St. Thomas Evangelical Lutheran Church
3800 East Third Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47401
(812) 332-5252
Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany (February 4, 2007)
Liturgical Color: Green
Reverend Doctor Lyle E. McKee
"God Needs Us"
Grace to you and peace from our loving God, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
As I look over these texts, the rather startling word of truth that keeps coming back to me is, "God needs us."
The almighty, everlasting, divine, sovereign God has need of you and me—of us weak, time-bound, faulted, limited human beings. It is an amazing thing, but these texts help us to know that it is true. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament readings tell of God's call to individual people-to Isaiah and to Simon Peter.
The mere fact of the numerous calls we read of in the bible attests this truth—that God needs us, that God requires us to carry on the full work of God's mission in the world.
On reading scripture, one might ask questions such as the following a seemingly all-powerful and autonomous God:
Why didn't God perform miracles without Moses in getting Pharaoh to free the Hebrew slaves?
Why did Jesus need disciples if he was God?
Why did Jesus, on the Mount of Olives, ask his disciples to stay and pray with him?
We talk a lot about Immanuel—God with us—during the seasons of Christmas and Epiphany. God has broken into our lives and nothing can ever again be the same. In Epiphany, we might also speak of "us with God"—working side by side, with us speaking and acting in God's name.
God needs us, each of us&mdsah;all of us.
If, as these various calls demonstrate, God needs people, God has very little choice about the kinds of people to be chosen or called. And that kind of person is, of course, sinful and imperfect.
The appearance of God in Isaiah's vision would delight Hollywood's Steven Speilberg. It has all the characteristics of a real box-office hit: the Lord sitting on the throne so magnificent that one dares not look up, seraphim standing above, and a choir of winged angels. An earthquake and incense complete the scene. And there is poor Isaiah quaking, as any sensible person would. The scene is dramatic, and Hollywood would, no doubt, make the most of it. But in all of this the point might be missed. The purpose of the drama is not to depict the majesty and glory of God, but to tell of the call of a prophet.
And not only that, but a prophet who is unworthy and sinful. Isaiah cries: "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips; yet with these eyes I have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts."
A similar acknowledgement of unworthiness comes from Simon Peter as he hears Jesus' call in the gospel. After Jesus preaches from Simon's boat, he arranges a miraculous catch for the obliging fisherman. Instead of lining up to have his picture taken with the biggest one or rejoicing over the haul, Peter is awed and sees him own sin and powerlessness in a new way. Sounds like Isaiah doesn't it? He says: "Leave me, Lord: I am a sinful man." This is Peter, the rock of the church, who sees his own inability to perform—to respond to the perceived demands placed upon him by Jesus. And Jesus replies, "Don't be afraid; from now on it is people you will catch."
Again, Isaiah comes to mind.
Such is the response of all who hear God's call and reflect on their inadequacies to meet the challenge. I am reminded of Luther's "Sacristy Prayer" of which a framed copy was given to me by my internship supervisor. It hangs in my office:
Lord God, Thou hast made me a pastor and teacher in the Church. Thou seest how unfit I am to administer rightly this great and responsible Office; and had I been without Thy aid and counsel I would surely have ruined it all long ago. Therefore do I invoke Thee.
How gladly do I desire to yield and consecrate my heart and mouth to this ministry! I desire to teach the congregation. I, too desire ever to learn and to keep Thy Word my constant companion and to meditate thereupon earnestly.
Use me as Thy instrument in Thy service. Only do not Thou forsake me, for if I am left to myself, I will certainly bring it all to destruction. Amen.
Do you suppose my supervisor was trying to tell me something?
In any case, this prayer amply reflects the sense of sinfulness and powerlessness which we feel when we sense God calling us to some task in our work or in the church. We immediately ask, "What need has God of one such as I?" "I am unworthy and useless in the face of God's power.
And yet, God calls. Us. From Abraham to the present, God has called human beings‐sinful, inadequate people. And God continues to do so today. God needs us!
And God does not leave us in our state of inadequacy and fear. In the Old Testament lesson, one of the seraphim touches Isaiah's lips with a coal and declares that his sins are forgiven. God shares the power with us; God gives us the grace to do what it is we are called to do.
I remember a stained glass window in the rather simple sanctuary fo the first church I served as an ordained minister. The congregation I speak of is Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Bellevue, Kentucky. The stained glass window depicted a single large star, a scroll, tongs, and a burning lump of coal. The large star symbolizes the promise that God made to Abraham that "your descendants shall be as the stars of Heaven...and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed." The scroll, tongs, and coal also symbolize the promise of God revealed through Isaiah. As the tongs holding the hot coal cleansed Isaiah of his sin and guilt, so the same promise comes to everyone in Christ.
So, by this symbolic act of touching Isaiah's lips with a coal, God gives Isiaah grace and forgiveness while foreshadowing our own.
In a somewhat less dramatic gesture, Jesus calms Simon Peter's fears and sense of inadequacy by saying simply: "Do not be afraid; from now on it is people you will catch." In essence, Isaiah and Peter were told that existing skills would be employed for God's work, and that God would be with them. Isaiah's mouth is touched—now he will have a word to speak, a word that is from God and not simply his own. One recalls the touching of Jeremiah's mouth in the reading from last Sunday, symbolizing that his words are replaced with God's. Peter is told that he will continue to be a fisherman, but now for people.
Too many of us are caught, not by this or another fisher of people, but by our own assessments of our abilities. We are immobilized into inaction by our fears and our sense of inadequacy. We have great difficulty completing these biblical stories in the context of our own lives. We never quite feel the touch of God's forgiveness or the gentle words of Christ: "Be not afraid." But these readings emphasize for us again in the Epiphany season that we are ones named ambassadors for Christ and charged with illumination the nations. We are called for a purpose. There is an intrinsic connection between an experience of the risen Lord and action in worship and through our vocation—regardless of what the vocation might be.
What God needs to accomplish God's mission in the world is people like us—sinful and troubled people who happen to believe in the power of God, both to give a rebirth to our current vocation and to call us into new realms of service.
Buckminster Fuller, at age 86, told about a crisis he had gone through 54 years before. His four year old daughter had died of infantile paralysis, and he had experienced a number of setbacks in his career. So he went out to Lake Michigan with the intention of drowning himself.
But there a new insight came to him. He says, "I said to myself, 'If I'm doing what the Almighty wants done to make humans a success, I'll get on.'" He sensed the call of God's power to work even through the difficult circumstances of his life.
Martin Luther lifted up for us the word that is implicit in the texts before us this morning. That word is "vocation." The idea of vocation is that whatever role one is performing in life at the different moments of life, whether it is on the job, in one's home, as a friend, or a citizen, he said, it is a calling from God. So if we are not taking it seriously or it is not going well, we need to remember that it is nonetheless our calling from God. We simply need to trust God's power and presence with us as we engage those callings.
Jesus speaks to us, saying: "Don't be afraid. I am with you."
Interesting, isn't it, that Simon Peter and the others left their occupations just as they could have achieved great success? As one author puts it: "There is something economically absurd about having your greatest bonanza, and quitting business before you ever bank the profits."
They left their nets and followed Jesus. In the Christian scale of values, prosperity's greatest usefulness is to demonstrate that it cannot satisfy the longings of our souls. Worldly success is the mask of worldly failure until a person discovers his or her mission in the cause of Jesus Christ.
God needs us. We also need God. It is our calling to see that the mutual need is also mutually and communally beneficial. Amen.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our
hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord, unto eternal
life. — Amen
