Whether you’re a life-long church member or hearing for the first time, God’s trying to get your attention and call you to follow, trusting you’ll be guided and directed.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, Lectionary 5 C
Texts: Luke 5:1-11; Isaiah 6:1-8

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Fifty-six years ago today my parents carried me, twenty-two days old, to the baptismal font at St. Matthew’s in Worthington.

My truth is that from my earliest memories I have been part of a Lutheran congregation. I have worshipped very nearly every Sunday for these 56 years. I have heard the Gospel read and preached my whole life, I have sung the hymns of the Lutheran Church my whole life, I have prayed and walked with Christians my whole life. I can’t imagine what it would be like outside the Christian faith.

I have absolutely no idea what Simon Peter is going through. Meeting God’s Son for the first time as an adult and being called to follow could never happen to me. I expect many of you are the same. Some of us here came to faith later in life, but in the established church, most congregations are full of people with no other experience than being a member of a congregation.

Today Jesus grabbed Peter’s attention, and set a clear choice before him: follow me with everything you have, or don’t.

Have you ever known such an experience? Has God ever grabbed your attention, and showed a clear crossroads in front of you, a path to take one way or the other? The challenge of being an established congregation in an established church is that rarely do any of us have this moment of sensing something new from God and knowing we’re being asked to decide what to do.

Now, Isaiah is more like us than Peter.

Isaiah is a regular practitioner of the Jewish faith, like Peter, but he’s in the Temple, worshipping. It’s likely he has only ever known the worship of the One Who Is, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Yet on this day, Isaiah had a vision: the presence of God filling the Temple, so large that God’s hem filled up the immense interior.

And then God called Isaiah. God grabbed Isaiah’s attention with this awe-inspiring, terrifying vision, and set a clear choice before him: go where I send you, or don’t.

In Isaiah we see that even if you’ve never known anything but the faith you’ve practiced, even if you’ve always walked with people who shared your faith, God can still get your attention and set a crossroads in front of you, a path to take one way or the other. Established church or not, God’s not interested in us sitting on our status quo.

Maybe the question is, what is God doing to get your attention?

Isaiah’s vision feels like the events of Pentecost. Worship becomes this massively charged moment that can’t be avoided or unseen, whether it’s God’s hem filling the Temple or the wind and fire of the Spirit blowing through the believers. We don’t usually expect such things in our worship.

Peter’s crisis is also rare. An experienced fisherman knows what happens fishing at certain times and places, and he’s knocked over by a catch that is threatening to sink two boats, a catch that just shouldn’t be. Like Isaiah and the believers at Pentecost, Peter’s just seen something that clearly says “God is now present, in front of you.”

What do you do if you’ve never seen such things? This is why we might sit idly by. We haven’t seen sights like these. So maybe we’re not called like these were.

But you have seen and heard wonders from God. You have heard God’s Word, and have been moved to joy and tears by it. You’ve felt pulled into God’s love for the creation. You’ve seen the pain of God’s children and the suffering of the world and heard God say, “whom can I send?” You’ve experienced God’s forgiveness calm your heart, you have had a sense of God’s Spirit in you. In this very place, you’ve experienced God’s presence in worshipping with these people. Maybe what you’ve seen and heard isn’t as cinematic as these stories, but it’s no less powerful or real. Maybe what you’ve seen and heard hasn’t happened every week, but neither did these spectacles.

God is trying to get your attention, and in those moments you are no different from Isaiah or Peter.

And like them, every day Christ is saying, “Follow me, I have things I need you to do.”

Tiny choices of how you will treat the stranger you meet at the store or the driver of the other car. Larger choices of what you will do next in your life, or whether you will make changes to your lifestyle to join Christ’s blessing for the world.

God’s Word is filled with such calls, once you realize that, while your experience isn’t like exactly like Peter’s or Isaiah’s it is just as real, and that such crossroads as God places before you today have much the same clarity and much the same finality.

Because when you choose to follow, you choose to turn away from other things. Likewise, if you choose not to take Christ’s path this afternoon, or tomorrow, you choose to turn toward other things.

The question is: are you paying attention, and if so, do you see the crossroads? Then the only thing left is your answer.

A couple things can trip you up. The first is a sense that you’re not worthy.

Both Isaiah and Peter felt this. Facing the unmistakable presence of God, they both fall down and say, “I’m a sinful person! I shouldn’t be in God’s presence.”

