Sinful But Called

Fifth Sunday in Course 2025

The first thing that strikes me as I read today’s Gospel is that Peter and his fishing crew had been working all night and then had cleaned their nets. These professionals had just worked at least ten hours and were ready to go home. Jesus came along with hundreds of listeners and needed a stage from which to speak. He requested Peter’s boat and stood in it, teaching the crowd for perhaps a couple of hours. The fishermen had worked the equivalent of a double shift but then are asked to put out into deep water and lower their now-clean nets for another how many hours of fishing?

Simon Peter had just heard the most powerful, inspiring sermon of his life. He doesn’t say no to the request, but he does register a slight animadversion: “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” The power of God’s word, spoken to Peter and the others by the very Word of God, Son of the Father, was enough to kick in the adrenaline and motivate the fishermen to fish longer in the worst time of day in the part of the lake with the worst prospects. But the power of God’s word is also such that it attracts a huge shoal of fish, enough to start breaking the nets, even from two boats.

The response given by Simon Peter echoes through the ages, on the lips of every human with any self-understanding: "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." We are all sinners, every one. Isaiah saw it a thousand years before this incident. As a priest, he was supposed to be set aside for God’s service, holy. But he had seen a glimpse of the awesome presence of God in His Temple, and saw his own sins, in his mind and heart. He had been taught from his youngest years that the vision of God would strike him dead, and he prayed: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" Then a Seraphim took a hot coal from the incense purifying the altar, and symbolically purged his sin as he physically touched Isaiah’s lips. Only then could the prophet accept his call from God to go for God to speak and write God’s Word.

Our response, using the psalmist’s words, admitted God’s unchanging intention toward humans: “give thanks to thy name for thy steadfast love and thy faithfulness; for thou hast exalted above everything thy name and thy word.” Steadfast love is chesed and faithfulness or fidelity is emeth. These are the two words that characterize God’s relationship with his people all through the OT. If there is a change in that relationship, it has to do not with God’s constant pouring out of love and gifts on His children, but with the often ungrateful response by the recipients.

In the NT, God doubles down on His promises. Instead of heavenly bread in the desert, called manna, the Father gives the Bread of Life, His very Son, Jesus the Messiah. As St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, in what is probably our oldest profession of faith, “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.” And Paul goes on to the hundreds of others who witnessed the Risen, Living Jesus, including himself. You might remember that Paul recalls his own Isaian moment, the appearance of Jesus as Paul journeyed to Damascus. He calls himself “untimely born, [Jesus] 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.” He vividly remembers standing nearby as his synagogue brethren stoned deacon Stephen to death, and Stephen praying for all of them as he gave out his last breath. But he more remembers the forgiveness of Jesus he experienced when shortly after he accepted baptism, and went on to become perhaps the most effective evangelist in Christian history.

What about us? Each of us has a call, maybe not as dramatic as that of Paul, or Isaiah, or Simon Peter. Maybe we haven’t heard it yet or haven’t yet listened for it. Each of us has a mission from Christ, given by the agency of the Holy Spirit with our baptism. If you don’t yet know what it is to do, tune in your spiritual ears for the Holy Spirit’s frequency. Do that with silent prayer, and do it trusting that Christ always fulfills His promises. May His holy Name be praised forever, Amen.