Year C
Luke 5:1-11
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
Defining Moments For the Kingdom of God
We all experience defining moments in our lives. For me, the birth of my daughter and later the births of my grandchildren, my ordination to the diaconate and then as a presbyter, moments that have defined the direction of my life. Today we encounter several individuals who experienced defining moments in their lives. In keeping with the Epiphany theme, as they responded with passion and in a certain way, they participated in extending the kingdom of God into this world. In those eye opening moments, the texts opens our eyes to see Christian response to all that God has done through the ages for those who seek to participate in extending God’s kingdom.
Like those in our texts today who heard and responded to God’s call. We are called to rededicate ourselves to the call of this extending kingdom of God ministry. For many, the pattern of such a call may first be a commission where we begin to know in our hearts and minds that God is calling us to kingdom ministry, some, move forward with a call while others may temporarily or permanently reject a call. God continues to reach out to give reassurance through the Holy Spirit and for some even possibly a sign. I imagine Isaiah today who definitely received a sign in a vision, was praying that the Lord was talking to anyone but him.
Written by the prophet, the text today recounts the story of his call to prophecy. In the year of the death of King Uzziah, 738 BC, God appears to Isaiah in regal brilliance, seated in the temple and attended by heavenly creatures. Isaiah laments his unworthiness and is cleansed by a burning coal from the altar provided by one of the seraphs. Now that his sin is purged, he then responds positively to the call by saying, “Here am I; send me!” His defining mission was to speak to a people who were totally immune to his words. He was called to proclaim a word of judgement that was also a word of promise. He was called to persevere and endure in faith. This is the same faith we have been called to.
It can be sobering to realize that God still calls prophets to speak the prophetic word the world most needs to hear. It certainly was a sobering experience for Peter and the other disciples in the gospel today. Instead of the temple and the glimpse of worship in heaven that Isaiah experienced, we have four discouraged fishermen who encounter Jesus beside the lake of Gennesaret where near the beginning of his ministry, he was preaching to a group of followers. Pulled up on the shore were two fishing boats. The owners were mending the nets on the beach after a night of failure.
Jesus, who was standing in ankle deep water, sees the empty boats and gets into one to continue his sermon. The four fishermen were obviously not strangers to Jesus, for when he spoke to them they called him, ‘master” or “teacher. Just before this story today, Jesus had healed Simon Peter’s mother-in-law who was suffering from a high fever. When the crowds had gone home, Jesus tells Simon to ‘take the boats out into the deep water and put down their nets one more time.’ “Won’t do any good”, he replied. We fished all night and don’t catch a single fish. I think most of us can relate to Simon. We do our best, work hard and sometimes the results are not what we had hoped for.
The results of their failure, was not because they didn’t know what they were doing. They knew the lake, where the fish congregated and the kind of weather needed to bring in a good catch. Their families had been working those waters for generations. But even if all the conditions were right that night, their nets remained empty. Weary as they were, they did what Jesus asked they got into their boats, rowed to the deep water and let down their nets. They obviously trusted him and it was a good thing because not only did they bring in the biggest catch ever, but soon they would be trusting him with their lives.
If their success that night is where the story ended, it would be a wonderful miracle. It might even fuel our desire for a gospel of success in our lives, but it would hardly be worthy of Jesus. Fortunately Simon Peter saw more than just the miracle. His first reaction, like Isaiah’s, was to know that he is in the presence of something that he is wholly unprepared for. Falling at Jesus’ knees, he begged, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” Peter, like Isaiah, is given the confidence he needs by the fact that he is then asked to do something. God must have trusted them a little, or they would not have been given their call, their mission.
The miracles of Jesus are parables in action; they teach us a lesson and surely Jesus used this miracle in that way. They teach us about God and God’s call to us. The fact that Simon Peter, James and John trust Jesus to leave everything to follow him, to not be afraid; because from then on they would be catching people, show us the radical demands of following Jesus. This same dynamic is at work in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Paul is talking about the world-transforming knowledge of the resurrection that he has received, and that he has passed on to his converts as something to base their lives on.
Just like Peter and Isaiah, Paul knows that he has not been given God’s work to do because he is clearly the best person for the job. But though God’s grace, love, Christ was revealed to Paul so that he could proclaim the Gospel and others might believe. The right response to God’s action, when we witness it, is the one all three of our heroes today demonstrate. They know they have little to offer, and yet they accept the task that God has given them that become defining, transforming moments in each of their lives. They see God, and are grateful to be allowed to be involved in God’s work.
Perhaps we might wish that God would reveal to us God’s self in power and glory as God did for Isaiah so that we could clearly see God; or as God did on the road to Damascus to Paul, or to filling our empty nets with abundance-then we too could trust and do what God has called us to do. But I would suspect that they might be envious of what we have seen of God’s power since their lives and wonder at our lack of faith. Each one of us can decide that there is more to life than we have found, and that to follow Jesus means deeper water, more risks, new paths.
It all started that morning when Andrew, Peter, James and John after working all night and taking nothing, left their nets when a man said to them, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch”, to become fishers of people, disciples, apostles, martyrs and saints. A defining moment that completely transformed their lives and they were sent out to reveal God’s glory to the world. May we see God’s hand and call in our lives and respond with passion this is my prayer for us today and for the world.