Fifth Sunday after Epiphany - Lectionary 5, Sunday Feb. 6, 2022

Prayer

Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Luke 5:1-11

"Tristam (Land of Israel) says of the fish in the Sea of Galilee: "The shoals are marvelous, black masses, many hundred yards long, with their black fins projecting out of the water as thick as they could pack. Any net would break that enclosed such a shoal.""

From The People's New Testament, B.W. Johnson, 1891.

"God often becomes manifest in the ordinary, even seemingly unnecessary events of a person's life ? events which nevertheless are in accord with some purpose that is or is not known."
Commentary, Luke 5:1-11, Arland J. Hultgren, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2010.

"Despite signs of legendary development the bearers of the Jesus tradition never divinised Peter. He remained one of them, one of us; leadership by grace. The best traditions let it remain so. They also affirm his role and the continuing role and need for leadership and its accountability in the church. Ultimately Luke is linking that leadership to Jesus? own leadership and mission declared before his home town synagogue. It is a leadership that sets free."
"First Thoughts on Year C Gospel Passages in the Lectionary," Epiphany 5, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

"The reason for the call is not to say to Peter, 'Buck up, little buddy, you're not so bad,' but rather, 'Stop being afraid now. We have work to do.'"
"Regular People as Disciples," Mary Hinkle, Pilgrim Preaching: Keeping Company with Biblical Texts and the People Who Hear and Preach Them.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

[This is taken from my reflections on the text in my book Vocātiō.]

Let us return to the disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Luke’s Gospel tells the story of the calling of the first disciples as a fishing miracle. Jesus came by and taught the people using the boat as a platform. He then invited the disciples to cast out into the sea and to put out their nets. 

Let me pause here for a second. There are several kinds of words used for nets in the New Testament. They are: δίκτυον, ἀμφίβληστρον, σαγήνη.  Scholars point out that the word ἀμφίβληστρον and σαγήνη designate specifically nets for fishing like a casting-net, generally pear-shaped. I want to point out the word used in our lesson today is δίκτυον and it is a seine or dragnet. 

The fishermen doubted as they had been fishing all night with nothing to show for their efforts. They did as Jesus said and a great multitude of fish was brought aboard. Luke tells us that their nets were breaking. They called other boats to come and help. Peter immediately told Jesus he was not worthy to follow. Jesus told Peter, James, and John to join him and he would teach them to fish for people (Luke 5:1–11).

I want to broaden it to fit into a wider discussion of the disciples’ work as peacebuilders, because followers of Jesus are doing work in this world that will remain at the end of the age. Jesus used the dragnet as a metaphor for this peace-making enterprise. The community the disciples build was to be universal and catholic—everyone was included.

Dragnets gather in everything because they dredge the seafloor. They capture wood and plants as well as fish. They capture inedible fish as well as edible fish. The community of peace that Jesus inaugurated in this world has the same characteristic of indiscriminateness. God is making a community that connects, or networks, all kinds of people. While we normally think of this kingdom-net only containing fish, and good fish at that, it truly contains everything: the weeds, the detritus of dysfunctional relationships and human brokenness, the debris of daily life lived in service to the masters of economies and political powermongers. The community of shalom, our dragnet, “touches everything in the world: not just souls, but bodies, and not just people, but all things, animal, vegetable, and mineral.”[i] God in Christ Jesus is in this very world gathering into the community of shalom the whole of creation. As God in Christ was lifted up on the cross, the great crossroads of community was bridged—heaven with earth, humanity with God. All were drawn to God’s self (John 12:32). As the book of Revelation indicates, all of creation is drawn to God in Christ—not just people.

