5th Sunday after Epiphany

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Not too long ago I spoke with our catechism class about the fact that in biblical times, there were no calendars yet. You could not just give a date and year to let people known when something had happened.

I asked the class how, in the future, they would talk about this year if they couldn’t use any dates. Right away, one of them said, “When we had the pandemic.” Another said, “during winter”. And a third added, “When Biden was President and Hogan was governor of Maryland”. If you put all this together, you indeed come to January 2022.

Our reading from the Old Testament starts with this line: “In the year that King Uzziah died.” By sharing this event, the prophet is dating his experience. What Isaiah encountered in the temple happened in real time and place.

In the future, when we refer to the pandemic, it will be much more to us than just a marker in time. It will bring back memories of being cooped up, of anxiety and fear, of financial hardship, of illness and death, of lives put on hold.

The same is true with Isaiah. The death of King Uzziah was a huge deal. That king had ruled for more than four decades and had brought stability and economic boom to the nation. Now he was dead. A new king would be anointed. There was always struggle around succession. There was uncertainty as to what the new king would be like. What would life be like? All the while, those Babylonians were more and more threatening; was there going to be war? It was a very anxious time.

In the midst of this anxious time, Isaiah goes to the temple. He comes to worship. He seeks God’s presence. He longs for affirmation and comfort and assurance in the sanctuary, the space set aside for worshiping God.

There is something about holy space. Today is the first Sunday in weeks that we are allowed to gather in the sanctuary. How we have longed for it! It is absolutely true that we can worship God anywhere at all; that where two or three are gathered God is among them; that the church is what is left when the building burns down, namely the people. All that is absolutely true. And yes, we have been faithful in our worship outside of church, be it online or in the parking lot.

And yet, there is something about being in a sanctuary. This is holy space. This space allows us to rest, to let go of the stresses of daily life, to take a deep breath and open our hearts towards God. We smell the candles, hear the music, sing the hymns, see the stained glass, and our eyes are drawn upwards by the lofty ceiling.

We have longed to be here, in this holy space, with our brothers and sisters in Christ. What a blessing it is to be here!

Isaiah is also blessed that day in the temple. He receives a grand vision of God almighty, sitting on his throne high and lofty, so vast that the hem of God’s robe fills the whole temple. Seraphs attend the throne and call out God’s praise, and smoke is everywhere. A truly awesome scene.

When Isaiah’s world is shaken, God meets him in the temple. God assures him that God is still God, powerful and mighty, and that God has not abandoned his people. Whatever the future will bring, God will be in it; God will be with his people.

This experience of God inspires, assures, compels Isaiah. Never again will he doubt God’s power and might and care. When God asks who might be willing to go and tell the world about God, Isaiah immediately volunteers, “Here am I; send me!” Isaiah’s shaken world needs prophets like him who can reassure their neighbors that God is still God and will see them through.

Moving on to the gospel story: Jesus is preaching. So many people come to hear him that he has to get into a boat to preach from the water, with the crowd standing on the shore. (There is something about this improvised preaching scenario that reminds me of what we did during COVID.)

The boat Jesus has commanded is Peter’s boat. When he is done preaching, he tells Peter to row out to the deeper waters and cast his net. Peter isn’t thrilled to hear this. “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.” One can hear hesitation, but also exhaustion. I can so relate to this exhaustion. Jesus, we have done this and tried that, and nothing seems to work, and we are tired; we can’t do this anymore!

In the end, though, Peter listens to Jesus. He does row out to the deeper water, and he does cast his net, and when he pulls it up it is so overloaded with fish he can’t manage them all. His buddies have to come and help him, there are that many fish.

A story about a miraculous catch of fish would be a great story in itself, much like the stories if the feeding of the multitude or the wine miracle at the wedding at Kana. Any time Jesus blesses his people with abundance is a story worth sharing.

