The new series of “The Apprentice” started two weeks ago on the BBC. I know this because I’ve come across the trailers and watched the last two minutes or so of the episodes when I’ve switched my telly on to see “The News at Ten”. I used to watch “The Apprentice” for its quirky entertainment value. For those unfamiliar with the show, at the start of the series, a bunch of people present their massively overestimated talents, skills, and achievements, each confident that they deserve Lord Sugar’s prize money. Then, throughout the show, this all comes crashing down, effectively revealing the contenders’ self-evaluations as bonkers. I realised that the “entertainment value” derived from my semi-conscious comparison of the participants’ apparent stupidity and subsequent feeling of my superiority. That’s clever TV editing for you in action. I realised such a manipulation put me on a par with the show’s contenders. Subconsciously, I felt I could do better than them, which was precisely their thinking about their fellow participants.
The thread connecting today’s readings seems to be the polar opposite. The main characters had a strong sense of their unworthiness. The prophet Isaiah was overwhelmed by the vision of God’s glory: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Paul, in his letter to the Christian community in Corinth, recalled his shameful past: “I am […] unworthy to be called an Apostle because I persecuted the Church of God.” Then Simon the fisherman was overwhelmed by the unexpectedly rich catch: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” I would risk comparing the latter two, Paul and Simon, to the contenders on “The Apprentice”. By his own admission, the first one was so full of himself and his self-righteousness that he actively persecuted those he disagreed with. Simon’s response to Jesus’ order to drop the nets was dismissive: “We toiled all night and took nothing!” The characters’ unshakable “certainties” fell apart to reveal something incomparably greater than themselves. The prophet Isaiah described it movingly as the vision of an angel who “flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.’” Paul put it beautifully in simple words: “By the grace of God, I am what I am.”
The characters’ respective crashing down, Paul’s on his way to Damascus and Simon’s huge catch, happened not for the sake of their humiliation but to put them on the solid ground of reality, where their lives could be built up. They were set on the road to “finding themselves”, but not in the modern meaning of the phrase: hollow and self-centred, but by God’s way, namely, in service to others. In the case of Isaiah, Paul and Simon, they were called to a specific mission that’s hardly reflected in our lives. However, when we venture outside their narrow job description as preachers and into a broader way that God’s grace works within us, then we can see how the same process can apply to our lives. To that purpose, let’s focus on Simon’s story for clarity.
Having worked hard all night, he must have been gutted to return to shore with nothing to show for it. The tedious job of cleaning the nets must have been more tiresome than usual because no fish were caught. I suppose he’d have liked to finish it as quickly as possible and go home to get some rest. Instead, Simon was approached by an itinerant preacher who wanted to use his boat as a pulpit. Too polite to refuse (we’ve all been there…), Simon had to abandon his menial work, sit down in the boat and was somehow forced to listen to Jesus. Something similar can happen in our lives when an unexpected turn of events can throw us out of our routines. Then we wonder, “Why has this happened to me?” Sitting quietly in the boat and mulling over his own misfortune, Simon must have heard something in Jesus’ preaching that answered his questions. We know that because when Jesus told him to cast the nets, after his instinctive protestation, “we toiled all night and took nothing!” Simon quickly added: “But at your word I will let down the nets.” This is what we call “active faith”. It’s a dynamic response to our challenging reality, enlightened and directed by religious principles, morals and ethics. When I say “I have faith”, it only means I know those principles, morals and ethics, but faith only comes alive and is transformative when I apply those to my actions. St James warned us in his letter: “Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (2:17) The final act of Jesus’ meeting with Simon in today’s gospel was a call to embark on a completely new and different mission: “from now on you will be catching men.” The prospect was so scary that Jesus had to reassure Simon: “Do not be afraid.”
Recently, an old friend of mine reminisced about how unsure she had felt almost three decades ago when I asked her, then a beginner guitar player, to help me run a school retreat. She thought I was mad (she was probably right…), but there was a method to my madness. Unless you run a wealthy football club or a successful business, you can hardly afford to employ fully trained and experienced professionals. The workaround is to grow talent from scratch. You see the potential and help the holder see that, too. You nurture the talent and help it grow and develop to its full potential through encouragement and constructive criticism. You help the person to overcome difficulties and to get over inevitable failures. Eventually, the talent has imperceptibly developed, and now flourishes and brings forth fruit. This was the method successfully employed by Jesus with his selected disciples, whom he called apostles. It’s the method that can make our parish community flourish too.
There are various reasons why people don’t volunteer. One is a perceived lack of time because we are so busy. The other is a sense of unworthiness: “I have neither useful skills nor talents” or “I’m not good enough.” It all might be true here and now. But you can be better tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and in the years to come when you challenge yourself and embark on the journey of discovery. “I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ Then I said, ‘Here I am! Send me.’”