But Isaiah’s guilt and sin are burned away. Peter is told not to be afraid, that he’s just who Jesus needs.

When we consider the immense, undying love we know from God, and then hear calls such as Paul’s call we heard last week, to love as Christ loves, we can feel our own imperfection and sin and weakness. To consider that you might be God’s chosen person to bear God’s grace and love to others can seem ludicrous.

So we make excuses, covering for our fear: I’m too old, there’s nothing I can do. I’m too busy, I can’t add anything to my life. It’s too complicated, there’s nothing I can do to make a difference. I don’t know what to do.

These are dodges, not reasons to stand still at the crossroads. But like Isaiah and Peter, God has something to say to your fear. Hear God’s words of grace to Peter as yours: “Do not be afraid.” Taste in Christ’s Meal the wonder that you are forgiven, your life cleansed by Christ’s body and blood. These are for you. These are your truth. So you can, like Isaiah and Peter and millions before you, stand up. And hear the call: “Follow me. I have need of you.”

The second thing is fretting about the details.

I can’t tell each of you right now what your crossroads are today, or what they’ll be tomorrow, or exactly what you should do. It’s easy to get stuck worrying about all the things you don’t know about following and never decide to follow. To get lost in the weeds of what might happen or what exactly God needs.

Isaiah isn’t told anything about how his ministry will work, what risks there are. Peter has no idea what it will be to fish for people, what crises he’ll face, or even what he’s supposed to do that day.

That’s always the way it is with God’s call: you hear it and you decide to follow. Or not. And if you follow, you trust God’s promise to always lead and guide you in the Spirit. The details will come later, and that’s where we help each other. We talk about our paths, about our call, and we help each other figure out the details of what it will look like today, and tomorrow. We listen to each other’s questions.

Don’t let the lack of details make you sit back into the pew and do nothing. The only question that matters is “Will you follow?” If the answer is yes, the rest will become clear.

This disconnect we sometimes feel between our lives and those of the biblical people called to follow can be dangerous and lead us to do nothing.

We can hear Peter’s call and Isaiah’s vision and decide we’re just fine as we are, assume we aren’t called. Because we didn’t experience what they did.

But the Triune God is seeking your attention, and has a path for you to follow. You are being called, you have crossroads before you every day, and choices to make.

So how will you answer God?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Love, agape, the love of Christ, is the only way to live, the only way God will heal all things, and the one thing that makes your gifts healing and blessing to the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Lectionary 4 C
Texts: 1 Corinthians (12:31), 13:1-13 (adding in that extra verse)

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Early in my ministry I got knocked back by a seminary professor.

Ordained for about three years, I had a half hour conversation with a professor with decades of experience, not from my seminary. We talked about Christian ethics, and I shared my growing conviction that the dominant New Testament ethic, from Jesus to the letters, was love of God and love of neighbor.

This professor said I was too simplistic, that I hadn’t factored in all the other ethical considerations to really understand what I was talking about. And, he said, love isn’t enough of an answer. You’ll have to define what love is, he said, and that’s where all the disagreement happens.

Now, I hadn’t yet connected all the dots of my thesis, and I was pretty wet behind the ears. So I didn’t have this snappy comeback: “Well, Paul seems to have pretty clearly defined love in 1 Corinthians 13.” So the professor went on his way having properly put the naïve pastor in his place.

25 years later, I still hold the same conviction, only much more deeply and with far greater certainty. It’s simply too clear in Scripture. And today we hear Paul’s magnificent proclamation of love, agape, that centers it all, the wisdom he gave his fractured church at Corinth.

It’s true, saying love of God and love of neighbor is the heart of Christian ethics might be simple. But the last thing you can say about Christian love is that it’s easy.

You want to know what is easy? Do what you normally do.

If you want me to get angry, I can do that right now. I can be rude without thinking, arrogant without noticing. It comes as naturally as breathing.

Insisting on my own way? Easy as anything. I expect many here are the same. There’s nothing easier than being irritated at someone who bothers us, or resenting other people, nothing easier than losing control and being unkind.

Now, I’ve met people who seem to have Paul’s Christian love genetically written into them. They appear to be naturally kind, gracious, not boastful or arrogant or rude. Maybe they’ve been working on it and it was hard for them, too. But for most of us, that’s not our natural tendency.

