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What's the first thing you think of
when you hear the word caught? Well for most of us is probably something not
positive but for the disciple it means something wonderful. Being caught by the
Gospel is being able to speak the truth about ourselves because of Jesus Christ
and confessing what we know is the truth of what God's will and purposes are
for us. A big theme for our lessons today is hearing the call of God and
realizing the vocation of being a disciple as well as the cost of discipleship.
There's that title again, of that wonderful book, ‘The Cost of Discipleship’ by
Dietrich Bonhoeffer. If it wasn't for my last doctoral class diving so
thoroughly into Bonhoeffer, I would have never realized what profound radical
things he saw as elements of faith in one's Journey.
With the gospel of Luke, we hear of
Peter’s calling basically through the miracle of the fish overflowing the boat.
You have to love Peter, he truly is the “everyman.” He truly is your average
Joe, first century Joe that is. He's like “okay you want us to go do this
again… we've been out fishing all day, we're tired you know?” But then he
realizes, when all the sudden Jesus makes the fish strain the nets to ripping
and almost sinks both ships, that he made a great mistake and he apologizes for
his doubt. But he apologizes in the sense of repenting, what he realized. And
then the profound ending of this Gospel is an infamous verse: “Do not be afraid,
from now on you will be catching people.” The other Gospel writers have this as
they will be Fishers of Men. The early Christians caught onto this and
memorialized it in some senses with the symbol of the fish. Now we see it on
bumper stickers and as car bling and so on.
For the early persecuted Christians
from the days of the book of Acts and onward their secret code to identifying
one another as sojourning disciples was that one person would draw one part of
the arch into the sand and then the other would create the other arch, making
the symbol of the fish. What I think is a lovely theme that I saw on one of
those History Channel episodes was an episode that talked about the early
Christian ossuaries. All of these grave sites have the symbol of the fish as
well as some would have the symbol of Jonah in the whale. Now there's a great
image of somebody who was caught! But then God was sort of being a smart aleck
here and we could sort of say maybe he's doing that as well when we look at
Isaiah's call which is in the first lesson, we have this Sunday afternoon. We
begin with this fantastic scene of angel-like creatures who cauterize Isaiah's
lips with a hot coal when he confesses that he is in a man of unclean lips. Now
his mouth has been prepared to preach the good news of God. He then asks God: “How
long, oh Lord what do you need me to do?” He tells him what to say to the
people… (which again, if you ask me it sounds like God is being smart aleck
here.) God: “Well okay… you can keep on listening, but I know you're not going
to comprehend. You can keep looking, but I know you won't understand.” He
finishes by telling Isaiah to make their minds dull, stop their ears and shut
their eyes. I immediately saw the image of the three monkeys: “See no evil,
speak no evil, hear no evil.” But then monkey see, monkey do?
The reading we have from Paul once
again trying to deal with his Wayward Corinthians seems very foreign to us
because it is of a time and a practice perhaps, we don't really have much faith
in these days. What I'm talking about is speaking in tongues I am truly
confessing that I am just like doubting Thomas. I'd really have to see it, and
I'd have to have a “Freaky Friday” experience to really know what it felt like to
know if it was truly real. People say the same thing about ghosts. They say if
you hear ghosts that you're probably nuts or if you think you've seen things
move that perhaps you're just getting light-headed, so on and so forth. There's
always going to be some truth to things that humanity has thrown out with the
bathwater as they say. Yes, we are no longer living in an enchanted world as
they did in Jesus’ day towards the Middle Ages. We have supposedly grown past
the quote days of the enlightenment to having our feet firmly planted on very
solid, opaque ground, real ground.
This has perhaps made or created a
giant log in front of our own eyes to see the miraculous, to realize that
prayer works and that the Spirit is very real. Peter had to see the fish
ripping through the nets and the boats nearly sinking to finally confess and
realize the miracle that Jesus was committing in front of everyone to then
affirm his calling to be His disciple. Human nature is always going to have a
battle between the spirit and the mind. I had someone asked me once, who wasn't
familiar with the custom every time, I begin to read the Gospel, why I make a
little cross in my forehead and one on my heart. According to many Protestant Traditions,
it would be considered adiphora. You can see it that way or you can see it
as an affirmation of God's word being thoughtfully contemplated in my head and
in my heart as that Living Word of the Gospel is most certainly real and living
and transformative.
When I was thoroughly enjoying
reading “absorbing” Bonhoeffer's Discipleship Works volumes as well as his ‘Cost
of Discipleship’ book, I thought about something that really challenged me and
my belief because it was unnatural. What was unnatural is that Bonhoeffer would
see the last two verses of this Gospel: “… left everything and followed Him,”
as an ultimate obedience that is not of choice, it is purely of change. It's
sort of like looking at a sentence and wondering where the verb is if somebody
leaves out the verb, what is the subject and the remaining sentence doing
together? When you think of being obedient to following Christ, choice seems to
be the natural human word to put in the equation alongside change.
Transformation is the discipleship Journey. The cost of discipleship is
realizing the conditions of a miracle where the eye sees in the spirit makes
the effort. All God really requires of us is a loving and gracious response a
willingness that doesn't come from any form of the ego as well as does not come
from our human rationale.
Let's just face it so many things
are radical about God's Word that we kind of sit there scratching our heads in
what is He trying to say? Like I said earlier, is God being a smart aleck
talking about telling Isaiah what to say to people. Or is he teaching them how
to really preach? Which most people may not know is to comfort the afflicted
and afflict the comfortable. I will always love that short little verse. I
heard it early on in my Seminary studies and I think it's a profound way for us
to begin to prophesy teach what God's truth is leading us to do and to
be. This little snippet of lecture from Saint Paul to his wayward
Corinthians is trying not to get them to “pay lip service,” if you will, or to
show off how they know their spiritual gifts. “I know how to speak in tongues
better than you!” But he had this problem with these people. The Corinthians
wanted their Joel Olsteens. They wanted to have their Cafe sidebar in the
narthex with coffee table Bible books. They wanted to have their way or the
highway and lastly, they wanted to realize their gifts in a way that was purely
coming from the ego. In our everyday terms they were big time into “one-upmanship.”
“I can do things better than you can, haha” and “…This guy speaks words I like
to hear better than you.” And they did do that to Paul they were nasty to him
not just the Corinthians but the Galatians gave him a hard time too.
Saying we're only being human is
taking the easy way out of walking through those tributaries in the wilderness
back home to Eden. I thought of that analogy again because of all strangeness,
while I was traversing up the mountain back from dropping my husband off this
past Thursday morning, there was a gigantic huge tour blimp that was right
between Mount Charleston and the dip of the valley. Being in sort of Area 51
territory… (it's a hundred miles north of where we live) at first it look like
a big silver disc and I almost drove off the road staring at it for a second. No,
it wasn't an alien spacecraft and it wasn't a Goodyear blimp either but what if
those people who were wandering the tributaries of the original path that Adam
and Eve began had used a blimp to lift them in the air to find a shortcut way
back to where they wanted to be? Taking the easy way out though, might not open
their eyes to what God is calling them to see within themselves to transform
and renew from.
Sometimes though, Our Lives could
seem like we are swimming upstream against the current and it's a continual
battle with no end in sight. It's easy to teeter on that fine line of doubt and
hopelessness. Lord knows this current culture is challenging that upon us daily
not just through the death work politics but through denying vocation and
denying the calling of the Spirit not only in their lives but in others.
We are called to love our neighbor. It is a part of the golden commandment of
loving God and neighbor. With this is a covenant of faith. It is walking by faith
and truly making the effort to trust God and do what the Spirit working in the tabernacle
of the heart is calling us to do. The mind is an amazing thing. There's
been oodles upon oodles of scientific studies, philosophical studies and so
forth done upon the natural gray matter hard drive of the human being. I've
been having that on my mind recently in grieving a parishioner, I was visiting
nearly lived in the hospital with chronic illnesses. She was very young, only
in her late 50s and basically her blood pressure stopped, and her mind turned
off. She passed away this past Wednesday in the early morning hours. The
hospital says she wasn't in a coma she was just “out” since before Christmas
actually. I wonder what she was thinking or if she was thinking why she could
not open her eyes and she could not speak. I wondered if she saw herself the
many times, she shared with me, of painting her ceramic horses and actually riding
her family's horses when she was a young girl in Pennsylvania.