The disciples were called to participate in the transfiguration of the world, which is partly why they were led down from the mountainside after Jesus’s transfiguration. They were to be the transfigured Christ in the world. The work of transfiguring creation only happens down in the village where demons are cast out and people are healed (Matt. 17:1–27). The mystery of the community of shalom is that it includes God and people and must also include the whole of creation. Secular moderns, imprisoned as we are in our immanent frame, want to differentiate between what is worth capturing in the net and what is not, but no such distinction is made in the parables of the kingdom in the Gospels.[ii] The dragnet rejects nothing in the sea; it encompasses all things. The only people missing from God’s dragnet when it is hauled ashore will be those who carve themselves out of the net with their own sickle of judgment. This is what the scriptures imply when they say that the sickle will soon enough come for those who refuse the community of peace and instead choose power, abuse of the poor by neglect, and do violence to others and creation (Matt. 25:31–46; Rev. 14). The sickle comes for those who cannot live with the least, the lost, and the unclean. They have spent their whole life being different from those “other” people. They hold too much judgment in their heart, keeping track of the negative marks against others. It is difficult for people who routinely use their power and authority to keep others down to accept that God has invited everyone into the reign of peace. I pray that it will be very difficult indeed to resist God’s grace, to deny God’s sacrifice is enough even for my enemy, and to reject God’s love when I come face-to-face with God’s eternal peace.[iii]

The story of scripture also tells us that the separation of judgment will not take place before the transfiguration at the end of the age. There is always time. In this hope we live and work and have our being. Between now and the end of time, the disciples of Jesus can reject nothing, for the dragnet rejects nothing, and the community of peace has no “business setting itself up in the judging business. And, neither, a fortiori, does the church.”[iv] The disciples are to follow Jesus and learn from him, as participants in the great narrative of God’s shalom. We are to learn how this new dragnet of community is to hold all kinds of people. This is how the band of Jesus followers become a “sacrament,” the continuing body of Christ in the world. We will have to “avoid the temptation to act like a sport fishermen who is interested only in speckled trout and hand-tied flies,” says Capon.[v] Disciples are called to be the worst kind of fishers. The only thing we are to discard is the temptation to reject the mess of creation and humanity. Our community of shalom in this world participates in the reign of God at the end of the age if it remains in relationship with all the “old boots, bottles, and beer cans” that a truly random dredging of humanity must be. The Church will be transfigured to the extent that it is one and the same with the mess it intends to drag in.[vi]

To point out how important this work is, Luke follows the call story of the disciples with an encounter with a leper. Lepers were shunned from the religious community of the day. Their illness made intimacy and belonging impossible. Lepers were seen as sinful and unworthy of community membership, but Jesus restored one such leper back to the community by engagement with the God of creation. God’s Living Word made the leper whole, rejecting the status quo. God in Christ Jesus engaged someone who was not to be engaged (Luke 5:12–16). Moreover, Jesus tied his healing of the leper into the story of Moses.

[i]  Robert Farrar Capon, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2002), 113.
[ii] Ibid., 115.
[iii] There are multiple theologies of atonement that are accepted within orthodox Christianity. Most people are familiar with the one where God requires Jesus to be a blood sacrificed. If you are interested in the many theologies of the Christian Church. I suggest reading The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ by Fleming Rutledge (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2017). This is an excellent text on the subject.
[iv] Capon, Kingdom, 115.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid.

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

"The entirety of this chapter is the eloquent center of Paul's primary argument for the Resurrection."
Commentary, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Susan Hedahl, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"Whether then it is we or they (and may God make it both), so let us proclaim, that the world might come to believe; that Christ Jesus died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, and that he we raised again."
Commentary, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Karl Jacobson, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2010.

"Affirming that God raised Jesus from the dead (whether with a transformation model or a replacement model) is foundational for reading the story of Jesus as paradigmatic for us all: there is death and there is hope!"
"First Thoughts on Passages on Year B Epistle Passages in the Lectionary," Easter Day, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

This passage also appears on Easter Day in year B. 

Paul begins by drawing the readers of his letter back to the good news of God in Christ Jesus that he proclaimed to them...that Jesus died upon the cross for all and to save all people. That all people are reconciled to God through the work of Christ on the cross. What this means is that we are reconciled first to Christ and then to each other.

I have always thought that we reveal our relationship with God and Christ through our relationship with others. In other words, our relationships with others (good, bad, indifferent) are all rooted in our understanding of Christ's work. And, if Christ saves me and I truly have that hope, and it is not in vain, then I must see all others in the same relationship with Christ's saving act. And, in so doing I see the potential hope of our own reconciliation.

Paul then bears witness to how this extra-historical event of great magnitude was literally witnessed by others. He writes,

"Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures,and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

Paul then writes that he received such grace that he himself became a missionary of this message. The power of Paul's belief, and reception of the good news is what has spurred him on.

I feel that Paul is deeply rooting not only his own mission and ministry in the cross of Christ, but he is reminding anyone who would call themselves a follower that they too are rooted here in this cross. Before we raise our banners high for our Christian sect or our belief that we have it right and others wrong...before we start to claim that the future of the church...this or that...is dependent upon our actions...I feel Paul is reminding us that everything is dependent upon Christ and his cross and resurrection.

I wonder if things in church, our arguments, those things we think are so essential, would be approached in a very different manner if we started out where Paul starts out in this passage.

Isaiah 6:1-8, (9-13)

"We are sent to join God in mission because we have encountered God, because we have been brought face to face with God's holiness and our brokenness, and because we have been made whole by God's grace."

"Worship that Sends," Patrick Johnson, Missional Preaching: Equipping for Witness, 2015.

"When we encounter the God who is majestic and merciful, what matters is humility and honesty. When we can have the courage to respond in this way, we find ourselves connected to the source of all life, all love, and all joy. And we find ourselves somehow more connected to ourselves, and to everything and everyone around us."
"Majestic and Merciful," Alan Brehm, The Waking Dreamer.

"Volunteerism, an expression of stewardship, is a major theological theme in this text. The majestic nature of the liturgical drama that unfolds invokes a sense of praise and makes clear the sacredness of God, the moment, and the call to serve."
Lectionary Commentary, Cheryl Kirk-Duggan, The African American Lectionary, 2009.

"We must learn to understand this judgment as an opportunity to truly know ourselves as sinners. We must accept this judgment, ultimately, as an expression of God's grace."
5 Epiphany, Year C: Isaiah 6:1-13, Biblische Ausbildung, Dr. Stephen L. Cook, Virginia Theological Seminary.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

John's gospel understands that Isaiah is a witness to the divinity of Christ. Isaiah is the voice crying out in the wilderness (John 1.23). Then again in 53.1 and 6.10, John uses Isaiah again to reveal that Jesus is fulfilling prophesy. (Richard Hays, Echoes of the Scripture in the Gospels, 293.)

This is all very important because what Christian biblical theologians argue is that Isaiah has this vision (the one from today's lesson) he is not simply seeing God on the throne, but he is seeing the incarnation, the Christ, on the throne. Hays argues that this is John's view too and this is why it is so important for him to enlist Isaiah as a witness to God in Christ Jesus. (Hays, 289.) This is a witness to the triadic nature of God and the eternal presence of the incarnation. (Hays would say Jesus...but I think that is theologically incorrect.)

This is an important reading of scripture because it is both triune and it begins to reveal how the first evangelists and followers of Jesus understood who Jesus was without a New Testament.

One of the real issues on Trinity Sunday is not so much the Trinity, but our lack of good theological and scriptural underpinning.

What I am saying here is quite important, at least to my theology and understanding of the creation. People often suggest that the Trinity is a mere mystery planted into theology because of early Christian infighting over the idea of who Jesus was and the deep desire to not appear anything other than monotheist. Secondly, we err on the side of believing that the incarnation begins with Jesus' birth - which it decidedly does not...if you are a true Trinitarian that is. And, lastly, we make the mistake of believing that the only reason that Jesus comes into the world is because of sin. That is hogwash too. You see most people get a good understanding of Augustine's trinitarian doctrine and don't go any further. Without doing so what we get is the heresy of modalism... another words...as Augustine says himself: the trinity is really about describing three somethings. (Augustine, De Trinitate 7.9 (CCSL, 50A:259).