Paul writes to a faith community that’s the opposite of this chapter. They’re divided and fighting, and it’s easy for them. So Paul tells them of this most important gift of the Holy Spirit. “Strive for the greater gifts,” he says. “And let me show you this still more excellent way.”

Paul’s argument has three parts. The first is simple: everything you value in yourself has no value if you don’t have love.

It’s an eye-opening argument. He’s just spent a lot of ink talking about the many and various gifts of the Spirit, how each member’s gifts are different and important to the body of Christ. Paul is our greatest proclaimer and describer of the gifts the Holy Spirit pours out on the Church and on individuals.

But now he says: none of these gifts have any worth if they aren’t accompanied by love. Without love, there’s no point to anything you do as Christ. It doesn’t matter how well you speak (he says to preachers like me), if you don’t have love, you’re just noise. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, if you don’t also love, it’s worthless. A prophetic voice in a world of injustice means nothing without love. And even faith. Remember how Jesus said just a tiny bit of faith could move mountains? Paul says, even if you have such faith and move those mountains, if you don’t love, who cares?

All the things we most value about ourselves, gifts of God, things that can make a huge difference in the world for God, if we have no love wrapped around them, flowing out of us, we might as well be a lump of rock.

Ah, but – our professor complains – love is too simplistic a term. What do you mean by it? I’m glad you asked, Paul says. Let me tell you part two.

“This is what I mean by love,” he says.

Love is patient, love is kind; love is not envious, love isn’t boastful. Love is not arrogant, love isn’t rude. Love doesn’t insist on its own way. Love isn’t irritable; love isn’t resentful. Love doesn’t rejoice in wrongdoing – even in our enemies – but love rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, love believes all things, love hopes all things, love endures all things. Love never ends.

Oof. There are literally no loopholes here. No cracks where you or I can sneak out of this, no places to hide. Paul is painfully clear. If you aren’t being kind, you don’t have love, and anything you’re doing means nothing. If you insist on being arrogant or rude, you don’t have love, and there’s no point to anything you’re saying. If you’re happy when someone messes up, if you’re envious or resentful, you don’t have love, and anything else you’re up to has no worth.

These are some of the hardest words in Scripture. Behaviors we claim are “just part of who I am” are signs that we are not Christ, because we are not love. Excuses we make for such behaviors carry no weight, because Paul doesn’t give the option of being impatient in certain circumstances, or insisting on your own way on some special occasions. There is only love, Paul says, love we have seen and known already in Christ. Anything else, you’re just wasting your breath, taking up space, making noise.

But hear Paul’s third part before you despair.

Paul says we only see dimly now, have imperfect knowledge. But that will change.

All those things that mean nothing without love don’t last into the next life. But love such as Christ has, love like this, never ends.

So you don’t stay in dimness of sight, lack of knowledge. You are being changed by the Spirit into a new creation in Christ. Day by day you will see love more clearly, live love more deeply. It will become a part of you and transform those parts that are not of Christ. At some point it will become like second nature to you.

It’s like growing up, Paul says. You mature from childish ways, you become an adult. The Spirit is likewise growing you into maturity of love, until you look like chapter 13, like Christ.

And when you move through death into the life to come – something Paul will proclaim in great detail in chapter 15, which we’ll hear these next few weeks – when that happens, your dim sight will turn to clarity of vision. Your imperfect knowledge will be complete.

But you know what will still be there? The Christ-love that has matured in you. That love – for God and neighbor, for the creation, for all things – all the growing into Christ you’ve done here, when you are raised into eternal life through Christ’s resurrection, that love comes with you.

Love’s not only the greatest gift the Spirit gives. It’s the gift that never goes away.

Love isn’t easy at all. It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do. But it’s the way god will heal all things.

Consider a world filled with creatures who are kind, humble, patient, generous, sharers of joy, where anger and rudeness and arrogance and irritation aren’t known. Can you imagine living in such a world? God can.

So strive for this greatest of all spiritual gifts, Paul says. “Strive” carries with it the word “zeal,” so Paul’s saying two things. Zealously pray for the Holy Spirit to give you this gift, transform your heart and your life. Put all your prayer into asking for this gift. But also be zealous in your actions, your thoughts, your decisions, your life, zealous to live this kind of love.

Then all the many gifts of the Spirit that we see here, your gifts, my gifts, that work for the common good together, then they also mean something. Covered by such love, shaped by such love, your gifts now become part of God’s blessing of this creation. As God always intended.

This is the more excellent way, Paul says. Will it be yours?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen