First Reading: Isaiah 6:1-8 [9-13]
1In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” 4And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5And I said: “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!” 6Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” 8And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” 9And he said, “Go, and say to this people: ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’ 10Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” 11Then I said, “How long, O Lord?” And he said: “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, 12and the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. 13And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled.” The holy seed is its stump.
Psalm 138
1I will give thanks to you, O Lord, with my whole heart; before the gods I will sing your praise. 2I will bow down toward your holy temple and praise your Name, because of your love and faithfulness; 3For you have glorified your name and your word above all things. 4When I called, you answered me; you increased my strength within me. 5All the kings of the earth will praise you, O Lord, when they have heard the words of your mouth. 6They will sing of the ways of the Lord, that great is the glory of the Lord. 7Though the Lord be high, he cares for the lowly; he perceives the haughty from afar. 8Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you keep me safe; you stretch forth your hand against the fury of my enemies; your right hand shall save me. 9The Lord will make good his purpose for me; O Lord, your love endures forever; do not abandon the works of your hands.
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 14:12b-20
12bStrive to excel in building up the church. 13Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret. 14For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful. 15What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also. 16Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say “Amen” to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying? 17For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up. 18I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. 19Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue. 20Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.
Gospel: Luke 5:1-11
1On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on {Jesus} to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, 2and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. 3Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. 4And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” 5And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” 6And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. 7They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. 8But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” 9For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken, 10and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” 11And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.
Opportunity Knocks
One spring afternoon, not long after she and her husband moved into the community, Marianne decided to ride her horse a mile and a half up the road to visit their elderly neighbors, the McLindens. The weather was perfect, so Marianne was excited to get her horse out and let him stretch his legs. Upon arrival at the McLindens, she dismounted and, reins in hand, approached the back door. Apparently, her neighbor had polished the glass in the storm door, because it shone like a mirror. Marianne knocked twice and waited with her horse, Phar, at her shoulder. After a few moments, she decided her neighbors weren’t home and started to leave when she noticed that Phar was staring at the gray stallion in the glass with fascination. He grunted and pawed the ground. So did the other stallion. He was staring, of course, at his own reflection.
Marianne tugged on the horse’s reins, but he refused to move. Marianne was beginning to get a bad feeling, so she became more forceful and tugged and slapped Phar with the reins. Then he moved all right. He swung around, and with both hind feet, bashed in the door! Glass flew down the inside stairs, the metal grillwork caved in. At that point, Marianne was obviously concerned and was just about to beat a hasty retreat when, from inside the house, she heard Mrs. McLinden call to her husband, “Bud, I think there’s someone at the door.” “I could have strangled Phar,” says Marianne. “Instead, I helped the McLindens clean up the glass, promised to pay for the door and got out of there. My reputation, however, soon was widespread throughout the county: ‘If Marianne Siebert comes to visit, be sure and get there after the first knock, or she’ll kick in your door.’” We often speak of opportunity knocking.
Someone once wisely said, if opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough. So true! When we think Biblically about knocking, we think of Jesus’ words to St. John, “behold I stand at the door and knock” (Revelation 3:20). However, there’s one important thing we must remember, the only handle to the door is on the inside, we must be the one to open the door. Jesus will never do a forced entry. It’s these two images, “opportunity knocking and Christ knocking” that converge in today’s Gospel Lesson.
In our Luke reading for this 5th Sunday after the Epiphany, two fishing boats stand empty by the side of lake Gennesaret. Discouraged, the fishermen have given up for the day and have busied themselves with cleaning out their nets. It was mundane, but necessary work. They didn’t come to the lake that day for sport; fishing was how they made their living, and from the narrative, we’re told they hadn’t had any luck. Discouragement, it’s a feeling most of us has experienced. We’ve all struggled, seemingly to no avail, with a task that’s before us, yet we can’t seem to make progress.
I’m reminded of what we used to call ghost problems when working on aircraft systems in the Air Force. I first learned how troubling these problems can be during my first assignment in Korea. I was working on the Pave Spike system for the F-4D aircraft and the pilots kept writing up the system for a built-in-test failure. We would go out and test the system over and over. We swapped pod after pod. We changed the aircraft adapter with a known-good aircraft. We swapped cockpit control panels repeatedly. Nothing we tried seemed to work. No matter what we did, the system seemed to work well on the ground, but would sporadically fail inflight.
