Our Old Testament and New Testament readings this morning are stories about two men and their encounter with God in their lives. Even though these stories take place hundreds of years apart, we see that both Isaiah and Simon Peter had very similar experiences. Both men learn valuable lessons about their own personal sinfulness, worth, usefulness and value in God’s eyes.
In our reading from the Book of Isaiah, we learn that one day while he was in the Temple, Isaiah had a vision. And what a vision it was! In it, Isaiah sees himself in the presence of Almighty God. Isaiah sees God seated on His throne with the angels all around Him. The seraphim are flying about and praising God in loud voices saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.”
Being there in the presence of God, standing in awe of God’s power and majesty, Isaiah cries from the depth of his soul and the brokenness of his spirit, “Woe is me! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King of Kings, the Lord of hosts!”
Standing there in the presence of Almighty God, in the wonder, in the might, in the holiness and righteousness of God, all that Isaiah could do was to proclaim his own sinfulness. There with God, Isaiah felt, understood, and experienced just how sinful his existence was, when compared to the perfect righteousness of God. And that God’s perfect righteousness is the measuring stick that we all must use when examining our own lives.
Isaiah cries out in his anguish, and one of the seraphim takes a burning coal from the altar of God and touches it to Isaiah’s lips saying, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin forgiven.” Isaiah cries out and God responds. God acts. God is moved by Isaiah’s prayer and responds by cleansing Isaiah of his sin. Notice:
Then, look at what happens next. God desires someone to take a message to His people, and we see how Isaiah responds. He says, “Here I am. Send me.” Isaiah has been touched and cleansed by God. God acted in Isaiah’s life and set him free from the bonds and selfishness of his own sin, and now, Isaiah is free to respond to God’s call. And respond he does. He says, “Here I am; send me, God. I will be your spokesman to the people. Let me do that for you.”
There is a story of a little boy who had a pocketknife. He usually went around flicking his knife into the side of a tree, or flipping it up so that it would land and stick upright into the ground. These were the primary functions of the knife, or so the little boy thought. Then one day, the boy’s grandfather said, “Son, let me show you what can be done with that.” The boy handed over his knife to his grandfather and watched as the old man took a piece of kindling and carved an intricate and beautiful design of circles and stars on its side.
“Now, let me show you something else,” said the boy’s grandfather. He took out a small block of wood, whittled off the corners and rounded the rough edges. He gouged, cut, grooved and shaved until, about a half-hour later, the boy was staring at a smiling, bearded face which had emerged from the plain block of wood.
“Just one more thing,” said his grandfather. He went to the refrigerator and, using the bottle opener attachment on the boy’s knife, he opened two bottles of pop. “There,” the grandfather said as he handed the knife and a bottle of soda to the boy, “you see, there are a lot of good things you can do with a knife.”
In God’s presence, Isaiah saw what could really be done with his life. He had felt his own unworthiness and his own brokenness. But then Isaiah was touched by the hand of the Master. That touch changed Isaiah’s life, and he was willing to respond to God’s call.
The grandfather, the master carver, touched the knife, and using it to its full potential, made it come alive for the little boy, made the knife do things that the little boy, scarcely, if at all, thought the knife could do. In the same way, God touched Isaiah and made him worthwhile and able.
That brings us to our Gospel reading. We find Jesus using Simon Peter’s fishing boat for a pulpit. The crowds have been getting larger wherever Jesus goes to preach. So to keep Jesus from being crushed by the crowd and to give Him enough space to speak so that people could hear Him, Peter has taken Jesus a little off shore.
After Jesus has finished speaking, He tells Simon Peter to go into deep water and let down the nets for a catch. This must have taken Peter by surprise, because he begins to explain to Jesus that they had been out fishing all night and hadn’t caught a thing. After a little time of mild protest, Peter finally says, “Because you asked, I’ll do it.”
We do not have all of the small details filled in, but we do know that when Jesus had come along that day, Peter and the others were finished fishing for the day and were busy mending and cleaning their nets. So it is possible that Peter was reluctant to go to take them out and get them dirty and possibly torn again. Perhaps Peter went ashore to get the nets and he and the other fishermen had a discussion as to whether or not they should go back out.
