09 February 2025 – 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time

by Fr Fabian Dicom

Imagine for a moment that you are walking along a familiar path, confident in your direction and secure in your beliefs. Then without warning, a storm hits, a metaphorical storm. A sudden loss, an unexpected betrayal or a crisis that shatters everything you thought you knew. In that raw disorientating moment, certainty vanishes and you are left holding onto nothing but quiet hope that somewhere, somewhere, somehow, God is still there.

Today’s Readings remind us that faith is not built on steady ground. It is born in disruption, in the very moments when our carefully constructed world begins to fall apart. We are not used to this, not the way we have been instructed because everything we think or at least the church tells us is absolute. But in reality, much of what we go through is unsettling. And there are disruptions.

Now let us look at the scriptures today.

Isaiah sees God’s glory and he is overwhelmed. ‘Woe to me, I am lost.‘ He thought he understood holiness until he encountered the real thing. Real holiness.

Paul recalls that he was once a persecutor of Christians. He thought he was serving God. He really thought until he realised he was fighting against God.

And then we have Peter. Peter witnesses the miraculous catch of fish but falls to his knees saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.‘ He thought he was just a fisherman until Jesus called him to something greater.

None of them, Isaiah, Paul and Peter, none of them were ready. None of them were confident. None of them were in control. Their world had just been turned upside-down.

We like to imagine faith as an upward climb. We like to imagine faith getting stronger, holier and more righteous. But in reality, faith always begins in the fall. Think about it. Think about a moment in your life when everything you thought was certain and then it all collapses. Maybe it was a sudden loss of a loved one and you were left questioning where is God. How can I handle this? Why do you do this to me? Where are you?

Or maybe it was a career failure, a relationship breaking apart or betrayal by someone you trusted. Maybe it was time when you realised that the faith you inherited, the version of God you grew up with no longer made sense in the light of what you are experiencing in the real world. Suddenly coming to church is irrelevant. 

And that is the reality. That is the struggle with a number of us and it is true. It is valid. These moments are painful and we resist them.

But today’s Readings show us something very insightful. It is precisely in these moments of collapse that God does something new. Isaiah, Paul and Peter all experienced personal crisis. But instead of abandoning them, God meets them right there, in their disorientation, in their self-doubt, in their fear and instead of rejecting them, God calls them forward.

Now why does faith so often begin in the fall? Why?

Because as long as we cling to our false self, built on ego, built on achievement, built on performance, built on control, built on proving our worth constantly, then there is no room for the deeper self that God wants to awaken in us. It gets knocked down because of our preoccupation. And that is the struggle you and I go through.

Look at Peter. Look at Peter’s reaction to Jesus. He sees a miraculous catch and realises ‘I am not in control. I don’t deserve this.‘ His instinct is to push Jesus away. That is what the ego does. It assumes, the ego assumes we must earn love. We must earn it. That we must be perfect before we can stand before God. And sometimes the ego gets us to apply to the people around us, who deserves love and who doesn’t deserve love from the Lord.

But Jesus does something remarkable. He doesn’t say ‘Yes, Peter, you are unworthy.’ He doesn’t say ‘Go fix yourself and then come back.’ Instead, he says ‘Do not be afraid. From now on, you will be catching people (catching men). Do not be afraid.‘ In other words, I see you. Not from here (points to heart). I see you. Jesus was telling Peter, ‘I see you. I got you. I know your weaknesses and I am calling you anyway.‘

We all start our faith journey with a certain understanding of God, shaped by our upbringing. Think about this very carefully. Shaped by upbringing, shaped by our culture, shaped by our experience, shaped by the religious leaders and parish communities. But at some point, life happens. And that version of God becomes too small. If God is only about rules and regulations, what happens when life feels chaotic and unpredictable? When these rules just don’t fit in anymore?

If God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, that is a narrative we are accustomed to, what happens when good people suffer?

If faith is built on certainty, what happens when we face mystery? Last Saturday, I spoke about how we cannot grasp God completely. And that’s maturity in our spiritual life that we are not certain but He is there and we believe. And there is a mystery about our faith. Uncertain.

What happens when we face doubt or an unexplainable suffering? And leaders even priests who don’t understand or don’t have this experience would discount it.

For many, this is where faith falls apart but what if these moments of disillusionment are invitations to go deeper?

Isaiah, Paul and Peter all experienced the collapse of their old way of seeing things. But instead of leaving them in despair, God opens a new door. What feels like the end is often the beginning. 

