The Rev. Canon Bill Lewellis
Feb. 4, 2007
Isaiah 6:1-8 + 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 + Luke 5:1-11
May God’s word be in our minds and on our hearts … and on my lips. Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people. Amen.
Souper Day of Caring
Today is … both the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany and Super Bowl Sunday. Some of your teenage members have put the focus on a national “S-o-u-p-e-r Day of Caring” about hunger and poverty in local communities. They know we, too, care … and they will ask us to help. This morning, they will also have completed a 30-hour retreat during which they have been fasting . learning and praying about hunger.
Hear what the Spirit is saying …
I suspect you’ve heard some great sermons. You may not recognize, however, that the greatest sermons you’ve heard have been those you preached to yourselves … while the preacher preached on … about something or other.
How do I know this? There was a time, whenever someone complimented my sermon, especially if it was one I thought was pretty good myself, I’d ask if there was something in particular that got their attention. (That’s called fishing for a second compliment … or, perhaps, betting double or nothing.) Inevitably, I’d hear something quite insightful that I didn’t say.
Since then, my intuition has been that, when anyone tells me they liked the sermon I preached, you’re likely telling me it was simply the occasion for the great sermon you, as active listeners, preached to yourselves. That’s good. It means you were working as hard as I was.
So, let’s get to work.
Isaiah “heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send and who will go for us?’ And [Isaiah] said, ‘Here am I; send me’” Here am I. Here I am. Send me. Send me.
Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.
Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Put out into the deep water.” Deep water. Where is the deep water in your life? What does it mean to strike out into the deep? Where are those places you’d rather not go?
Hear what the Spirit is saying …
Simon Peter answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. But, upon your word…”
Hear what the Spirit is saying …
“They caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break … When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.’ For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken.”
All three readings this morning contain confessions of unworthiness. “Your sin is blotted out,” the angel told Isaiah. St. Paul tells us that he was unfit to be called an apostle. And Peter: “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” It’s as though all three – Isaiah, Paul and Peter – felt threatened by the holy. But God won’t go away. Their sinfulness won’t keep God away.
Hear what the Spirit is saying …
Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Don’t be afraid.”
Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.
Jesus said to Simon Peter, “From now on you will be catching people.” That’s from Luke’s gospel. In Matthew and Mark, we hear this as “I will make you fishers of people.”
I’ve never been keen on either metaphor. Catching people. Becoming fishers of people. Though I don’t take the Bible literally – no one really takes the Bible literally – I’ve still heard both phrases as just too manipulative. Until I heard that the verb in the original Greek text came to mean “to restore to life and strength, to revive, to keep alive.” Don’t be afraid, Jesus said to Peter. “From now on, you will be restoring people to life and strength.” Captivated by God, attentive to God, swept off our feet by God, we will restore people to life and strength.
Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.
“They left everything and followed him.” They followed Jesus … after having been in the boat with him. The area of the church building in which you worship is called the nave. “Ship,” in Latin. That’s not simply coincidental. Returning to land, having been captivated by Jesus on the lake, they return changed, freed from their sinfulness released from whatever may have gotten in their way of following Jesus.
Hear what the Spirit is saying …
Epiphanies
Do you know how an epiphany works? It’s not God occasionally showing up. It’s we occasionally noticing.
God is ever tapping on our heads – ever ready also to be heartfelt – trying to get our attention. Once in a while we look up and say, Huh??? – or Aha!!! That’s an epiphany!
Isn’t it one of life’s greatest mysteries that God has a hard time getting our attention … while allowing us to be free?
My favorite theologian, a long time ago, still, was an English Canadian Jesuit who taught in Rome. He was an academic. A theologian’s theologian. That’s what you say when you don’t understand what a theologian is saying. He never wrote anything one might find on WalMart rack. Nothing like The Purpose-Driven Life … or Church. Surely, nothing like the Left Behind apocalyptic trash. Not even anything like Taking the Plunge, Anne Kitch’s wonderful book of practical theology on baptism and parenting.
I think that almost everything Bernard Lonergan wrote related in some way to one of his early books, Insight, a philosophical work on the experience of understanding. It was an attempt to help readers experience what actually happens within us when we understand something for the first time. The Aha moment. Probably the most exciting, fulfilling and satisfying moment next to … well … whatever.
I’ve slightly adapted what I think of as his Aha mantra, though I suspect he would never have called it that. It goes like this: Be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible, be in love … and, if necessary, change. Had not one of my best friends, your interim dean, imposed a time restriction on me, I would attempt to explain how that could be a religious rule of life. But, let that be your job. Preach the great sermon to yourself: Be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible, be in love … and, if necessary, change.
Might our lives be transformed right where we are, with the people we know and love? What wonders, what miracles, what epiphanies challenge our expectations? Look around. Be attentive to God. God is showing up. Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.
[From the Collect for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany] Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
