Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”  When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.  [Luke’s Gospel 5.10-11]

The disciples’ nets are empty, having worked fruitlessly all night.  

The images on our screens this week of Palestinian desolation in Gaza are arresting, leading to despair. Where does one start to rebuild? More critically, where do you find your home, your street, your neighbourhood?

The glib suggestion about removing the Palestinians altogether and creating a beach resort was the remark from someone not understanding, or ignoring, profound pain – the immeasurable agony of loss of friends and family, of home, community and future.

Please don’t suggest that this issue is patently more complex than my brief preceding paragraphs; the simpleminded political solution offered is where this week’s problem begins. The cruel irony of proposing that the Gazans might be removed by train to somewhere else ridicules not just their history and sense of place, but the obscene anniversary the world has just acknowledged about the liberation and closure of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

We cannot worship this week – any week – without attending to the world in which we live. We cannot speak of hope without asking what does hope look like for people fearful of the next hour, or the next day.

I have been reading enough recently to be confident that there are pieces of hope the size of mustard seeds being sown in Palestine and Israel. They are sown not by the hands of missionaries from abroad, but by locals – Israeli and Palestinian, Jewish and Muslim and Christian and none – who have lost much, and refuse to succumb to despair.

Even if I had wisdom which I was arrogant enough to offer, more than seven decades of pain will not be addressed, resolved and healed by more punishment and vengeance. We cannot permit this week – and the years before and the stories to come – to pass unacknowledged.

We must pray for, and speak of, and embody, justice.

The Gospel reading this week addresses the way people feel when they encounter Jesus. Jesus’ new disciples are confronted with their mortality and their frailty; they come with nothing and discover the fear and wonder of hope at Jesus’ hands.

The word which I found arresting this week is when Jesus invited them to follow him, leaving their impossibly full nets – and everything else – behind. Jesus called them to be “catching people, alive”, a word in deliberate contrast with their trade.

As we watch the cataclysm in Gaza being removed stone by stone, and slowly restored; as we grieve over the birthplace of Jesus being scarred consistently by war; what does it mean for us to serve and attend to people, especially those in need, to offer them safety? What does it mean when salvation is not just an idea, but the offering of wholeness itself – here in and the life to come?