 1 – he uses the Greek word for knitting together. And in the latest updating of the New Revised Standard Version, which we often use in the Cathedral, the translators are proposing using that more literal translation. So that familiar verse would read: ‘I appeal to you… that you be knit together in the same mind and purpose…’.
Paul implies that the unity among Christians should be like the threads knit
together in a garment. Each thread, each member of the Church, each citizen of
God’s kingdom, has a worth and an integrity and a role to play; and the Church
and God’s coming kingdom will be the places where our threads are knit together;
and where all the tears in the fabric will finally be mended. Meanwhile the business
of knitting ourselves together and mending tears in relationships is the responsibility of all of us, as disciples of our Lord.
Where does Jesus go to find these skilled and dedicated net menders, to find the weavers of Church, the knitters of the threads of the Kingdom? He doesn’t go to the centre, to the safe and well-defended capital, Jerusalem, the seat of political and religious power and wealth.
No, he goes to the northern-most parts of the country, which Isaiah had written
about at the time that the northern area was continuously threatened with violent
attack from Israel’s enemies: the people, Isaiah said, who sat for those many years
in darkness and in the shadow of death – in the land around the Sea of Galilee, the
ancient land of the tribe Zebulun and the tribe Naphtali.
It is these people who see the great light first, who hear first the proclamation of
God’s kingdom and see diseases cured and sickness healed. The message for us is:
however bad you feel your situation is, however hopeless the place in which you
find yourself seems, whatever reason you feel you are sitting in darkness, the Lord
can be your light and your salvation.
The window artist who designed our Fisherman’s Window illustrates this by
offering in the overall design an extraordinary theology of place and calling. In the
window the most prominent elements, which take the eye first, are the figures of
four patron saints of fishermen: St Anthony, St Peter to one side; St Andrew, and
St Wilfred to the other. And in the centre of these Christ the Lord, sitting above the
water flood. Then at the bottom the central panes represent Gospel scenes, including two from today’s passage To the left of centre is the calling of Peter and Andrew, with the text, ‘I will make you fishers of men’; to the right of centre the pane we started with, the calling of James and John, with the text, ‘Follow me’. In the bottom centre is the scene from the Resurrection appearance of Jesus by the Sea of Tiberias, with the text, ‘Bring me of the fish which ye have now caught’.
But what’s most striking – and what’s made the window famous – are the two bottom corner panes. In these the artist develops a parallel between the Fishermen Disciples in Galilee, and the holy and devout Fisherman, Izaak Walton. The bottom left hand corner pane shows him fishing in Dovedale, Derbyshire. And – in what is locally the best known pane of all, the bottom right pane – he is shown fishing next to the Itchen. He is by my reckoning sitting somewhere near the modern line of Garnier Road, judging by the distinctive shape of St Catherine’s Hill with its copse visible above.
As the first apostles fished in Galilee, God revealed his Word to them, making his light shine where there had been darkness. So, as Izaak Walton fished, and read the scriptures by the Itchen, God revealed his Word and his Light to him.
Whoever we are, wherever we are, the call rings out to us. Follow me, says the Lord, and I will heal you, and weave yo into the fabric of God’s Kingdom; and as you follow my call I will make you yourselves the menders and weavers of my healing and of my salvation for individuals and communities. So that even those who have sat in darkness will see the great light and salvation of God.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