That discussion may have gone something like this:
Simon Peter gets caught up in the excitement of this incredible, unbelievable, miraculous moment. Then suddenly, he stops. It begins to dawn on Peter what really has just happened. He begins to realize who Jesus is, and the words that Jesus had been speaking to the crowd finally hit him. Peter falls to his knees in the boat and says, “Leave me Lord, for I am a sinful man.” But instead of leaving, Jesus says to Peter, “Fear not. From now on, you shall be a fisher of men.”
For Peter, everything had changed. He had seen the power and goodness of God, right there in his own boat and that caused him to recognize and acknowledge his own sinfulness. “Leave me, Lord. For I am a sinful man.”
Peter had doubted Jesus’ request for him to go into deep water. Perhaps he had been afraid of failure. But perhaps now, after this miraculous catch of fish, as it is sometimes, success was even scarier than failure. After all, if Jesus could do this, what else could He do? Where would this lead? Peter realized, sure enough, that things would change. He must have been thinking, “I am not worthy of this.” Life would never be the same as it had been. And many times, familiar failure can be easier than life-changing success.
Simon’s whole perception of the world and the way things are supposed to be were now thrown into disarray. You just don’t go out into deep water after a miserable night of fishing without the least success and throw your nets over the side and bring in a boatload of fish. Yet that is exactly what had happened. Peter, like all of us, liked to believe that he understood how things worked. He liked to think that he had at least a modicum of control, but all of that had been shattered, as something miraculous, something impossible had just taken place. Simon had thought he knew what fishing was all about, when suddenly that huge catch of fish rendered his knowledge in that area of his life almost worthless. The result was, in short, Simon Peter was afraid. Then Jesus said, “Fear not. For from now on, you shall be fishers of men.”
I am not certain if those words allayed Peter’s fears, or added to them. “Fishing for people?” This was a call for Peter to follow Jesus; to make a commitment; to change his life, and this was a scary proposition for Simon Peter. Jesus says, “Come, follow me.” And Scripture says, “They left everything to follow Jesus.”
Simon Peter left his old life behind. He left all that he was certain of and followed Jesus to become a “fisher of men.” He did not know it that day, but Peter would be required to rethink all that he was certain of many times in the future:
Many people these days, including many pastors, priests and church leaders, have made God out to be in the image of an old loving Grandfather figure, so that when we do encounter Him in our lives, we are no longer moved to wonder and awe. We no longer sense the wrath that God feels at our sinfulness. We do not acknowledge His holiness or our lack of it.
Until we cry from the depths of our being, as Isaiah did, until we are honest with ourselves and acknowledge how lost we really are, we will never fully experience or appreciate the gift of salvation that Jesus has given us. God’s voice and His touch are waiting here for us. He will lead us out of our old life and to His path of righteousness. God’s forgiveness is right here, available to all. After you encounter God, after you have been forgiven, after you have been released from your sin and guilt, what then?
But there is still fear. The same fears that Simon faced, we face. We are afraid of failure. We are afraid of rejection. We are afraid of being unworthy. We are afraid even of success. Mostly we are afraid of leaving behind the familiar, and setting off into uncharted territory. Like the imaginary fishermen that I mentioned earlier, and their reasons for not going fishing with Jesus, we too can come up with reason after reason to avoid Jesus’ calling on our lives to, “go and preach the Gospel to all people.” But that is our calling nonetheless. It is our calling as individuals, and it is the calling of Salem UMC.
Yes, it may mean we have to do things in new ways. It may mean we have to take some risks; like risking failure, risking resources, risking offending someone, and even risking success.
When Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Computers, was recruiting John Sculley, an executive of Pepsi Cola, Steve asked him, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugar water, or do you want a chance to change the world?” This was Jesus’ call to Simon Peter, and it is Jesus’ call to us. It is a call to change the world. Even though he was afraid, Peter trusted Jesus. He left behind the certainties, the familiarities of his life of fishing and set out to deep water. The results did change the world.
What about you? What about Salem UMC? Are we willing to fully trust Jesus Christ? Are we willing to let down the nets? I hope that, today, you sense the freedom found in the Gospel, the freedom of God’s forgiving love, that allows you to dare to respond to God’s call with your God-given talents, gifts and resources.
I hope God excites you today. I hope that you become so thrilled and excited about Him, that you can’t wait to serve Him in any way that you can. I believe God is calling this church to do mighty things for Him. And I hope you are as excited about that as I am, so that as a congregation, we can stand together and say, as Isaiah said,