+ 5thSunday after the Epiphany – February 10th, 2019 +
Series C: Isaiah 6:1-8; 1 Corinthians 14:12-20; Luke 5:1-11
Beautiful Savior Lutheran, Milton
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
God is the God who calls.
God called Isaiah to be his prophet, to declare God’s word of warning and promise to Israel.
God called Peter, James, and John to leave everything behind – the nets, fish, and boats – to be his disciples, to hear, teach, and proclaim his word to all people.
God calls you too. Calls you his adopted, holy child in Baptism. Calls you pardoned in holy absolution. Calls you to fed and forgiven in his body and blood in the Lord’s Supper. He calls you to faith in Jesus, and to live out that faith in whatever vocations he places us into.
Our Lord calls us the same way he did Isaiah and the disciples. By his Word. Jesus’ Word that cleanses us of sin, calls us his own, and sends us out in our callings with his Word (in our hearts and minds, and on our lips).
On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”
You can probably imagine what Peter and the other fishermen were thinking, at this point. Perhaps muttering to one another. “Who does this guy think he is? He’s just a rabbi carpenter from Nazareth. What does he know about fishing anyway? It’s a waste of time fishing in the deep in midday. Doesn’t he know it’s easier to catch fish in the shallows toward nightfall when they come up to feed?
“Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!”, Peter calls out. “But at your word I will let down the nets.”
This is rather remarkable if you think about it. Simon Peter trusts the Word of Jesus over and against his own experience as a fishermen. He has no good reason to let out the nets in the daylight in deep water except for Jesus’ Word. Yet, there’s something different about Jesus’ Word. Peter has heard him preaching in the synagogues. Saw him heal his own mother-in-law. Witnessed Jesus cast out demons.
“At your word I will let down the nets.”
Perhaps we’ve stood in Peter’s sandals before. Just when everything, every one, and every experience in life seems to be running the opposite way of God’s promises, something unexpected and undeserved happens. That’s how Jesus works for us too – all by grace.
So they let down the nets. And to Peter’s surprise, the fish swam in like little kids to ice cream. The nets began to burst. The boats began to sink. And as Peter looked at the fish, flopping around in his boat; looked at Jesus. And this big, tough, fisherman fell to his knees crying out…
“Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”
In that moment Peter saw Jesus for who he is. He was more than a carpenter, rabbi from Nazareth. It also revealed Peter for who he was, an unholy person in the presence of the holy God. He fell to his knees. He confessed. Not his sins.Not the fights with his brother, the bickering with his wife, his greed for gain, his discouragement over a fruitless night of labor, or whatever. He doesn’t simply say “I have sinned,” but “I am a sinner.” That’s what he is. That’s what you and I are as well.
With Isaiah, we come into God’s holy presence and confess, “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.” A string of broken commandments stands as evidence against us. And all we can do is what Isaiah and Simon Peter did –confess it. We are sinful and unclean, in our thought, our words, our deeds, in what we do, in what we don’t do. Sinful and unclean. Simon Peter knew it; Isaiah knew it; we know it too.
But then something unexpected, undeserved, and truly amazing happens. Jesus did not depart from Simon Peter. Our Lord did not let Isaiah wallow in his uncleanness: he sent a seraphim with a burning coal from the altar. And neither does he depart from us in our sin. Instead, he atones for it. Jesus jumps in the sinking boat of this world with us, to bring us into his holy ark, the church.
The holy one of Israel becomes unholy for us. The sinless one takes on our sin. Jesus departs to the cross with all of our sin, doubt, disease, and death so that he will never depart from us.
“Do not be afraid”, Jesus declared to Peter. The same words the angels said to the shepherds at Jesus’ birth, and the disciples at Jesus’ resurrection, and from Jesus when he appeared that Easter Sunday. Do not be afraid.
Jesus does the same for you here today that he did for Isaiah in the temple. He baptizes you with the fire of the Holy Spirit. He burnishes your lips with the hot coal of forgiveness in the form of His body given into death to save you; his blood shed for you as the atoning sacrifice of your sins. He puts the Word of forgiveness, the Word of Absolution, into your ears which are the doorway to the heart. Faith comes by hearing the Word.
“Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
“Don’t be afraid: from now on you will be catching men,” Jesus tells Peter, James, and John. They were caught, called, and sent. To catch men alive in the net of Jesus’ death and resurrection in the deeps for the lost, the lonely, the last ones. For us. Whom Jesus also catches, calls, and sends by His Word.
Trusting in his Word, his ways, his time, not ours. His Word and His ways. His outrageous, free, abundant forgiveness, more abundant than the fish in the nets. His Baptism, Supper, Forgiveness, and Word of Life. Snatching sinners out of the depths to life and freedom.
God is the God who calls. Isaiah. The disciples. You and me. Caught. Called. Sent. All with the Word of Christ Crucified for you.
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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