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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
In today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 6:1-13), the prophet Isaiah responded to his vision of the King, the Lord of Hosts, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, by crying out in despair and confessing his uncleanness, but a heavenly creature took away Isaiah’s guilt and atoned for his sin, and the Lord subsequently sent Isaiah to speak on the Lord’s behalf to His people. In today’s Gospel Reading, the at‑that‑time apparently sometime disciple Simon Peter responded to the miraculous catch of fish that the Lord Jesus granted him by ordering Jesus away and confessing his sinfulness, but Jesus told Peter not to be afraid and that Peter would be catching men. Today, you and I, have come into God’s presence confessing our sin, blessed by Him are able to remain here, and then will go our ways to serve Him in the vocations that He has given us. This morning we realize that “God enables repentant sinners to remain in His presence.”
In ways other than visions and miracles God reveals His Presence to us, chiefly by the Word of God that the crowd pressing in on Jesus in the Gospel Reading also was hearing, which Word of God can be said also in other ways to dominate the Reading (Roehrs‑Franzmann, ad loc Luke 5:1-11, p.64). Yet, instead of Peter’s fearful astonishment, people today, ourselves included, may not always react to that Word of God rightly but may go to one of two extremes. One such wrong extreme reaction might be not having enough awareness of our own sin and God’s holiness and how the two cannot mix. We might not fully appreciate that we are totally corrupt by nature and that we have sinned countless times against God and our fellow human beings, any one of which sins on its own warrants death in time and eternal torment in hell. We might be too casual when we come into God’s Presence, not fully appreciating how absolutely holy He is or giving due consideration to His care for how we come into His Presence and worship Him. Another such wrong extreme reaction might be having too much awareness of our own sin and God’s holiness despite God’s making us holy by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. We might still fixate on sins from a long time ago that God has long-since forgiven, or we might doubt whether God’s mercy and grace are really sufficient for the depth and magnitude of our sin.
Apart from God we are ensnared by the devil, having been captured by him, in order to do his will (2 Timothy 2:26), but God sends His messengers, such as Isaiah and Peter and pastors today, to “catch” us for God, in order for us to do His will, which is for us, enabled by God, to confess our sin and be forgiven by Him for the sake of Jesus’s death on the cross for us. When Peter in the Gospel Reading confessed his sinfulness in the presence of the Lord, he did not quite yet recognize that God was present in the person of Jesus Christ not to cast him away from His Presence but to enable him to remain in His Presence by forgiving his sin. And, such enabling is what God did for Peter with His faith-creating and individually‑absolving words “Do not be afraid”, and such enabling is what God does for you and for me. As we sang in today’s Psalm (Psalm 138; antiphon: v.5), though the Lord is high, He regards the lowly. When we confess our sin—whether our sin of not enough fear of God or our sin of too much fear of God—and when we trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, then God forgives our sin, our sinful nature and all our sin, whatever our sin might be.
The miraculous catch of fish that the Lord Jesus granted Peter showed Jesus to be true God in human flesh, the same God Who on the Fifth Day created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm (Genesis 1:21; Wolfmueller, CPR 29:1, 46). And, Jesus needed to be true God in human flesh in order for His death on the cross to take away the sins of the whole world, including yours and mine. Yet, we note well that, while Jesus needed to be true God in human flesh and could and did display God’s all-powerfulness, what saved us was not such a display of God’s all‑powerfulness but a display of His “weakness”, as it were, Jesus’s humbly not using His all‑powerfulness in order to die on the cross in our place, His being cast out of the Father’s Presence, forsaken by His God (Matthew 27:46, citing Psalm 22:1), so that we can remain in God’s presence now and for all eternity.
For that same purpose of our remaining in God’s presence now and for all eternity, Jesus made Peter and his brother Andrew (Matthew 4:18-19) and their partners James and John to catch people like us. One could so-allegorize today’s Gospel Reading as to lose sight of its reporting a real miracle, but Jesus uses their formerly fishing as a comparison or contrast with their future ministry, and so not without foundation do preachers such as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther call their “nets” Baptism, Absolution, and the Sacrament of the Altar (Wolfmueller, CPR 29:1, 45, citing Luther’s Postil Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity; confer AE 78:204‑221). To be sure, through Holy Baptism, individual Absolution, and the Sacrament of the Altar, with its bread and wine that are the Body and Blood of Christ, God applies His Gospel to us individually, creating and sustaining our faith, forgiving our sins, and thereby giving us life and salvation. Through the Word in all of its forms the Holy Spirit works, as we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Corinthians 14:12-20), to build up the Church. The nets in any one place at any given time may not appear to be bursting, but God overall is nevertheless “catching” those whom He wills to catch!
Men such as Isaiah, Peter, and pastors today are sent to preach the Word of God and administer His Sacraments to the Lord’s people, but most of the Lord’s people have different vocations. With faith created and sustained through God’s Means of Grace, we go our respective ways to serve Him in the vocations that He has given us, within our families, congregation, and secular society. Freed from the fear of the condemnation that our sin otherwise deserves and from the fear of everything else in this world (Wolfmueller, CPR 29:1, 45), we at least try to fear, love, and trust in God above all things, the First Commandment, and so we also at least try to keep all the rest of His Commandments. When we fail, as we do, we return to His Presence confessing our sin and trusting Him to bless us so that we can remain in His Presence now and for eternity. Until then, we certainly will experience tests of our faith, such as that Peter might be said to have experienced in today’s Gospel Reading, but we remember that Peter “passed” that test of faith, and we can pass ours, too, for God does not permit us to be tested beyond what we can bear with His help.
With that blessing of God in mind, and having realized that, out of His great love, mercy, and grace for the sake of Jesus Christ, “God enables repentant sinners to remain in His presence”, we are confident that the words of today’s Psalm that we sang earlier apply to and remain true for us: The Lord will fulfill His purpose for us; His steadfast love endures forever, so we give thanks to the Lord with our whole hearts.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +