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If you were hoping for some good news when you came to church today, you’re in luck. The readings are full of good news – all three of them. And what is the good news? The good news is that God calls sinners; God not only calls sinners, he depends on them to do his work. And the good news is also that, for God, nothing is impossible. The reading from Isaiah sets the stage. Isaiah is favored with a vision of the all-holy God in all his majesty and glory. He hears the angelic chorus filling the heavens with their mighty hymn, “Holy, Holy, Holy!” and suddenly he is overwhelmed by the enormous abyss that exists between him and God – between God’s holiness and human sinfulness. “Woe is me,” he says, “I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips living among a people of unclean lips.” But God bridges the great abyss. God sends one of the seraphim to touch Isaiah’s lips with a burning ember taken from the altar and in that moment grace floods in. And when God asks for someone He can send on a prophetic mission, Isaiah, released from his overwhelming sense of sinfulness, speaks up: “Here I am,” he says, send me!” Call that Good News, exhibit A. God calls sinners and depends on them to do his work. Exhibit B was in the gospel, a story we know well. Jesus was teaching a large crowd of people at the Lake of Galilee. So large was the crowd on the shore that Jesus decided to teach them from Simon Peter’s boat. He sat down to teach, not, as you might think, to steady himself as the boat rocked and pitched, but because rabbis always sat down when they taught. It was a sign of their authority. When he had finished teaching Jesus turned to Simon Peter and his fellow fishermen who had been washing their nets after a long and fruitless night of fishing. He told them to join him in the boat, to put out into deep water, and to lower their nets for a catch. At first, Peter tried to reverse the roles and play the teacher. He was, after all, the fisherman, not Jesus! “Master,” he said, “we have worked all night and have caught nothing.” But even though Peter was absolutely certain that there were no fish to be caught, he swallowed hard and, in an act of faith that must have surprised even himself, he said to Jesus, “but at your command I will lower the nets.” It was an act of faith that bore fruit: so great was the catch that the nets nearly gave way and Peter had to send for help from his comrades on shore. And then there’s Peter’s response to Jesus. Did you notice how much it resembled Isaiah’s when he saw God’s glory? “Woe is me. I am unclean,” Isaiah had said. “Depart from me, Peter said, “for I am a sinful man!” And just as Isaiah was cleansed from his sins, so was Peter. And just as Isaiah was sent on a mission, so was Peter. God calls sinners and depends on them to do his work. Good News, exhibit B. Exhibit C came in the second reading. Paul reminds the Corinthians of the various appearances of the risen Lord (to Peter, James, the Twelve, the 500 brothers), and then mentions himself, quickly adding that he really didn’t deserve to be an apostle at all for he had persecuted Christ’s church with a vengeance. But his sins didn’t seem to count for much. God had chosen him and called him and that was that! God calls sinners and depends on them to do his work. Good News, exhibit C. My friends, we have heard some very good news today, but there is even more good news in those readings: there’s the exceedingly good news that for God nothing is impossible. Luke sounds that theme often in his gospel. We heard it during Advent when the angel announced to Mary the impossible news that she, a virgin, would conceive and bear a child who would be the long-awaited savior; we heard it, too, when Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, childless because she was barren, conceived a child in her old age. And of course, we heard it in today’s gospel when Peter and his friends pulled up a great catch of fish from an empty lake. Nothing is impossible for God. Nothing can get in the way of God’s wonders: not our sinfulness, not our human limitations, not even nature itself – nothing! The two boats full to the gunwales with wriggling fish are evidence of that! My friends, we live in a world where bad news rules. We can’t get away from bad news. It is everywhere and it so easily drags us down, stymies us, immobilizes us, turns us into cynics. But we are believers. We are people of the gospel, people of faith. We know what happened to Isaiah, and to Peter, and to Paul and we know that the God who worked wonders for them can do the same for us. The God who turned Isaiah the priest into Isaiah the prophet; who turned Peter the fisherman into Peter the preacher, and Paul the persecutor into Paul the apostle can do great things like that for us. God can. “Nothing is impossible for God!” Father Michael G. Ryan |
The
5th Sunday in Ordinary Time