Only Those Who Have Received Mercy Can Give It (February 9, 2025)

Isaiah 6:1-12; Psalm 138; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

When Isaiah was at worship in the Temple, he had a vision of God’s throne in heaven, and he said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips.”

When Paul wrote to the Corinthians about his vision of the risen Christ, he told them: “I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.”

When Peter finished pulling in the astounding catch of fish, he said to Jesus: “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”

Isaiah. Paul. Peter. By any measure, these three figures are heroes of the faith, central figures in the Scriptures, people who were grasped deeply by the mystery of God and who still have so much to teach us today, thousands of years later, about who God is and how God works in us and in the world.  And when each of them was first called by God, their immediate reaction was: No, Lord, not me. I am not worthy of this. I am a sinner.  All three of them report saying the same thing.  No, Lord, I am a sinner.

What do you think about this?  How does this common experience related by these great believers in our Scripture readings today make you feel?  Because I must say that I am of at least two minds about it.

On the one hand, I suppose that if one has a profound experience of God – Isaiah in the Temple having a vision of God in heaven, smoke and incense everywhere, the building shaking, angels flying about; Paul knocked to the ground and struck blind by a vision of the risen Christ; Peter exhausted by hauling in so many fish that his boats nearly sank – I suppose it is understandable to feel small and insignificant and unworthy of a true experience of divine majesty.

But on the other hand, I think it’s very difficult for modern middle-class American Christianity to really understand ourselves as sinners.  I mean, we know we’re not perfect – nobody is – but we aren’t depraved psychopathic criminals either.  We’re just normal suburban people living normal suburban lives, and so how bad can we really be?

And so a lot of people have a hard time seeing themselves as sinners – other people, yes, the depraved psychopathic criminals are sinners, but me?  I know I’m supposed to call myself a sinner, but I’m basically normal and I try my best and I’m probably basically OK.  I remember as a child going to Catholic school, we were required to go to confession once a month.  Sometimes I couldn’t think of anything to confess – but I knew it would be terribly presumptuous to say I hadn’t committed any sins, so instead I made some things up.  And then at the end I said, “And I lied once.”  I guess that one really was a sin.  But for a lot of people, talk about being a sinner stills seems artificial, not really connected to how they perceive themselves.

But there are also a lot of people who live with a profound sense of shame, who feel like they’re just terrible, awful people, whom God could never love or respect, who feel like they’re damaged goods who can’t be repaired.  This shame can come from many places, often – I hate to say it – from the church.

Women, especially, often get the message that boys will be boys so you are completely responsible for preserving your virtue.  And if anything goes wrong, it must therefore be her fault – she wore the wrong thing, she didn’t say no the right way, doesn’t matter, it’s her fault.  People with bullying and abusive personalities will always tell you – it’s your fault that I had to hit you.  And a lot of people come to believe it.

Many LGBT people hear from the church that their existence is an abomination to God, that their desire for love and connection is actually hateful to God, a sin so terrible it cannot even be spoken about openly.  Believing that about yourself can really mess up your mind; take my word for it.  And when people have broken free of this kind of shame, they often want to hear nothing more about sin.  Don’t tell me I’m a sinner – I know all about that manipulative nonsense, I’m not falling for that again.

So as I say, it is difficult for us modern American middle-class Christians to really get our heads around why people like Isaiah and Peter and Paul started their journeys of faith by saying “No, Lord, not me – I am too much of a sinner.”  But there are three common threads to these three stories that might help us begin to understand.

One thing that is clear from these stories is that – setting aside for the moment whether any of these three people were really “sinners” – is that none of these three people thought of themselves as the kind of person who had any right to expect a special calling from God.  Isaiah was praying in the Temple, presumably alongside many others who did not see the magnificent vision he did.  Peter was just having a bad day at work and let the visiting preacher speak from his boat, no great deed worthy of such a reward.  Paul was on his way to Damascus to persecute Christians when Jesus came to him.  Why me?  It would be natural to ask.

And the point is: God did not come to these three people because of anything they had done to earn it.  As Chris Green says, “God’s goodness is shown not in what [God] does to sinners, but in what [God] does for them.” So if you don’t feel like you’ve done anything special to earn God’s special blessing, welcome to the club.  Nobody in Scripture thought they had done anything special either.

Which brings me to a second thread through all of these stories – Isaiah, Paul, and Peter may have thought they were unworthy, but God does not agree with any of them.  The angel brings a coal from heaven to purify Isaiah from what Isaiah perceived to be his uncleanness; Jesus sends Paul as an apostle even though Paul says he was unfit; Jesus tells Peter “Don’t be afraid, from now on you will be catching people.”  So if you don’t think you’re worthy of a special calling from God, God respectfully disagrees with your opinion.

And finally, the calling God gives to each of these three people is not a calling to show others how to achieve the gifts that they had been given.  Isaiah does not write a book “Mystical Experiences in Six Easy Steps.” Paul does not tell people how they, too, can see the resurrected Christ.  Peter does not open a fishing consultancy – “I caught a bazillion fish and you can too, if you just follow my patented plan, for just 3 easy payments of $39.99.”

No, Isaiah is called – in the terrifying end of that passage – to speak God’s Word to a people who don’t want to hear it.  To a people who would rather burn everything down than respond to God’s Word, even though – as Isaiah stresses – God is always ready to heal anyone who turns to God in faith.  Paul is called to join his witness to that of the other witnesses of the resurrection; Paul writes to the Corinthians that whether they believe Christ is risen because of Paul’s testimony or someone else’s testimony makes no difference.  Peter is called to follow Jesus, and for a good long while he’s about as effective a follower of Jesus as he was a fisherman before Jesus showed up – insightful but always making mistakes.

To encounter God – not as the reward for a life of striving and good works, but as a surprising God of mercy and compassion – to know that God is merciful and compassionate to me because I know that I am someone who needs mercy and compassion – this is the starting point for being able to share God’s compassion with our neighbor.  We don’t share our own compassion as if we were the ones in control deciding to show grace – we share Christ’s compassion, Christ’s mercy, because we have first received it for ourselves.

We are, as the old saying goes, simply beggars telling other beggars where they can find bread.  Isaiah, Paul, and Peter never claimed to be anything else.  Never claimed to be any different from you or me.  And so the One whose call that transformed their lives is just as capable of calling us to a transformed life as well.