The Real Thing

Isaiah 6: 1-8; Luke 5: 1-11

Last Sunday I attended worship at Mt. Baker Park Presbyterian Church.  The choir asked me to join them for our last Sunday of the season.  In addition to honoring the choir that day, they also honored graduating seniors… one of whom was also singing in the choir.

When Lee Seese, the pastor, started his sermon, he did an unusual thing.  He strode over to the choir loft and sat down beside that graduate… greeted her… congratulated her on her graduation from college… and then he said, “I have one word of advice for you as you go out into the world… just one word…”  In the pause that followed, you could hear whispers around the congregation.  You know what they were saying, right?  Plastics.

“No,” he said, “It’s not ‘plastics.’  It’s humus.”  What??  “Humus.”  Dictionary definition: “A brown or black organic substance consisting of partially or wholly decayed vegetable matter… that provides nutrients for plants and increases the ability of soil to retain water.”  I mention this because it sprang to mind when I was reading our scriptures for today. 

In the passage from Isaiah that Shannon read, the scene is the Temple in Jerusalem.  Isaiah goes in alone… we’re not told why… and has this incredible, Cecil B. DeMille sized vision.  He sees Adonai… the Lord… the unnamable one… seated on a throne, high up in the air, and the train of his robe fills the Temple.  As if that weren’t enough, Adonai is attended by huge, magnificent angels, and each has six wings.  And they are calling to each other, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory”!  Can you hear dramatic music in the background?  There must have been music.

In response to this, Isaiah falls to his knees – well, yes… who wouldn’t?!  He is struck by God’s grandeur and by his own smallness.  “Woe is me!  I am lost…”, he cries.  He not only realizes how small he is, but how sinful he is… how much he has separated himself from God… and by the sinfulness of his people. 

That’s when I thought of the humus…  it comes from the same root as “humility,” you see.  And that’s what Isaiah was feeling there on his knees… woe is me… I’ve been thinking of myself as big and powerful… but now I see what “big and powerful” really is!  And I am feeling like dirt!

But that’s not the end of the story..  One of the angels flies to the altar and picks up a burning coal with a pair of tongs… and flies back to Isaiah and touches it to his lips.  In a very graphic way, God makes sure Isaiah understands that he is cleansed and forgiven.

I can’t go any further without mentioning that this passage has historically been the basic template for Presbyterian and Reformed worship services.  Do you see the familiar movements?  We open with praise of God, but coming into God’s presence sends us to our knees in confession of our smallness and all the ways that we have tried to separate ourselves from God and God’s intentions for us.  Not only as individuals, but as a community of people… it’s corporate confession.

And as we rise from our knees, we immediately hear the assurance of God’s love and forgiveness.  Then, we add a bit more … including hearing God’s word to us… and then God sends us out to serve… just as God did with Isaiah.  “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”  And bless Isaiah… he rose to the challenge…  “Here am I.  Send me!” 

Humus again…  remember the definition?  “A brown or black organic substance consisting of partially or wholly decayed vegetable matter…”  dirt… but not just dirt… this is good, rich soil “…that provides nutrients for plants and increases the ability of soil to retain water.”  Don’t you just love to get some good, rich dirt like that in your hands?  It’s like looking at gold.  It’s precious… it’s life-giving…  It’s dirt with a purpose!  There is a job that only it can do.  Just like Isaiah…

The scene in our gospel passage is much more mundane.  Simon and his partners James and John are just going about their daily work…  and along comes Jesus…  (Look out, boys!)  The men had been out fishing all night and hadn’t caught anything, so I’m guessing that the job of cleaning their nets was feeling a bit heavy that morning.  Perhaps Simon was glad for the diversion when Jesus got into his boat and asked him to put out a bit from shore so he could talk to the folks who had followed him there from the boat.  Apparently, he had collected quite a following as he’d been healing and teaching around the area. 

And then the scene shifts a bit…  Jesus says to Simon, “Put out in the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”  The key words here are “deep water.”  If they aren’t a cue for the music to come up, I don’t know what is.

Peter says, we’ve already done that with no luck, but if you say so, Rabbi, we’ll do it.  And they do… and their nets fill to overflowing… so that he has to call James & John to bring another boat… and they still can’t contain the whole catch!  The boats are so full they start to sink!! 

Simon, bless his heart, gets it!   [I love this guy.  He reminds me of some of my Italian cousins… big, impulsive guys with arms open wide… gesture with both hands when they talk or tell a story… warm smile, great hospitality… and open-hearted… I mean, they’re tough, but when something touches them, you know it.  They aren’t afraid to respond.]

Well, something...  or rather, someone… touched Simon there in that boat… and like Isaiah, he fell to his knees before Jesus.  “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

Just like Isaiah, Simon was suddenly aware of God’s greatness and his own smallness and disconnection from God.  Now I want you to notice who is doing the judging here… it is the men… Isaiah & Simon.  They pass judgment on themselves… but God does not.

God reaches out to restore relationship, to heal brokenness.  God’s angel touches Isaiah’s lips with the purifying coal.  Jesus says to Simon, “Don’t be afraid.”  And I’ll bet he reached out to touch him.  Our fears and judgments are met with God’s love and abundant grace.

I think this is a really important point.  /  Because we are all aware, at some level of our being, of how fragile life is and how vulnerable we are, we try to build ourselves up or buttress our lives with status or power or material goods or bravado.  When God tries to break through those walls to reach our hearts, we can run the other direction or try to close up the hole in the dike, or we can fall to our knees and let the truth of our circumstances flood over us.

If we choose the latter alternative, like Isaiah and Simon, then God is able to reach out to us with love and grace, help us to our feet, pat us on the back, and send us out to do the work we were created to do.

Right after Jesus told Simon not to be afraid, he said, “…from now on, you will be catching people.”  That’s your new work in life.  And he and his companions “left everything and followed him.”

That’s an amazing response!  On this day when we honor the men in our lives, we can’t find much better models than Isaiah and Simon.  Real men who lived in the real world, and who were open to encountering God wherever that might happen, AND were willing to turn their lives upside down to follow God’s leading.

I wonder if you’ve had a God encounter that made a difference in your life…  It might have been on a mountaintop or just in the course of your daily life.  It happened to me just last fall. 

[Tell story about Pastoral Leadership Program.]

[Invite others to share their story.]

God is always seeking to make contact with us… Jesus is always calling us to go to the deep waters… to move past our fears and judgments… to plumb the depths of our lives… often to those places we feel least prepared to go… because then, when we get there, we know that what we find there is totally a gift from God… not something of our own creation… and it is meant to empower us for ministry.