This is something no one will ever
know or see but we all know or have hope that she is in Jesus arms and she is
once again out in the stables with her family horses, with full use of her legs,
full use of other areas of herself that she had long since lost. I
will miss the weekly times I prayed with her when I would come to visit her. I
will miss the many times of hearing all the stories of her creating art when
she was well and complaining about the hospital food. We would celebrate the
days and the weeks she would get to stay home each year though I didn't get to
know her as long as I would have liked to. But since I've known her for almost
2 years, I'd say 75% or more of the time, was visiting her in different
hospitals. Nearly two weeks before she passed away, I came with Pastor Mary and
we prayed over her and I anointed her head with oil. All I can say is that it
felt like she acknowledged my touch and it brought her some peace.
It's the little things of God's work
within us that make us not only ambassadors of His Word but truly make us to be
bringing a little light, perhaps a little miracle of something into someone
else's life. The past couple of months I have been writing various essays
almost daily about why do I want to be a minister? Why do I want to care for
others? Let us just say that's one step away from asking me what do you think
is the meaning of life? Do you have another year to sit down and I'll tell you?
Being called by God is a very unique thing. It is a miraculous thing which
comes to you through something that just telling another person about, they're
never going to understand and they're not going to really see it as the truth. Just
like Thomas who had to stick his hand in Jesus’ wounds, no one's going to know
where you're coming from, when you've got that bug, when you've been caught by
the gospel.
So, you're a Jesus Freak ehh? Yes, I
am. I can have plenty of people who don't choose to believe in me as a good
witness to His Gospel yet alone give me the time of day to serve them the Gospel…
but my priority is beyond them. Fox Mulder from the X-Files was somebody who
never said never to all the challenges he got, even from his lovely partner,
Scully. He had to keep searching for the truth because it was out there! On
that same breath, I have to keep preaching and teaching and living the truth,
so the people out there see it within themselves. There's no easy button
for discipleship and that is even doubly so for the pastor. We are at the head
of those tributaries holding the hands of those in our flock and guiding them
by speaking the truth in love, in order for them to find the truth within.
Monkey see, monkey do. I love that
it sort of has both lines of truthfulness to it. That seeing and doing comes
from the life-altering power of God's Word. We hear God's Word. We speak God's Word
and we are called to heed to God's Word. Perhaps that's where Bonhoeffer was
pushing the envelope with us thinking about heeding. No one likes the word
obedience it sounds like Brussel sprouts or oatmeal! I apologize in
advance for anyone who's an ardent fan of Brussel sprouts… but for my analogy
it works perfectly. The voice of God has never stopped speaking to us. We may
not hear it sometimes and we may feel it is super real, but God is always
trying to guide us. The moment we stop running away and run towards this voice,
we will begin to see, and the Spirit will reveal what our hearts must covenant
to. That's what's great about the close of this Gospel, when they had brought
their boats to the shore, they left everything. They just deep-sixed it all and
they followed Him period. Part of the cost of discipleship is part
of our own struggle fighting against it. The world really wants to fight
against it because it's not self-absorbed, consumeristic or hedonistic it is
radical revolutionary and opposite world, the kingdom of God.
Let us Pray
Loving and Gracious God
Help us to hear You
Help us to open our eyes to Your
truth
And help us to heed the power of Your
Words’ call upon us
To love and serve our neighbor.
May we realize the wonderful
gracious gifts
You have given each and every one of
us
May we use those not for ourselves
But to be ambassadors of peace and
love
The fruit of Your Living Words
truth.
We lift this prayer to your Mighty Heart
AMEN
February
10th, 2019; 5th Sunday After the Epiphany; Year C; SOLA
Lectionary
Sermon
by: Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins
Psalm
138; Isaiah 6:1-13; 1 Corinthians 14:12-20 & Luke 5:1-11
The link below is to this sermon's delivery at the Grace Hub at 12:30pm:
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