Readings – Isaiah 6: 1–8; Luke 5: 1–11
‘And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’’
I think it would be fair to say that as a congregation, we don’t think of ourselves as being pious or particularly holy. In fact, that sort of understanding of what being a Christian means rather freaks us out – and thank the Lord for that. In my experience, we tend to see ourselves as pilgrims on the road towards God, travelling as much with those outside our walls as within them, and certainly not as some sort of vanguard of God’s chosen people. That understanding is also big part of how I see my ministry as a priest.
18th Century icon of the Prophet Isaiah, from the iconostasis of Transfiguration Church, Kizhi monastery, Russian Karelia
We are nothing special. We have the same failings as anyone else. And yet we are chosen by God to follow Him, each of us as individuals, and collectively as His people here in the centre of Devizes, worshipping the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in this building as people have done for 892 years. It is awe-inspiring to think that the people who built St John’s in the decades after William had conquered were closer in time to us today than they were to Peter and James and John on the shore of the Sea of Galilee when they left everything and followed Him. Yet across these vast gulfs of time, we are all joined together in the chain of those who have broken bread and shared wine in Jesus’ name that stretches back, unbroken, to group of friends who shared supper with Him on an early Spring evening in Jerusalem, just before His death.
It is not, my brothers and sisters, because we are particularly good that we follow Jesus Christ but because the God who is love calls us to follow Him, as the people we are, and as the community of Christians here in St John’s that we are.
God has always chosen people who didn’t think they were anything special. Isaiah, when he was granted a vision of heaven, cried that he was a man of unclean lips. Still remembered as a thinker and wise counsellor after 2,700 years, from a time when very few names survive except for those of warriors and kings, Isaiah was nonetheless a man well aware of his own limitations.
Dear old Peter, never a man who failed to say what he meant, was entirely freaked out when he realised who Jesus was and what He had just done shouting, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!” Our modern presentation of Jesus Christ rightly focuses on Him as our loving brother, but we have lost something of this sense of awe at the majesty of the Holy and Undivided Trinity.
This awe-inspiring God is calling everyone in this church this morning to speak for Him, to serve Him, to be fishers of men. “Here I am – send me”, says Isaiah, in full awareness of his failings. God’s question to Isaiah, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” is addressed to each one of us.
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