February 4, 2007, Epiphany 5

Isaiah 6:1-8, [9-13]; Psalm 138; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

When the sacred meets the secular

What is the Bible about? Faith? Piety? Worship? Surely all these are included.

It is a story of a people of faith. It is the story of what this people of faith believe and of how they understand their God and how they relate to him. It is a story of how their God has made himself known to them by breaking into their everyday lives. It is the story about how God breaks into our lives – our ordinary lives in an extraordinary way. It is about the meeting of the sacred and the secular.

One doesn’t just wake up one morning and say, “I think I’ll become a Christian today.” The decision to follow Christ comes as the result of being “called” – it is the result of an encounter with the holy, the sacred, with some manifestation of God.

Take Moses for example – there he was, minding his own business – well, tending the sheep of his father-in-law, Jethro - and God breaks into his life in the form of a burning bush – one that talks. Last week we heard about Jeremiah who heard a voice. Isaiah is in the temple at the coronation of a new king for Judah when God breaks in with a vision. And here’s poor unsuspecting Peter, working on his nets when the Lord steps into his life.

Our gospel lesson tells about Jesus walking along the shore of the – lake of Gennesaret – also known as the Sea of Galilee. It says that the people are pressing in on him in order to hear him speak – so much so that they are pushing him out into the water – so he gets into a nearby boat. It happens to be Peter’s boat – and he asks Peter to put out from shore a little way.

When we were in Israel, we visited a grassy cove on the Sea of Galilee where our guide said this might have happened. It was a little half circular inlet with grassy slopes slanting up and away. It was very similar to an amphitheater where the water was the floor/stage area. Having visited the amphitheater in Jerash, Jordan, and having stood at the focus and talked in a normal voice while Sam on the top back row heard me as clearly as if he were standing next to me – having experienced that and looking at that grassy slope, I knew that in a boat on the water at the focus, Jesus could easily be heard throughout that grassy hillside.

And when Jesus finishes speaking, he tells Peter, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Well, regardless of what Peter might have thought while Jesus was teaching, this was probably the craziest thing he’d ever heard. In first century Galilee, commercial fishermen didn’t fish during the day. Remember there was no refrigeration – so people would fish at night and would take their catch in the early morning to the market to be sold – fresh fish to be bought early and taken home to cook or preserve for later in the day. After selling their fish in the market, then they would clean and repair their nets to have them ready for the next night. Then by noon, they would head home to grab a few hours sleep to get ready for the next night’s work.

And here is this new preacher making a ridiculous suggestion – but Peter decides to humor him – he probably thought, “well, we’ll just give him an object lesson.” The boats they used were somewhat small and most likely manned by a crew of two. The nets they used would be much smaller than the nets used today.

The crews fished the shallow waters where two people could handle the nets and bring in the fish that were feeding near shore. If you went out into the deep, the nets wouldn’t reach down far enough to catch fish hiding near the bottom. But Peter humors Jesus and puts out to deep water and he throws out the net not expecting to find anything.

But to Peter’s surprise they catch so many fish that the net is beginning to break – so he summons his partners in the other boat. The other boat comes out and helps them pull in the catch of fish. Peter knows that something special has happened – that this is indeed a holy man – the sacred has met the secular and made itself known. And Peter falls to Jesus’ feet and cries out saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” He feels himself unworthy in the presence of Jesus.

Many of you will have some story of an encounter with the sacred, the holy. If so, I hope that is one of the things you might share at some time during Allison’s story writing class. I guess my very first encounter – was when I was a police officer for UT in Austin – I remember driving by the seminary on patrol one day, and casually wondering if they let ordinary people take classes there. (By the way, they do!)

Later I was walking down a hallway at Camp Allen when I had something like a vision, a momentary mental picture - whatever you want to call it – of myself celebrating the Eucharist. Simple things where God was trying to get my attention – but I was pretty thick headed and cast those things off as ridiculous.

We even have modern day examples of this meeting between the sacred and the secular. TV shows such as Highway to Heaven, Touched by an Angel and especially Joan of Arcadia tried to present stories about the meeting of the secular and the sacred. Movies such as Oh God, (I and II) with George Burns and Bruce Almighty, Keeping the Faith, Leap of Faith, and many others look at this meeting of the secular and the sacred.

God reaches out and touches us in both little and big ways. We don’t always respond like Peter did, falling to our knees in awe and wonder – or with a sense of our unworthiness. For me, in the beginning, I just ignored –brushed off – the touch because I felt unworthy. It took God a number of times before I finally broke down and cried tears of joy and tears of wonder and awe in acknowledgment that God might really be calling me to some deeper ministry.

Our gospel lesson ends with Peter and James and John accepting the call and leaving everything to follow Jesus. Different people are called to different ministries – to different levels of ministries. Can we be like Isaiah – who when God said, “Whom shall I send?” answered with a firm, “Here I am, Lord. Send me!” Can we be like Peter and James and John who left everything and went out to learn how to catch men – alive? Can we leave our comfort zones – to step out into an unknown realm – to reach out to those who don’t know Christ – to make Christ known to the world around us? Whether it’s through painting, music, teaching, healing, praying, cooking, or serving, God reaches out through us to the world around us. He invites you to join him in this conscious effort.

Please feel free to email me with comments at nan@doerrworks.com