This is the homily that was written to be given at Flohr’s Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELCA) in McKnightstown, Pennsylvania on Sunday, February 9, 2025 by Fr. Gene Tucker.
“ENCOUNTERING
AND SENDING”
(Homily
texts: Isaiah 6: 1 – 13 & Luke 5: 1
- 11)
As
we make our way through life, the path of life can take many different turns.
One way to appreciate the blessings and the successes of life is to engage in
an exercise whereby we try to imagine what life would be like without those
blessings and successes.
So
we might begin with an exercise of our own this morning, trying to imagine (as
a starting point) some of the very ordinary things that – without them – life
might be a whole lot different.
We
will begin with two of my favorite things: Coffee and chocolate.
Try
to imagine (if you are a devotee of coffee as I am) life without it. Try to
imagine “blending into your day” (to borrow an Army buddy of mine’s phrase)
without the blessing of a hot cup of coffee in the morning. Frankly, I can’t
imagine beginning my day that way.
Or,
how about chocolate? Personally speaking, having even a little bit of chocolate
makes everything seem better after the encounter.
The
point here is to say that life, absent these two things, would be different
without them.
Now,
to be a bit more serious, how about some of the things we have available to us
today that people in times past didn’t have.
Consider,
for example, how different life would be without indoor plumbing (I lived that
reality in my growing up years until the age of seven or so). Or how about no
air conditioning (I lived that reality until age ten). How about no vehicles –
cars and trucks – to get us around to where we needed to go?
Life
would be a whole lot different without these three things, and many others.
Chances are, we’d be much more uncomfortable without these things, and we’d
probably be spending a lot more of our time simply doing the basic tasks that
life demands that we must accomplish.
OK,
now try to imagine a life without God. How much different such a life would be!
God, that One who loves us, and who gave us the gift of His Son, creates the
framework upon which we can weave a life that is pleasing to Him and which is honors
Him and which is a blessing to others.
One
more step in our imaginings is in order, I think:
Imagine
what would happen if God had granted us an encounter with Him? I’m talking
about an encounter that is unmistakable, one of the sort that the Old Testament
prophet Isaiah had, one like Simon Peter had with Jesus that day on the Sea of
Galilee.
This
last imagining brings us to our Old Testament reading, and to our appointed
Gospel for this morning.
Isaiah
finds himself in the Temple in Jerusalem. The year is 740 BC. We know that
because he tells us that the event he describes took place in the year that
King Uzziah died. There, he witnesses a vision of the Lord, whose train filled
the Temple. Seraphim fly above the Lord, and the place is filled with smoke. The
Lord’s presence makes the whole place shake.
Then,
the Lord purifies Isaiah, fitting him out for the prophetic ministry that God
will appoint him to, by touching Isaiah’s lips with hot coals from the altar.
Then,
the Lord says, “Who will go for us, whom shall I send?” Isaiah replies, “Here
am I, send me.”
The
Lord grants Isaiah a glimpse of His glory, majesty and holiness. Then, Isaiah
is commissioned to go and take the Lord’s message to God’s people. Isaiah’s
life takes a turn in a new and completely different direction.
Now,
let’s fast-forward almost 800 years, where we find ourselves in Capernaum, by
the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. Luke (4: 38 – 39) tells us that Jesus
entered Simon’s[1] house, where Simon’s
mother-in-law was very ill. Jesus comes and relieves her of her illness. (Set
this incident aside for the moment, we’ll come back to it in a moment.)
Now,
Luke tells us that Jesus met Simon again as he and his partners were fishing.
Jesus asks him to put his boat out into the water a bit. Jesus sits in the boat
and addresses the crowd on the shoreline. (A note is worth making here: The
surface of the water is an excellent carrier of sound, so Jesus’ position in
the boat made it possible for a large crowd to hear Him.)
Then,
Jesus tells Simon to put out the boat into the deeper water and to put their
fishing nets out for a catch. At this point, Simon says to Jesus, “We’ve been
fishing all night, and haven’t caught anything”. The point seems to be, “We’re
the professionals here, we’ve done what we know how to do, and it hasn’t turned
out well.”
Despite
Simon’s protestations, he agrees to follow Jesus’ suggestion. The large catch
of fish almost winds up sinking the boats.
Perhaps
Simon’s openness to knowing Jesus’ identity was assisted by witnessing his
mother-in-law’s immediate healing, for he says admits to Jesus’ holiness,
saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man”.
Simon
Peter has an encounter with God, whose presence is mediated by Jesus. The
evidence is that Jesus knows where the fish are to be found, a knowledge that
God alone would know.
Jesus
then tells Simon Peter, along with his partners James and John, that from then
on, their lives would change: They would be fishing for people.
What
would happen to us if we had some sort of an unmistakable encounter with the
holiness of God? Such an encounter might happen through the intervention of the
Holy Spirit in our lives, or in the lives of others we know Such an encounter
might happen when we witness an act of divine healing, one which defies medical
science’s ability to explain. (I know of more than one such incident.) Or, such
an encounter when we or someone we know is delivered from some sort of an
addiction. (I know of such an incident in my own family.) Or, such an encounter
might happen when the Holy Spirit uses some passage from Holy Scripture with
which to convict us of something, or to make a call on our lives in some way.
(Many who are in ordained ministry describe God’s call to ministry in such
terms.)
Perhaps
we might take away from today’s readings the necessity of looking for God’s
work and God’s activity in our lives, and in the lives of others. We might pray
for the Holy Spirit’s enabling and enlightening power to see God’s hand at work
in our own time and in our own lives, realizing that such a call will result in
a changed life, and a new direction in life.
AMEN.
[1] Jesus will soon give Simon a nickname, “Peter”, which is how we know him more frequently.
