A sermon by the Reverend Sarah Grondin, given at St. Jude’s Church Oakville, on Sunday, February 9, 2025, The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany.
I speak to you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
I’d like you all to pick up the blue hymn book in front of you for a moment, and I want you to turn to hymn 430 “Will You Come and Follow Me.” This is one of my favourite hymns, and I have very fond memories of singing it as a child. It’s always had a special place in my heart, but I didn’t really know why for a long time.
I want you to look at the words of the first verse, “Will you come and follow me if I but call your name? Will you go where you don’t know and never be the same?” Those might seem like rather innocuous words when we sing them together, and maybe they are if we don’t think about them too much… but as Isaiah and Simon Peter learn in our readings today, when God calls, and Jesus asks us to drop everything, things suddenly get real awfully quick.
For the first 35 years of my life I was a Roman Catholic, and since the Catholic church doesn’t ordain women, I’d really never thought much about it. But one day that all changed and everything got flipped upside down.
I didn’t have a fishing boat like Peter, and unlike Isaiah I didn’t have a seraph appear in front of me either, which I’m pretty grateful for quite honestly, because they sound terrifying… but I did hear God say, “whom shall I send?”
There were no flashing lights, the heavens didn’t part, there were no portents in the clouds… there was just the familiar voice of an Anglican priest who had become a dear friend of mine, asking me one day if I’d ever thought of becoming a priest. And I remember I laughed at him. I laughed at him a lot. And then God laughed at me, and here we are.
Those opening lines of “Will You Come and Follow Me” suddenly took on a whole new meaning for me… “Will you go where you don’t know, and never be the same?” hits differently when you’ve said yes without really knowing all the terms and conditions!
In our readings today from Isaiah and the gospel of Luke, we get to listen in on Isaiah and Simon-Peter’s call stories, and to hear how these two men responded to God’s invitation. These stories take place thousands of years apart, but as we hear their stories, we can see that they had similar encounters.
When Isaiah was in the temple, he had a vision of himself in the presence of God. He saw God sitting on his throne, and the seraphim flying around and praising God.
In the overwhelming presence of God, in the midst of awe and wonder, Isaiah had one response: He cried from the depth of his soul! He cried from the brokenness of his spirit! He cried from the turmoil of life, “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!”
Then our text says that one of the seraphim takes a burning coal with tongs from the altar of God and touches the lips of Isaiah declaring: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.”
Notice how God is moved by Isaiah’s response, and cleanses him of his sins. God doesn’t tell Isaiah to get his act together, God doesn’t send him away from his presence. Instead, God responds with loving kindness to remove the stumbling block from Isaiah that is weighing him down.
God needs someone who will bring a message to God’s people, and Isaiah now freed from that incredible weight is able to say in response, “Here am I. Send me.” After Isaiah has been touched by God, after God has acted in his life, then Isaiah is free to respond, and now he can say to God, here am I, send me! God, let me do that for you! Let me be your messenger to these people. Send me. I can do it.
If we turn to take a look at our gospel story from Luke, we see Jesus calling his first disciples, largely focusing on Simon Peter. And many of the overall themes of Simon Peter’s encounter with Jesus, mirror the experience Isaiah had.
When Jesus tells the fisherman to go out into the deep water and cast their nets, they don't just bring in a lot of fish, they bring in an absurd number of fish. They bring in so many fish that their boats start to sink. Boats really only have one job, and that's to float.
The abundance of fish that Jesus brings forth supersedes that purpose. The boat is no longer merely a floating device to allow Simon and the others to fish. The boat full of fish is now a symbol of the overflowing abundance that comes from God. An abundance that is so over flowing, that it can be wipe out what was past to make a new and different future.
And when presented with this awesome deed of power unfolding right before his eyes, Simon Peter drops to his knees in the boat and says “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” When presented with this miracle, Simon is immediately aware of how unworthy he feels to be in Jesus’ presence.
But just like what happened with Isaiah, Jesus doesn’t tell Simon to get up and go sort his life out. Jesus doesn’t tell Simon that he’s worthless and to get out of his sight. Jesus tells Simon, “Do not be afraid.” Jesus responds with loving kindness that literally overflows Simon’s boat.
We don’t have seraphim flying around with hot coals to cleanse us of our sins and the things that weigh us down, and we don’t experience the miraculous power of Jesus in our world by having boats overflowing with so many fish that our boats can no longer boat.
Instead, we experience the forgiving hand of God through the celebration of the Eucharist. Jesus is God’s salvation in our world. Jesus is God’s touch to cleanse our sinfulness. When we come to the altar, Jesus’ touch of forgiveness is waiting for us. Jesus wants to set us free of our stumbling blocks, so that when he calls us, we can drop everything to follow him. We can say “Here am I! Send me.”
When we come to the altar to join in the Eucharist, and commemorate Jesus’ last meal with his friends before he was crucified, we remember that he fed everyone. He fed Judas who would hand him over to death, he fed Peter who would deny him three times, he fed all the disciples, even though in a few short hours almost all of them would run away in fear, abandoning their Lord.
The Eucharist doesn’t just celebrate that Jesus loves us. It celebrates overflowing nets and sinking boats. It celebrates an absurd amount of love, an overabundance that’s so great we can never fully understand it. But the beauty of it is that we don’t need to understand it.
Isaiah couldn’t comprehend the glory of God shown through God’s mercy. Simon Peter couldn’t comprehend the overwhelming love of Jesus’ miracle in the Sea of Galilee. But they didn’t need to. Once they had encountered the divine, confessed their sins, and experienced the healing and release that only God can give, they didn’t need to box everything up and make tidy categories… they had an encounter that changed their lives, and after that nothing would be the same again.
I want you to pick up those blue hymnals again, back to number 430. And now I want you to look at the last verse with me.
“Lord, your summons echoes true when you but call my name.
Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.
In your company I'll go, where your love and footsteps show.
Thus I'll move and live and grow in you and you in me.”
Once we hear God’s call we have a choice. We can dig in our heels and say no way, or we can acknowledge our short-comings and trust that if we follow in Jesus’ footsteps, we’ll move, and live, and grow in him, and he in us.
Jesus doesn’t ask us to be perfect. Jesus doesn’t ask us to be blameless. Instead, Jesus tells us “Do not be afraid,” and offers us a new and better way forward. I pray that each of us would have the faith of Simon-Peter to drop everything and follow our Lord, to come to the Lord’s table and find strength for the journey in the healing power of Jesus’ body and blood.
And I pray that with renewed bodies, minds, and souls, we would respond to God’s call like Isaiah did and eagerly say “Here am I! Send me!” Amen.
