Homily for the 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2025
Readings: Isaiah 6:1-2a, 3-8; Ps 137(138):1-5, 7-8; 1 Co 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11.
It’s been an excruciating week – seeing how Hamas has not been defeated despite the untold damage wreaked on Palestinian civilians in Gaza, hearing President Trump declare that he has a real estate solution for Gaza turning it into the Riviera of the Middle East, and watching our political leaders stepping on egg shells lest they jeopardise our trading relationship with the USA or, even more pressingly, lest they threaten their electoral prospects at home.
We all feel powerless and clueless as to what the solution, or even the next step, might be. What could any of us possibly say or do that might make the slightest difference? We are like the unwilling prophet in today’s first reading from Isaiah: ‘What a wretched state I am in! I am lost, for I am a person of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips’.
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We pray that a seraph might figuratively touch someone’s lips with a hot coal saying: ‘See now, this has touched your lips, your sin is taken away, your iniquity is purged.’ We pray that some wise person of integrity in our midst on hearing the call ‘Whom shall I send? Who will be our messenger?’, might answer, ‘Here I am, send me.’
Of course none of us in Australia is likely to have a role in solving the dilemma of Gaza but each of us can speak truth to power, insisting that all our fellow citizens be treated with dignity and pleading that our elected leaders use the benefit of our peace, wealth and security to advocate that the rules of the international order be maintained. We could, at the very least, stop kowtowing to the fear merchants and shock jocks who insist on useless, unprincipled laws such as mandatory minimum sentences for certain criminal offences.
During the week, Dr Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, commented on President Trump’s plan about removing the Palestinians from Gaza while the US did a rebuild: ‘The idea that so many (Palestinians) would choose to leave willingly is almost certainly unrealistic, while the prospect of forcibly transferring them should be both legally and morally unthinkable.’[1]
Rubenstein was honest and bold enough to say that ‘some of the impulses behind Trump’s proposals are quite positive – but aspects of what he has put forward so far remain unclear, unworkable, unhelpful, or all three.’ Sir Thomas Phillips who was a long time British diplomat, having been ambassador to Israel and Saudi Arabia, says that ‘the proposal to relocate a large number of Gazans to Egypt and Jordan is strategically incomprehensible’.[2]
It is in situations of complete powerlessness when world leaders are thinking thoughts which should be ‘legally and morally unthinkable’ and putting proposals that are ‘strategically incomprehensible’ that we can hear afresh today’s gospel with Luke telling the story of Jesus preaching to the crowd. Once he finished preaching, Jesus turned his attention immediately away from the receptive crowd and towards the indifferent fishermen nearby who had no interest whatever in what he had to say. Jesus tells Simon, ‘Put out into deep water and pay out your nets for a catch.’ ‘Master,’ Simon replied ‘we worked hard all night long and caught nothing, but if you say so, I will pay out the nets.’
Scripture scholar Luke Timothy Johnson points out that Simon’s situation is similar to that of Mary at the Annunciation. When the angel announces what lies ahead, Mary, knowing the practicalities, asks how can this be. Simon implicitly does the same thing. Mary is told that Elizabeth who was barren is to have a child. So too, Simon, the empty handed fisherman who has laboured all night, is to take in a huge catch. Johnson says, ‘The contrast between a lack of human potential and the reality of divine fulfillment is essential to Luke’s theme of the “Great Reversal” and finds its paradigmatic expression in the suffering and raised Messiah.’[3]
Here are we confronting the enormity, complexity and mess of Gaza – seeing it played out on our screens every night. What can any of us possibly do? If only someone would put out into deep water and pay out the nets for a catch.
One leader who did this almost 40 years ago was Prime Minister Bob Hawke when he was honoured by the Jewish community for the role he played in the resettlement of Jews from Russia to Israel. Hawke was presented with an award by Edgar Bronfman, President of the World Jewish Congress. Invoking the Old Testament account in the Book of Judges, Chapter 16, of the all powerful Samson being rendered blind and powerless by the Philistines in Gaza, Hawke, accepting the award, told the Australian Jewish community:
The subsequent tragic events in the West Bank and Gaza have further convinced me that the democratic, humanist principles on which Israel was built do not sit easily with the role of master of occupied territories and subject peoples.
The Palestinian in the occupied territories, as the Jew in the Soviet Union and the black in South Africa has his aspirations to be fully free.
The friends of Israel, around the world, are fearful that in a real sense we may be witnessing again after thousands of years a giant eyeless in Gaza. Is there not emerging the danger of Israel being blinded to the threat to its very soul and the vision of its founders?
I have spoken in Israel and here that the time bomb of demography is ticking away remorselessly. Within a generation, if Israel seeks to maintain its hegemony in the occupied territories the Jews of Israel face the certain prospect of being a minority in their own land. They will face the stark choice of being a democratic State or a Jewish State – they will not be able to be both. [4]
We have no expectation that any of our political leaders in the lead up to an election and dealing with President Trump will dare to utter such truths. And remember, Hawke spoke as a friend of Israel, not a foe.
No sooner had Simon Peter and his companions brought in a huge catch of fish, then they left everything and followed him.
When for obvious reasons our political leaders will not speak, we need to be like those simple fishermen in the gospel. We don’t have the answers to these very complex questions, but we need to be willing to leave our attachments behind and speak truth to power, especially to our friends. In the face of a complete lack of human potential, we need to pray more earnestly for the reality of divine fulfillment.
I thank you for your faithfulness and love which excel all we ever knew of you.
On the day I called, you answered; you increased the strength of my soul.
All earth’s kings shall thank you when they hear the words of your mouth.
They shall sing of the Lord’s ways; ‘How great is the glory of the Lord!’
You stretch out your hand and save me, your hand will do all things for me.
Your love, O Lord, is eternal, discard not the work of your hands.
[1] https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/some-merit-but-many-obstacles-in-donald-trumps-gaza-plan/news-story/12a538e84f817a657b4418605e8ccac5
[2] T Phillips, ‘Who Won the Gaza War?’ The Tablet, 8 February 2025, 4,5.
[3] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina Series (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991), 90.
[4] https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/original/00007322.pdf