One afternoon we had one of our Electronic Counter Measures technicians working with us and he suggested we not mount the pod to the aircraft, instead leave it on the mounting trailer and simply extend the cables to it and run the test. At first the system tested good. But then the ECM technician began shaking the trailer and suddenly the failure repeated itself. After further trouble shooting, we found that we had a faulty wire in the main wire harness. It took 8 hours of painstaking labor to replace the connector, but we never had the problem again. We had to change the way we did things to see success. The same is true in our efforts to share the gospel with our neighbors. Sometimes we see success, at other times all we seem to realize is frustration, and this is when we need to change our approach.
Salespeople, investors, business owners, teachers, and gardeners all know the feeling. For salespeople, prospect after prospect says no. Someone has said, “that’s why they have movies in the daytime, for salespeople who can’t handle one more rejection.” Investors know the feeling of seeing the market ebb and flow. Business owners know the uncertainty of prices, the economy, and competition. And teachers, I don’t need to talk about the hours spent and the frustrations felt of going over lesson after lesson, only to have some students continue to struggle and test score that don’t seem to reflect the progress made by the students. And what gardener hasn’t known the results of no rain, too much rain, bugs, animals, and bad seed. Each of us here, I’m sure, has toiled endlessly only to find little, if any, success. In any endeavor, there’s the potential for many rewards, but it also seems that too often the wolf stands poised at our door. We can’t always hit a homerun when we come to bat.
A troubled man paid a visit to his rabbi. “Rabbi,” said he, wringing his hands, “I am a failure. More than half the time I don’t succeed in doing what I must do.” “Oh?” said the rabbi. “Please say something wise, rabbi,” begged the man. “I need some words of encouragement.” After much pondering, the rabbi offered the following: “Go to the library and look on page 930 of The New York Times Almanac for the year 1970, and you may find peace of mind.” “OK”, said the man, and away he went on his quest.
At the library he located the resource; it was a list of the lifetime batting averages of all the greatest baseball players. Ty Cobb, the greatest slugger of them all, had a lifetime average of only .367. Even Babe Ruth didn’t do so good. So, the man went back to the rabbi and said in a questioning tone: “Ty Cobb .367, that’s it?” “Right,” said the rabbi. “Ty Cobb .367: He got a hit just once out of every three times at bat. He didn’t even bat .500, so what can you expect already?” The man thought he was a failure because he only saw success about 50% of the time.
The important point we need to remember is, we cannot always succeed at everything we do every time, and this includes sharing the Gospel. More importantly we need to remember, it’s not our job to convince, convict, convert, or save someone. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. Our job is to be witnesses, to simply share the gospel. God always acts first. Everything starts with God.
All of us get discouraged at times. Thus, we can sympathize with Peter, James, John, and the other fisherman standing beside their boats with nothing to show for their labors. All they could do was clean their nets and hope for a better day tomorrow. But as disciples of Jesus, we need to look further into this story. Notice how St. Luke, in the 5th chapter, opens the narrative, it begins with Jesus. For the Christian, everything begins with Jesus; it’s in Him that we live, and move, and have our being.
Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret teaching. The crowd, representative of our world today, is hungry for His teaching. They needed to hear the truth. So great a crowd had gathered, that He was forced to step into a borrowed boat to continue His instruction. But there’s more going on here. This is no happenstance meeting between Peter and Jesus. If you turn back one chapter to verse 39, it was Peter’s Mother-in-law that Jesus healed of a high fever. Jesus and Peter knew each other.
Jesus had chosen this spot to teach because He had more in mind than just teaching, Jesus was also there to call His first disciples. And this is good news for us. Jesus has a plan for each of us, even when we don’t realize it. Jesus wants us to be part of the big picture. In Jesus’ final command before His ascension, we are all called to share the gospel, and what we see in this story is the pattern for God’s call on our lives.
First, starting in verse 3 we read, “Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, [Jesus] asked [Simon] to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word, (and this is important), at your word, I will let down the nets.” And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking” (Luke 5:3-6).