Isaiah who felt unclean becomes a Prophet. 
Paul the persecutor becomes the Greatest Evangelist.
Peter who wanted to push Jesus away becomes the Rock of the church.
None of them were qualified, none of them were ready and yet they were called.

What does this mean to us?

In truth, it is not about certainty but about learning to trust in the middle of uncertainty. If faith is not about certainty but about learning to trust in the middle of uncertainty, what does that demand of us?

Could I suggest the following:-

It means stepping into the unknown even when fear grips us. A parent sits by the bedside of a sick child, praying for strength they don’t feel they have. Someone loses their job and wonders how they will put food on the table. Another walks away from a relationship that is toxic and is breaking their spirit, terrified of what comes next.

These moments feel like falling but maybe, perhaps, they are also moments of grace. And we need to believe in grace. Not everything is logical and you know when you look into your lives there are moments of grace. Unexplainable.

Maybe this is when God whispers ‘Keep going. I am with you. I will not let you go.‘

We need to believe that. We need to have a sense of that, to be mindful of that, if we need to survive and to live with hope.

It also means confronting the reality that the faith we have inherited may not be enough for the life we are called to live.

Maybe we grew up thinking faith was all about following rules, checking the right boxes and keeping our spiritual lives neat and tidy.

Maybe we believed holiness was just about avoiding sin, saying the right prayers and staying out of trouble.

But then Jesus comes, crashing in, flipping tables, breaking boundaries, demanding more. He tells us that to follow Him means feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, defending the oppressed, healing creation. Faith was never meant to be confined to the church walls.

I know I have been saying this countless number of times. You may be fed up of hearing this but haven’t we done enough for ourselves within the church walls? Haven’t we done enough for ourselves? Much of the resources are for us. When are we going to reach out, not just one section of the parish but everyone?

The walls of the church are the nets, the fishing nets that perhaps we need to let go. The perimeter of the parish perhaps are the boats we need to follow Christ, to leave behind.

In a conversation in a WhatsApp message with a very close friend of mine, we were talking about things and she said she categorised herself as a sinner. I told her that if you are a sinner, then it is hopeful. If you are a sinner, there is a great hope because I was thinking of the Readings today. The Readings today affirm that if we are in that place, we have hope, in the falling, we can go.

But this very person whom I admire very much made her breakthrough long ago, was called by the Lord. In spite of her comfortable life, she could have a comfortable life as an academician but despite that, she immersed herself in communities, marginalised communities, stood up for the rights of people and was even imprisoned because of that.

These are the people who make changes, who can step out of the walls of the church. They are models for us. And they continue to be humble, still discerning ‘Where is the Lord leading me to?‘ That is where we are. That is what we need to continually discern.

It also means surrendering our deepest need for control and embracing the freefall of grace. We cling to our plans, we cling to our comfort, our sense of security, afraid if we let it go we will lose ourselves. But Peter had to let go of his nets. And we too need to do that.

Before he became a disciple, Paul had to let go of his certainty before he could receive mercy. We too must release our grip on status, on privilege, on seeking honour and position and disillusioned of safety. 

Perhaps what feels like failure when we strip everything off, like losing everything, is actually the moment when grace rushes in and carries us where we need to go.

It means facing the hard truth that faith is not about our own salvation. It is about the salvation of the world. If our faith does not move us to stand with the poor, to defend the displaced, to fight for those crushed by the systems of greed and power, then what kind of faith is it?

We cannot claim to follow Jesus while ignoring the migrant or the refugees whose labour goes unseen. Or the family evicted with nowhere to go. The indigenous communities where land and dignity are stripped away.

Faith that does not cost us something. Faith that does not break our hearts for the suffering of others is a faith that has grown cold. Our faith must break our hearts when we encounter people who are suffering. It must do that. If our hearts are not broken, our faith has gone cold.

Faith is not about certainty. It is about risking love. It is about walking into the unknown with nothing but that trust that God is already there. It is about being broken open, poured out, spent for the sake of something greater than ourselves.

The question this morning is ‘Are we willing?‘

Most of all, it means recognising that when everything falls apart, it is not the end. It is the moment when grace moves in.  

So instead of asking ‘Am I worthy?’, ask this instead:
Am I willing to let God undo me?

Undo me so that something new can begin. Because the moment when everything falls apart, that is the moment when something new is being born.

Amen.

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