The Trinity's work is part of the very creation of the cosmos. It is present before the birth of Jesus and after. The 1 in 3 and 3 in 1 God is fully active prior to our imagining and will be long after our ingathering. There is one will causing all actions and one substance.

I think that Robert Farrar Capon puts a fun and quite theologically brilliant spin on all of this as he reminds us of the contribution of the early Scotists and Franciscan theologians - good Trinitarians all. I offer you this quote from his book The Third Peacock...well worth the read. Enjoy:

In the Christian scheme of things, the ultimate act by which God runs and rescues creation is the Incarnation. Sent by the Father and conceived by the Spirit, the eternal Word is born of the Virgin Mary and, in the mystery of the indwelling, lives, dies, rises, and reigns. Unfortunately, however, we tend to look on the mystery mechanically. We view it as a fairly straight piece of repairwork which became necessary because of sin. Synopsis: The world gets out of whack; perverse and foolish oft it strays until there is none good, no, not one. Enter therefore God with incarnational tool kit. He fixes up a new Adam in Jesus and then proposes, through the mystery of baptism, to pick up all the fallen members of the old Adam and graft them into Christ. Real twister of an ending: As a result of sin, man ends up higher by redemption than he would have by creation alone.

However venerable that interpretation is, though, it is not the only one. As long ago as the Middle Ages, the Scotist school of Franciscan theologians suggested another. They raised the question of whether the Incarnation would have occurred apart from sen; and they answered it, Yes. In other words, they saw the action of God in Christ, not as an incidental patching of the fabric of creation, but as part of its very texture. For our purposes—in this context of a world run by desire for God—that opens up the possibility that the Word in Jesus was not so much doing bits of busy work to jimmy things into line as he was being his own fetching self right there in the midst of creation.
And there you have the bridge from a mechanical to a personal analogy to the divine help. When we say that a friend “helped” us, two meanings are possible. In the case where our need was for a Band-Aid, a gallon of gas or a push on a cold morning, we have in mind mechanical help; help for times when help was at least possible. But when nothing can be helped, when the dead are irretrievably dead and the beloved lost for good, what do we mean by telling Harry how much help he was to us in our need? He did nothing; he rescued no one from the pit, he brought no one back from the ends of the earth. Still, we are glad of him; we protest that without him we would never have made it. Yet we know perfectly well we could have gotten through it just by breathing in and out. That means, therefore, that what we thank him for is precisely personal help. It was his presence, not the things that he did, that made the difference.

So with God, perhaps. Might not Incarnation be his response, not to the incidental irregularity of sin, but to the unhelpable presence of badness in creation? Perhaps in a world where, for admittedly inscrutable reasons, victimization is the reverse of the coin of being, his help consists of his presence in all victims. At any rate, when he finally does show up in Jesus, that is how it seems to work. His much-heralded coming to put all things to rights ends badly. When the invisible hand that holds the stars finally does its triumphant restoring thing, it does nothing at all but hang there and bleed. That may well be help; but it is not the Band-Aid creation expected on the basis of mechanical analogies. The only way it makes any sense is when it is seen as personal: When we are helpless, there he is. He doesn’t start your stalled car for you; he comes and sits with you in the snowbank. You can object that he should have made a world in which cars don’t stall; but you can’t complain he doesn’t stick by his customers.

So, back to Isaiah. Now, did Isaiah catch a glimpse of God in Christ, the Incarnation, sitting upon the throne? A man with arms and legs? A pre-Jesus. I doubt it but I do not know. But I believe that Isaiah understood clearly that the God who gave him the sight of such a vision was the God who had created the cosmos and would in the end gather us in. It is God, the Lord, who is present at our coming in and our going out. It is this God who, in the wreck of Israel and the end of King Uzziah's rule, is present. Everything can be in the dumps but the Lord sits upon his throne and sits by our side. 

And, it is this certainty of presence that Isaiah bears witness to, that the first disciples experienced both before and after the resurrection, and it is this certainty of presence that John the evangelist records in his Gospel.