I have served on the ministries committee of the Metropolitan Chicago synod for almost nine years. Before that I served on the same committee for the northern Ill Synod for three or four years. The bulk of the work that these committees do is to interview and evaluate candidates for professional ministry in the church. In the Lutheran tradition we believe the call to ordained ministry is both internal and external. In other words, the individual themselves must perceive that God has called them to this work and the church affirms that calling. Over the course of four or more years committee members meet with candidates many times to engage them in this process of discernment. Over the years of my work on the committee I have probably been involved with over 150 candidates for professional ministry. All of them have been asked the same question. "How do you know you have been called?" Answers to that range as wide as the backgrounds of the candidates that come to ministry. The one certainty that I have is that God uses many and various ways to interrupt people's lives to get their attention.
I have had people answer that question by beginning, "Well, when I was in prison", I had one person tell me that following a committee meeting at church they were compelled by some force to go to the small chapel off the sanctuary to pray. While they were there the room was bathed in light and they saw Jesus who spoke to them. From that moment they were sure that they were called. I have had people tell me that they were called at 12 or 16 years of age but that they ignored the call to pursue stock trading or business or architecture. So now when they are 45 or 50 or 55 they have felt that they have been given another chance to do what they should have all along. More often than not the call is a subtle process, a pastor queries, "Have you ever thought about the ministry?" A friend at work laughingly jabs, "You should have been a priest." A Bible Study half heartedly begun opens up new thinking and a thirst develops to know and understand far more. An act of service grows and grows into greater and greater commitment and desire to do more and more. The call can be a gentle nudge or an overwhelming pull. God approaches people in many and various ways. Our lessons today underline just that point.
The first lesson is a very famous story, the story of the call to the prophet Isaiah. If you remember as it was read, it is the very dramatic story of a vision that Isaiah had in the temple In the vision, God is so great and so grand that God's robe seems to fill the whole temple, just the hem of God's robe fills the temple. Isaiah smells the incense from the altar and then says: "It's like the very pivot of the foundation of the temple shook." Isaiah said: "Woe is me for I am a person of unclean lips and I dwell among people of unclean lips and I have seen the Holy One." Then there is this interesting dialogue; one of the seraphs, one of the attendants on the divine, takes a red hot coal from the altar and presses it on Isaiah's lips and says: "Be clean." Then a voice says: "Who will go?" and Isaiah says: "Send me." Isaiah's response to the Epiphany, this vision of God, was that Isaiah felt unworthy. Isaiah sees God and says: Woe is me. I'm unclean, my mouth says the wrong words, I am among people that are that kind of people. Isaiah felt he was not worthy, not equal to the task, not righteous enough, that he was too ordinary.
Let's talk about the Gospel lesson. Actually, the story of Jesus' call of the first disciples, as Luke tells it, is a story full of nuances that we can easily miss. According to Luke's telling of the gospel, Jesus was already working in his public ministry long enough to have a following but he still has no disciples. He has crowds that follow but no close associates. One day he is teaching along the shores of the Sea of Galilee and there people had come in such great numbers that, as I picture it and as Luke tells it, Jesus is threatened to be pushed into the water by the press of the masses. So he commandeers a fishing boat and pulls away just a little bit from the shore to a safe distance so that he could teach. He teaches and then dismisses the crowd. Then the interesting nuances begin. Jesus tells Peter, who is the owner of the boat and a professional fisher, to go out into the deep water and cast his net.
When we read that we tend not to be struck by something that would have been very striking for first century people. You see professional folk who gained their living by fishing, fished at night, not in the daytime. Think about it. Those were the days before refrigerators or newspapers, so what do you do with the fish? You fished at night; you took your catch to the market first thing in the morning; people bought what they bought and you threw the rest away because it quickly became inedible. You didn't fish in the daytime. You fish at night, market it first thing in the morning, you tended your nets, washed them and fixed them, and did those kinds of things. Then you got a little sleep and you started the cycle all over again. Remember in the beginning of the story Peter and his partner were repairing their nets? They'd fished all night and hadn't caught anything, didn't have anything to take to market. It was morning and they were repairing the nets and Jesus says go out and fish. Not only does he say go out and fish at the wrong time of day, but what are you going to do if you catch anything? The market is closed now. Not only is that strange, but Jesus said go into the deep water.
Fishing in the first century in the Sea of Galilee was a shallow water activity. These boats are not big schooners; these boats, to us, would be glorified rowboats. They are small vessels and the nets that they have are not great gigantic nets that stretch over a footfall field size piece of the lake; they are nets that can be handled out of an oversize rowboat and can basically be handled by a couple of people. So you fish along the shore where it is shallow, where your net could actually do some good, not out in the water so deep that the net was hardly significant. Jesus said in the middle of the day go out to the deep water and fish and they did and they caught lots of fish. Then, as you know, Jesus follows with his memorable statement: " Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." What happens with Peter? You notice, he falls down on his knees and says I am a sinner, I'm not worthy. Do you hear the connection there between Isaiah and Peter? Very different deals; Isaiah's grand vision, Peter fishing; but both of them experienced the power of the divine breaking into regular ordinary life and in response to that experience they felt dreadfully unworthy.
What I want to say to you this morning is that, just as Isaiah was called, just as Peter and his partners were called, so are you. Now probably you've not had a vision like Isaiah but somewhere in the course of your life, Jesus Christ has put a claim on you and I know that for the simple reason that you are here. You see, you; we; are a minority. In Ill, in Lake County on this weekend, if you total all the people that worship in churches and synagogues, and mosques, you will have much fewer than half the people in our county. Those that worship are a minority, those that worship are rowing against the stream of this society. You are rowing against the stream by being here. Somehow, somehow out of the majority, out of the regular way that most people live their lives, you have been tugged in, invited here, you've been called. Don't try to escape it!
Don't think it's just for the Isaiahs, the Peters or the professional ministers of the world. You are here; there is no other evidence needed. You have been separated from the majority, called, claimed. If you're like me and like most, when you think of it that way, you'll think: "Not me, I'm not much; I'm not very pious; I'm not very holy; I'm a person of unclean lips; I dwell among a people of unclean lips." But God has called you and is calling you nonetheless. In my first church, at Nebo an older congregation on the northwest side of Chicago, we decided one year to do a vacation Bible School and open it up and advertise to the whole neighborhood. There had been a nice little VBS of church people for many years but this year we wanted to get the community to know our church. We were overwhelmed by the response. Clearly we didn't have enough adults to teach so we began beating the bushes. I remember asking Shirley Stoewsand. She'd never taught, had one grown daughter. The first day, of our eight day VBS she had 23 kindergartners. On the whole a little much. "I don't know if I can do this, pastor." We worked out a compromise, we gave her two teen aged helpers and ten minutes off in the middle of the morning to have a cigarette. On the last day the children left the class hugging her and she signed up to teach the next year. God calls us in funny ways. We may feel inadequate or unprepared for the task but there is a need and it must be filled.
The world is full of people who are hungry, who are lost, who are confused, who are hurting, who are sick, who have been in a nursing home for weeks and weeks and years and years and no one has visited. On and on and on the list goes. We are the people, we are the people that, for some reason none of us can explain, have been chosen, who have been selected, who have been claimed to be the spokespersons for Jesus Christ. We are the ones who have the message: "Jesus loves you and so do I." If we don't say it, who will? Jesus is still saying to each of us: "Come into the deep water." Come out a little further than you're used to going, take a few risks and throw out your nets. Jesus is still saying: "Follow me, follow me," and it is our ear that that invitation is directed to. The folks who are called are in this room. Hear the call where the water is deep.
Amen.