Fifth Epiphany
Is. 6:1-8; I Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11
I was inspired by Garrison Keillors annual joke show on Prairie Home Companion last night. .How many Christians does it take to change a light bulb--Three but they're really one.
Why did Jesus go to China town? Because he loves mi-so.
What's a fish without an eye? F-shshshshsh And finally
A guy had been feeling down for so long that he finally decided to see a psychiatrist...He went there, lay on the couch, spilled his guts then waited for the profound wisdom of the psychiatrist to make him feel better. The psychiatrist asked a few questions, took some notes then sat thinking in silence for a few minutes with a puzzled look on his face. Suddenly, he looked up with an expression of delight and said, "Um, I think your problem is low self-esteem. It is very common among losers."
I'm really sorry. I don't tell jokes very well, but my last couple of sermons has been kind of lectury so I thought I needed a change up and that last joke is going to be the topic for the day. Self esteem or rather its counterpart unworthiness.
Let me back up a bit. All three of our lessons today have to do with the call of God to different people and they have for the past week or so. Somebody asked me at Bible Study this week why I just didn't share that bit of information so you the congregation could know what to be looking for in these lessons. I had to admit that I don't work weeks in advance so I didn't know that we were having a whole series of call lessons until I read these texts on Monday.
But here they are today--three different experiences of God's call. First we've got Isaiah who has a vision in the temple. His vision is complete with throne rooms and winged seraphim calling to one another. Their voices make the doors shake and Isaiah is almost overcome with the incense.
Then we get Paul's mention of his call. He doesn't explicitly tell the story but we've heard it before. This very heady, rigid man Saul is on the road to Damascus when he is encountered by a blinding light. Jesus appears in the light and asks him, "Why are you persecuting me?" A man of the book is not used to such revelatory experiences and he falls down blind. When Ananias comes to heal him he ends up seeing things he'd not seen before and he changes his name to Paul. It's all there in Acts.
Finally we've got the call of Simon Peter. Now this is interesting to me because this amazing haul of fish comes after Jesus has healed Peters mother in law who everybody thought was half dead. That didn't do it for Peter but Jesus hauling in two nets full of fish makes a believer out of him. Go figure.
The call for each of these folks is really quite different. For Isaiah the call comes in a very spiritual way for Simon Peter its right in the midst of his everyday experience. He's caught a lot of fish before but never this many. Maybe that says something to all of us. The call comes in different ways--different things cause awe in us. We have our breath taken away, our hearts pound, our knees shake at different things. Which causes me to ask the question? What awes you?
I remember talking to Linda Johnson about six years ago. I've talked to her since, mind you but this time is was just before Doug and I took a trip to Paris. Linda went on and on about Notre Dam cathedral. She talked about the gorgeous windows, and the side chapels and the sculptures. I remember at the time thinking--I saw that when I was in Paris in college. I don't remember it like that at all in fact I don't remember it. So thinking I was older now and more religious and certainly more receptive to art I made a special point of going back to Notre Dame. I hate to admit this, especially because it makes me sound so common--it was nice. A little dark and cramped for my tastes. Needless to say it didn't knock my socks off or create the sense of awe that Linda and so many others have had through the years
Doug and I are going to Sedona next week and numerous people have told us that we'll only be three hours from the Grand Canyon and we just have to go see it. I can imagine six hours in a car, to stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon and say, "Yep that's a pit."
This is as much as to say we are not all awed by the same things. What awes you? My Dad always says he gets a lump in his throat coming up the ramp and seeing the sun shining on Wrigley field. Maybe what awes you is an amazing drum solo by??? Or a Bach chorale. All the experiences are different but all have the same effect.
In our lessons today all three individuals have an experience of awe that leaves them aware of their smallness and worthlessness in relationship to God's greatness and grace. Isaiah, "Woe is me, I am lost, I am a man of unclean lips. Paul, "I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle." Simon Peter, "Go away from me lord for I am a sinful man." The question is "Does God ever awe us anymore?" Back to our sad little joke, do we ever really feel like losers in the presence of God anymore? Or are we just so assured of our capacity to harness the atom and influence the global climate that we have no opportunity to be awed by God anymore?
When I was in seminary I was privileged to have a class from a great theologian, Joseph Sittler. When I had him as a professor he had already been retired from the University of Chicago for years and was slumming it by teaching an occasional class at LSTC. I'm sure he was into his 80's he was virtually blind, wearing glasses so thick and distorting that you couldn't see his eyes. He brought notes to class but never looked at them preferring to tip his head up and peer into space like he was reading an invisible teleprompter. This brilliant man could always bring profound ideas exactly into clarity with honest and homespun example. I remember one lecture. He was talking to us about preaching. He was enjoining us to respect the people in our congregations. In our day and age he said you can't just moralize at them haranguing them with what's right and wrong--no he said you just lay a proposition out there before them, an alternate vision and invite them to pick it up. And then he put his finger up in the air and touched his lips like he always did when he was going to quote something and he broke into the old confession that uses the words from Psalm 22, "I am a worm and no man unworthy to come into your presence O Lord" and then he chuckled and wagged that finger and said "But, he said, you have to acknowledge we're pretty powerful worms."
What is it today that compels us to admit that we are a speck, a worm in the presence of God? What is it that can cause us to turn from a lifestyle centered on our selfish desires and embrace the purposes of God?
Peter, out there in the deep, thought he wanted fish. But then he got fish, more fish than he could have dreamed of and realized that the fish were no longer important. When do the things we think we're concerned about pale in comparison to the grand call of God.
The kids musical last week "Epiphany of the Planets" did a creative and thoughtful job of suggesting the concerns we have, the things we think we want that, when stacked up against the light of the world don't hold a candle. Saturn's rings of glamour, Mars dependence on war, Venus' fame Mercury's hot cars, Neptune's easy surfing lifestyle all are left wanting in comparison to God's love made human born in Bethlehem.
God's call comes to us in many and various ways--sometimes in the events of our days sometimes in the extraordinary. We stand before God unworthy, unworthy to receive the grace that's offered. But still God calls us, uses us, empowers us.
So the ball is in our court. Dare we answer, "Here I am, send me" Dare we Leave everything and follow him.
Amen