Sermon for Sunday, February 9th 2025

Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany [Proper 5] rcl yr c, 2025
ISAIAH 6:1-8 (9-13); PSALM 138; 1 CORINTHIANS 15:1-11; LUKE 5:1-11

heaven and earth are full of your glory

There’s one thing we can say with some confidence about Jesus today: Jesus does not suffer from Imposter Syndrome. Jesus does not suffer, at least not in this reading for today, from a lack of confidence in himself or his abilities. Jesus does not say to himself or anyone else,“Oh my, there sure are a lot of people here who seem to know way more about fishing than I do, so maybe I shouldn’t say anything much about fishing at all.”

Instead Jesus appears to suffer from the opposite: Dunning-Kruger effect, the syndrome so rampant, in our age, on social media, where people who know almost nothing at all about something lecture someone who is a subject-area expert.

(I almost got into it recently with someone on Facebook who attempted to lecture me on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s political theology, a topic about which I am perhaps overly acquainted, and a topic about which my conversation partner had already shown their ignorance. I decided it would be bad for my soul if only because I was beginning to find far too much glee in the prospect of taking part in that particular argument.) 

But Jesus, today, appears to speak authoritatively on a subject about which he would really know very little: fishing. And I can imagine, once Jesus had told those particular fishermen how to go about doing the job of fishing, we can imagine Simon Peter being tempted to say to Jesus, ‘Sorry dude, I don’t care if you dropped a line in the lake with dear old dad on May long weekend. Aren’t you a carpenter? And you may have a crowd listening to your preaching, but when did being a preacher qualify anyone to do anything useful, let along commercial fishing?’

But Jesus, the one who knows little to nothing at all about fishing, is very liberal with his advice about fishing, and tells Simon Peter and the others precisely what they should do: get back to work, do what I tell you, and catch some fish already.

If there is someone who does suffer from Imposter Syndrome today, though, it’s Isaiah. Isaiah does not confess to being fit, at all, to be a prophet. “Woe is me!” says Isaiah, “I am lost,” says Isaiah, “for I am a man of unclean lips.” ‘Who me, a prophet? Who me, someone to speak for the Lord? I don’t think so,’ says Isaiah. I’d be an imposter.

It’s really lovely to see both of these stories together in the lectionary today. Two stories about being called into God’s own work: we have Isaiah transported into a heavenly place, into the very throne room of the Lord, the Lord cutting such a majestic figure the just the hem of his garment fills the temple. Braziers are burning, the smoke is everywhere, even the foundations of the doors are trembling, and six-winged angels

proclaim God’s glory, singing of a heavenly glory that fills the whole of the earth. This is the God of glory, the God of a fearsome majesty. If transcendence itself could be transcended, this is what we would see, smell, hear, feel. This is the God  who is not like us, the God who is absolutely other to all the things God has made, and the Lord over all of this, us included.

Compare this calling of Isaiah with the calling of the disciples in Luke. Where Isaiah speaks to glory, transcendence, otherness, and the majesty of the Lord in the heavenly throne room, in Luke we have a much more pastoral scene. If Isaiah is called in glory, the disciples are called in the monotony of a long night of work on a morning with nothing at all to show for their effort. If God is known in elevation and distance in Isaiah, God in Christ is near-at-hand to the disciples, accessible, down-to-earth. We go from majesty to monotony, from the utterly transcendent to the immediately present, from greatness and grandeur to obscurity and vulnerability.

Things are rarely so easily divided though, particularly in the life of God. Sure, having a debate by the lake about how best to fish in the morning lends itself to imagining the Christian life in terms of relationships with others; the scene lends itself to imagining that following Jesus can take place in the most mundane moments of life. But we are also left with a Jesus who is Lord of the Wind and Waves, and the Lord of the Depths of the Sea too, apparently having intimate knowledge of the movements of the creatures below. This is no ordinary man.

And in that throne room, too, Isaiah is being prepared for a ministry in which he will proclaim the favour of the Lord to the most vulnerable of us all: the widows, the orphans, and the foreigner. God’s concerns are not just about the right way to worship the One who transcends the whole of creation; this is a God who is concerned with how we treat one another, especially those most at risk. The God of Majesty cares for the vulnerable; and the God who is close-at-hand in Christ is the Lord of all creation.

And to finish off where we started, with Jesus the seemingly overly self-confident carpenter and preacher giving fishing advice to fishermen, and Isaiah, the seemingly under self-confident prophet. We can’t leave things there, with the notion that these stories are about self-confidence or lack of it, because they are about something quite different: they are about God-confidence.

The disciples follow Jesus, despite the niggling notion that Jesus surely didn’t know what he was talking about, and they cast their nets as directed; Simon Peter appropriately invests his trust in this carpenter, in this preacher: “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.  Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”

And they do. And their confidence in Jesus is rewarded, not because Jesus is an expert in fishing, but because there is something more to him, something more yet to be revealed, a something more worth pursuing and getting to know, a something more that will be discovered only by laying down the nets and following him into the unknown.

And Isaiah too, follows the Lord’s lead: “Woe is me!  I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” And Isaiah is made ready to follow the Lord’s lead, not because he is confident in himself, but because his sin is blotted out by fire, his mouth cleansed and he is made ready to speak the Word of the Lord, words of justice and obedience. “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” says the Lord of Hosts. And Isaiah can now say, “Here am I; send me!” ‘Send me where I know not where to go and I will do what I know not how to do.’

And so what a blessing that we, too, can follow this God of majesty and vulnerability, and to pray together, as we are about to do, in the midst of our own lives—over-confident, under-confident, tired and probably working too hard to impress. Even as we feel alienated from one another, perhaps even alienated from God, God would nevertheless draw us closer to one another and to him in the Eucharistic feast.

What a wonder that in the middle of this life we are invited to join in a heavenly chorus of praise, to worship the Holy One and to rejoice in the Glory of God, heaven descending among us and us drawn up into the heavenly places, and to sing with the angels and archangels: “Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest.”

The Revd Canon Preston Parsons
Rector, St John the Evangelist, Kitchener