Hebrew Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-8
Gospel Reading: Luke 5:1-11
- Have you ever woken up in the morning, or laid awake at night, with an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy –
- You go over the stupid things you said or did yesterday with regret
- You think about how your skill set has become obsolete
- Or compare yourself with somebody else who seems so much more accomplished
- You consider the challenges in front of you and see yourself as just a pile of weakness in the face of it all
- And you almost can’t get out of bed because the challenges are so huge and you are so small and incompetent to deal with them?
Or is that just me that happens to?
- Whatever has happened in the world around you, you may sometimes have the sensation that you are just not qualified to deal with it
- Some of us may be feeling this about the mounting threats all around us in the culture right now.
- For some people in Los Angeles, they are facing a complete rebuilding of their lives, businesses and churches after the fires.
- You might remember a time in your personal life when the challenges just came too fast and hard to deal with gracefully.
- The quote attributed to Mother Teresa says, “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish God didn’t trust me so much.”
- The lectionary gives us two stories today that feature people who were hearing a Call from God in the midst of facing their own deep sense of inadequacy.
- One was the prophet Isaiah, who was called to be a prophet at a time when his nation of Judah was on a downward spiral toward destruction;
- Their king of 52 years, King Uzziah, who had ruled during a relatively prosperous time, had died of leprosy, and the nation was plunged into mourning and uncertainty;
- Which was made worse by the fact that their neighbors the Assyrians had begun preparing for war against them and their neighbor nations
- With this frightening backdrop, Isaiah was asked to prophecy to his people, to deliver some bad news
- And to make matters more difficult, God warned Isaiah that the people wouldn’t listen to his prophecies;
- and that they would keep descending into a spiral of disaster as their nation as laid waste by their enemies.
- In other words, God says, “Go preach, Isaiah; tell the hard truth. But don’t expect anyone to actually listen to you.” Kind of like being a journalist these days!
- Isaiah responded the way other prophets had responded: Moses, Jonah, Jeremiah…by saying “I can’t possibly do that. I’m completely unqualified! I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.”
- So God sends a seraph, an angel, to cleanse Isaiah’s lips with a burning coal from the altar fire; to purify Isaiah’s speech so he will have the power to tell the truth, even when nobody listens.
- And then, despite all his perceived inadequacies, Isaiah says yes to God, and is sent out to preach to a nation who would ignore his warnings.
- The other character we hear about today is Peter, the fisherman.
- On the day Jesus came to town to preach, Peter was already having a bad day
- He had been out all one sleepless night trying to catch fish and had come back to shore with an empty net.
- This meant no income, no food for his family that day, no self-respect
- And then Jesus asks to use his boat, because unlike Peter, Jesus is having his 15 minutes of fame!
- He is so popular, the crowds are closing in
- so he has to stand in a boat off the shore in order to be able to be seen and heard by the crowd as he speaks.
- The boat incident is how the two meet, and after the preaching is over, Jesus tells Peter to take his boat back out and do more fishing.
- Peter argues that its hopeless; he is a hopeless fisherman; he has searched everywhere; they fish are not biting; he’s a failure.
- To which Jesus says, “Just try one more time.”
- And so he does, and he mysteriously reels in a net so full of fish he needs all the fishermen in town to help lug it in;
- And presumably, the whole town eats well that night.
- Peter, seeing he’s in the presence of genuine mystical greatness, shrinks from with Jesus because he feels so inadequate next to him. “Get away from me, Jesus, I’m a sinful person,” he says. I’m not the kind of person you should hang around.
- He’s a small town nobody, who can’t even adequately feed his family
- And here comes Jesus, who is wise, well spoken, performs miracles, and even seems to know exactly where the fish are biting.
- Peter cannot help but compare himself unfavorably with this powerful holy person.
- But Jesus brushes off Peter’s feelings of inadequacy, and just says, “Don’t be afraid. From now on, you’ll be fishing for people.”
- And Peter follows, lugging all his inadequacies behind him.
- We see those inadequacies pretty clearly all through the rest of the gospels.
- Peter is always trying to be Teacher’s Pet, and he gets himself in trouble again and again, trying to have the right answer and be the best
- He falls in the water when he’s trying to walk on it like Jesus does
- He gets corrected for trying to protect Jesus on the way to Jerusalem
- and for pulling out a sword when the soldiers arrest Jesus in the garden
- And then he denies he even knows Jesus after Jesus is arrested
- Peter fails and fails, but he manages to keep following
- And what’s weird is, Jesus doesn’t just tolerate Peter, he blesses and elevates him,
- Jesus calls Peter the “Rock” who will be strong for the other disciples,
- And it appears that Peter did mature as a leader over time.
- Both Isaiah and Peter had to come to the point of realizing that their weaknesses were not enough to disqualify them from serving God’s purpose.
- God needed them, in spite of, maybe even because of their weaknesses.
- These Call stories should be making us uncomfortable right now;
- They make me uncomfortable!
- What, exactly is God asking me to do or be right now, in the face of so much change and loss around me?
- And I would say that’s a question not just for us as individuals, which is a good place to start,
- But also for our churches, for your church, Lyndale.
- I don’t think God asks people to do things we’re truly unqualified for.
- In fact, I think there’s a holy chemistry in the way God can match your spiritual gifts to a particular need
- But sometimes it feels like we just have no power to share, no direction forward.
- I wish I could be a Moses (the spiritual leader out front holding the water back with my arms)
- but maybe I’m an Aaron (the speechwriter off stage),
- maybe you’re Miriam (the song-leader with the tambourine!)
- You might not be the “Rock” who leads others like Peter
- Or you might be a pebble in the shoe of the oppressor that makes them stumble and fall!
- You are not qualified to stand up in this particular moment because you are powerful or virtuous
- Your qualifications come from listening to God’s call and bringing your whole, real self to that call.
- And there is daring in this—you may not be courageous or successful,
- but you are practicing to be more the person God knows you’re capable of, even if you can’t see it yet.
- Isaiah and Peter each found their ways to say yes, despite their incompetencies, sins, failures.
- Their inadequacies didn’t stop them, because they never had to work alone.
- Isaiah was echoed by other great prophet who passed the truth from one generation to the next;
- And Peter was joined by other fishermen, and many other disciples
- They all needed each other, and Jesus needed all of them, with all their weaknesses and strengths.
- I don’t feel qualified to preach into the time we’re in, but I have been here before.
- I guess one thing that comforts me is that God called a lot of other inadequate people before me and somehow made history move in a positive direction in spite of us all.
- If all those inadequate, bumbling prophets and fishermen in the bible could manage to carry the Truth forward across hundreds, even thousands of years, maybe there’s hope for you and me, too.
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