The amazing catch, however, is not the point of this story. The point is what witnessing this catch does for Peter and James and John. They see this catch and just know they are in the presence of the divine. Peter falls down before Jesus and confesses his sinfulness.

One commentator suggested, a bit tongue in cheek, that Peter confesses his sinfulness because of his remarks earlier. When Jesus suggested he throw out his net, Peter didn’t really trust Jesus to know what he was talking about. Now he stands corrected, big time.

But I think there is more to it. Isaiah reacted in the same way when he had his vision of almighty God: he lamented his sinfulness. Peter glimpses Jesus’ divinity and confesses his sinfulness. When face to face with God, humans are painfully aware of their shortcomings. There is a reason why we begin every worship service with a confession; about to encounter God in word and sacrament, we realize our human failings.

The good news is that our sinfulness doesn’t stop God from blessing us, inspiring us, assuring us, and calling us. God cleanses Isaiah’s lips and sends him out to be a prophet. Jesus gets Peter off the boat planks and tells him to fish for people. God uses flawed and fragile human beings to proclaim God’s mercy and love. God entrusts that important mission to people like us.

This entrusting doesn’t come out of nowhere. By the time Jesus calls Peter to fish for people, Peter has had quite a few experiences with Jesus. Peter has heard Jesus preach repeatedly. Peter had Jesus as a guest at his house, where Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law. Peter witnessed Jesus healing other people and casting out demons. There was already a relationship here.

This miraculous catch of fish just took it up a notch. It demonstrated to Peter that this Jesus was not just another preacher and healer, but the son of God. As soon as his realizes this, Peter drops everything and follows Jesus.

Peter had a relationship with Jesus; in this event that relationship grew to a new level of faith and trust, service and commitment. Isaiah had a relationship with God, already knew to seek God in the temple; that day of the vision, his faith and mission reached a new high.

This happens to us, too. Most of us have grown up in the faith. Parents or grandparents or neighbors or friends took us along to church. We attended worship and Sunday school, prayed before meals and before bedtime, found comfort in God’s temple and among God’s people. And it was good.

But then something happens that kicks our discipleship up a notch: We go on a mission trip, or are asked to teach a class, or a sermon wakes us up to a new calling. We encounter God in a new way, amazed that God would choose us of all people, inspired to serve God in a new calling. We are asked to put out into the deep water and catch people there.

This phrase, “you will be catching people”, has always bugged me a bit. Catching sounds like you are dragging people against their will. I have learned, though, that this word has a double meaning, just like in English. We can catch someone in a trap, or we can catch someone’s attention. We can hold a person captive in prison or captivate someone with a story.

This year, somehow this catching of people came together in my mind with the “putting out into the deep”. Deep water can be scary, overwhelming, threatening. It reminded me of the expression that something is “under water”. This whole imagery describes the feeling of going under, of having lost solid footing, of feeling overwhelmed.

How many people are feeling like this right now? How many neighbors to you know who are at the end of their rope? How many teachers and nurses can you name who are overwhelmed? How many folks are you aware of whose mental health is not good at all? How many people are in the deep?

Jesus calls us to go to them and catch them, captivate them with the gospel, lift them out of the deep with the love of our savior.

We have been blessed by encounters with God that assured us of God’s care and goodness and faithfulness. We have been like Isaiah, meeting God in the sanctuary during worship. We have been like Peter, blessed by abundance. We have been like both of them, forgiven through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We know our mighty and living God.

Jesus wants us to share our knowledge with those in the deep. Reach out with a story of grace, with an act of love, with a word of compassion, with some sign that you see what they are going through and you care and God cares.

In the year King Uzziah died, God assured Isaiah in his faith and sent him to share the truth about our mighty God. In the year Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea, Jesus assured Peter of God’s powerful and forgiving presence and sent him to lift up other people with the gospel.

In the year of the pandemic, God meets us here today, in this holy space, in word and sacrament, to assure us and inspire us. May our response be: “Here am I; send me!” Amen.