If you came to church today hoping for some
good news, you’re in luck. The readings are full of good news – all
three of them. And what’s the good news? The good news is that God calls
sinners and actually depends on sinners to accomplish good – even great
- things. And there’s even more good news. It’s this: nothing is
impossible for God.
The reading from Isaiah
set the stage. Isaiah is favored with a vision of the majesty and glory
of the all-holy God. 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 his own 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 reaches out to bridge the great abyss. God
sends one of the seraphim to touch Isaiah’s lips with a burning ember
taken from the altar. In that moment Isaiah is a changed man, so much so
that when God asks for someone He can send on a prophetic mission,
Isaiah, no longer burdened by his overwhelming sense of sinfulness,
quickly signs up: “Here I am,” he says, send me!” Call that ‘good news,
exhibit A.’ God calls sinners and depends on sinners to accomplish great
things.
Exhibit B was in the
gospel, a story we know well. Jesus is teaching a large crowd of people
at the Sea of Galilee. The crowd on the shore is so large that Jesus
decides to teach from Simon Peter’s boat. Luke gives a nice little
detail when he tells us that Jesus sat down in the boat to teach. We
might think that Jesus sat down in order to steady himself as the boat
rocked and pitched, but the real reason is that rabbis always sat down
to teach. It was a sign of their authority.
When he had finished
teaching Jesus told Simon Peter to put out into deep water and lower his
nets for a catch. At first, Peter reverses roles and tries to play the
teacher. He, after all, was the one who knew about fishing, not Jesus!
“Master,” he said, “we have worked all night and have caught nothing.”
But even though Peter was 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 says to Jesus, “but at your command I will lower the nets.”
It was an act of faith that paid off: so great was the catch that the
nets nearly gave way and Peter had to call for help from his friends on
a nearby boat.
Then there’s Peter’s
response to Jesus. Notice how much it sounds like Isaiah’s response when
he beheld God’s glory. Isaiah had said, “Woe is me for I am unclean.”
Peter says, “Depart from me 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 great mission, so was Peter. God calls sinners and depends on sinners
to accomplish great things. Mark that ‘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 more than 500). He
then mentions himself, quickly adding that he really didn’t deserve to
be an apostle 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 sinners
to accomplish great things. ‘Good news, exhibit C.’
My friends, we have
heard some very good news today, and 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 sterile, conceived a child in her old age. And
of course, we heard it in today’s gospel when Peter and his friends
hauled in that great catch of fish. Nothing is impossible for God.
Nothing can get in the way of God’s wonders: not our sinfulness, not our
human limitations, not even the laws of nature itself. Nothing! Isaiah,
Peter, Paul, and those two boats loaded down with fish are ample
evidence of that!
My friends, we live in a
world where bad news rules. We can’t get away from it, can we? It’s
everywhere. It’s in our personal lives in one way or another all the
time, isn’t it? And it’s everywhere around us. Look at the current
nail-biting Russia-Ukraine situation, look at the pandemic, look at the
relentless gun violence in our cities, look at our hopeless political
divides. There’s bad news everywhere, and it can so easily drag us down,
immobilize us, turn us into cynics. But we are believers! We are people
of hope, Good News people! We know the stories of Isaiah, Peter, and
Paul, and we know that the God who worked wonders for them and through
them can work wonders for us in our personal lives and turn us into
apostles - agents for change, agents for good, agents for justice in our
troubled world.
The God who turned
Isaiah the visionary into Isaiah the fearless prophet, who turned Peter
the fisherman into Peter the disciple, and Paul the persecutor into Paul
the apostle, can do great things for us, too, my friends. And our sins
and failings and inadequacies, whatever they may be, really have nothing
to do with it, for God calls sinners and depends on sinners to
accomplish good – even great – things. And “Nothing is impossible for
God!”
Father Michael G. Ryan
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