Look at the pattern here: first Jesus calls, He got into the boat with Simon. Next, He gives us a task, He gives us something to do. In the case of Simon and later the other fisherman, they were told to go out into the lake. Third, Jesus asks for us to trust Him. Jesus asked the fishermen to trust Him and go out into deep water. Initially, Peter complains, “we toiled all night and took nothing.” But Peter is smart enough to place his faith in the Lord: “But at your word I will let down the nets.” Peter not only trusts, he also acts, he goes where Jesus directs. Finally, we see the result of Peter, James, and John’s obedience, “they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking.” Anytime we place our trust in God, we do not labor in vain.
God is the one who not only provides, He provides in abundance. Last week I pointed out that Lutherans, by in large, are not good at evangelism. I’ve been giving this further thought, and I’ve come up with another reason this is the case. Is it possible that in addition to our reluctance to evangelize, as a result of not fully understanding what we believe, we don’t share because we make it too complicated? Are we so focused on the theological language, that we fail to communicate what we believe in a simple and straight forward way? I stress this to all my Confirmation students. We, as called and sent disciples, need to be able to explain our teachings, Creeds, and Confessions so that our friends can understand them. This means we must spend ample time struggling with what we know and believe so we can explain it in easy to understand language.
Furthermore, if we truly believe what we teach, the Bible, the Creeds, and the Confessions, and we earnestly believe that our teachings, the Creeds and our Confessions are true to the teachings of the Bible, then why is this so complicated? Our job is to share the gospel, what we know to be true because of what we’ve seen and heard. It’s that simple, we share what we have seen, and heard, and learned. Remember how Jesus answered the disciples of John the Baptist when they came to Jesus to ask if He was the One to come? Two chapters later in Luke chapter 7, we read Jesus’ response, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard (vs. 22). Jesus didn’t send John’s disciples back with long winded explanations and deep theological teachings. Jesus said go and tell John what you have witnessed, what you have seen and heard.
Yes, we need to do more than memorize a few key Bible verses. Yes, we need to understand what the Bible, the Creeds, and our Confessions teach, this is what it means to be a mature Christian. We must know them well enough to explain them in plain language to someone who has never heard them before. Evangelism is more than simply calling someone a sinner and telling them that God loves them and forgives them. In a rare few cases that may be exactly what needs to be said. However, in most cases, our call to evangelize is to people we know and have developed a relationship with.
Another important thing for us to remember is that evangelism is the work we do for the Kingdom, the Church, the Body of Christ. Evangelism isn’t about growing the membership of Bethel alone. Yes, we should invite people to come to Bethel, but this isn’t our primary motivation. Our primary focus should be on sharing God’s good news of love, and forgiveness in Jesus Christ with a hurting world. As I used to remind my young technicians in the Air Force, “don’t let the numbers drive your maintenance, let your maintenance drive the numbers.” In other words, when we do what we’ve been called to do, we will see positive results. I promise you, if we stay focused on what God has called us to do and place our trust in Jesus, Jesus will take care of His faithful. But, as I mentioned a few moments ago, we must also be equipped.
For those who have fished, you know you can’t simply sit in your living room and will the fish to come to you. The last time I checked, there isn’t an app for fresh caught fish! For someone to go fishing you must first gather your equipment. Notice that the fisherman took their nets with them. Second, they had to get into the water. And third, they had to be prepared for the fish they caught. It takes time, preparation, and acting if you want to succeed in any endeavor. We also must be prepared to seemingly come up empty handed at times.
Peter and the brothers Zebedee were diligent in their efforts to initially catch fish, they had labored in vain all night. Jesus and Paul both addressed this. In Mark chapter 4, Jesus uses three parables to illustrate how God works in people’s hearts. Down in verse 26, in the third parable, we read, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.” Then St. Paul explained further by saying, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building” (1 Corinthians 3:6-9).
Just before returning to the Father, Jesus said to the disciples, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). We were given the gift of the Holy Spirit in Baptism who empowers us to go. We’re not called to kick down doors, nor is it our job to convince, convert, convict, or save anyone, that’s the job of the Holy Spirit. We’re simply called to be witnesses for Jesus. We’ve been called to tell what we’ve seen, heard, and learned in plain everyday language. Will we always see the results of our witness? No, but that doesn’t mean that the Holy Spirit isn’t working. Today’s gospel text reminds us that Jesus calls and we need to be prepared to go where He directs. When we do, we also need to be ready to share in the abundance of what He has provided.
Amen