I
spent the summer of 2007 working at the Phoebe Needles Center, which is the camp and conference center for
the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia.
As of my ordination process I was encouraged to work at the camp as a
counselor and coordinator of our nightly devotions. At the end of each week we would gather
around a camp fire and have something of an extended worship, and each week we
sang the song Here I Am, Lord. I had never heard that song before that
summer, but every single time I heard the words I would get choked up. “Whom shall I send? Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go, Lord, if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart.” That song is a big reason why I am
a priest today.
There
are two feelings that get stirred in me whenever I hear or sing that song: a feeling of incredible awe, and a feeling of
terrible inadequacy. The song takes me
back to the moment when I was called by God on Thanksgiving of 2006, and I am
once more in awe that God would make God’s presence known to me. Now, as
then, I also cannot help but also feel that I am the least qualified person to do
the work of a priest: to proclaim the
Gospel, to administer the Sacraments, and to walk with and heal the people of
God. What a comfort it has been to
realize that every clergy person I know—at least the good ones, that is—has felt
the same way.
I’ll
tell you who else felt the same way: Isaiah,
Peter, and Paul. Those same two feelings
that get stirred in me—awe and inadequacy—are also the two themes that run
through each of our Scriptures this week.
The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of
those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said: "Woe is me!
I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean
lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!"
--Isaiah 6: 4-8
Last of all, as to one untimely born, he
appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an
apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am
what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I
worked harder than any of them--though it was not I, but the grace of God that
is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come
to believe.
--I Corinthians 15: 8-11
Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the
boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into the
deep water and let down your nets for a catch." Simon answered,
"Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you
say so, I will let down the nets." When they had done this, they caught so
many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their
partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both
boats, so that they began to sink. But 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; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with
Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will
be catching people." When they had brought their boats to shore, they left
everything and followed him.
--Luke 5: 3-11
In the year King Uzziah of Judah died—roughly 742 BC—a young man named
Isaiah was visited by God and called to be a prophet to the people of Judah. He describes in great detail what that
experience was like, and it sounds pretty terrifying. When confronted with God’s glory he responds: “Woe is me!
I am lost!” Some seven centuries
later a fisherman named Simon was in the boat with his rabbi, who somehow made
it possible for enough fish to be caught in the nets of Simon and his friends
that the boats started sinking. Seeing
this play out causes Simon to fall at his rabbi’s feet and declare: “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful
man.” About a decade after that event,
in a letter to a troubled church community in Corinth, a man named Paul described
himself as “The least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle."
For
Isaiah, Peter, and Paul, their initial reactions to encountering the majesty
and power of God was their own self-deprecation. I suppose we might call it humility, but what
we see here are three individuals who were utterly petrified upon meeting God
because they had long been taught that they were unworthy of such an encounter. Yet remarkably God does not dismiss them, nor
pass judgment on them, but God takes their feelings of inadequacy and
transforms them for the purposes of transforming God’s people. Isaiah is forgiven, emboldened, and given a
word to deliver after the seraph—which literally means ‘burning one’—singes his
lips with a hot coal, and God issues the call.
Peter is told not to fear and is assured that henceforth he will be
catching people, bringing the marginalized to know the love and mercy of
God. And Paul, by God’s grace, becomes a
powerful proclaimer of God’s love to the Gentiles. You see, God encounters human beings, not to
condemn and terrify, but to transform and call!
Brothers
and sisters, what we do each week, gathering together, breaking bread and
sharing in the Scriptures, is not just some act of remembrance. The love of God proclaimed in those
Scriptures is more than some awesome and awful story. It is a
transformative power! Look what it did to Isaiah, Peter, and Paul! Imagine what it will do for you! We often
shudder in fear, echoing their words. We
are lost. We are sinful. We are the least. We are not worthy to bear the responsibility
of proclaiming God’s redemptive love to the world; we are not even worthy so much as to
gather up the crumbs under God’s table, to borrow the words from the Prayer of Humble Access.
Well, if it were solely up to us, no, we could not do it; we certainly
would not be up to the task. And if it were about our worthiness, well compared
to the glory and majesty of God, sure we come up way, way short in that
department. Yet as the Body of Christ, assembled together and nourished
by Christ’s own body and blood, empowered by the Holy Spirit proclaimed in the
Gospel, we are drawn into the circle of God’s grace, made new creatures by that grace,
and given the power to share that grace with a hurting world.
