“Here I Am.  Send Me.”

I am intrigued with the call stories of the Bible, God’s invitation to mission and ministry; God’s call to discipleship. Last week we looked at Jeremiah’s call.  This week it’s the call stories of Isaiah and Peter, James and John with a focus on Peter.   What engages me is that I often see myself in the response of the one being called.  Perhaps you do too?  Last week we heard Jeremiah insist he was too young and inexperienced – in other words inadequate.  This week, similar to Jeremiah, the cry of anguish is a sense of unworthiness.  Inadequate and unworthy are not exactly the same but closely related.  Inadequate means to feel ill equipped and unworthy means to feel not deserving.  However, they often blend together in such a way it is impossible to distinguish between them, and they can exert enormous influence over our living.

When Isaiah came into the presence of God in his vision, he felt comprehensively unworthy, crying out in a manner that sounds like despair, “Woe is me!  I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.”

In the gospel story, when Peter witnessed the astounding catch of fish and attributed it to Jesus, similar to Isaiah, he fell to his knees in the sand and confessed his deep sense of unworthiness in the presence of Jesus, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.” 

Jeremiah felt inadequate and both Isaiah and Peter unworthy when it came to the things of God.  Perhaps you identify?  I know that I can.  As a child and teenager I lived with a speech impediment.  I stuttered – at times severely.  When it came to speaking in front of people, I felt grossly inadequate.  I lived in fear of speaking in public.  I wanted to be a meteorologist, but in subtle ways, primarily through the voices of Christian friends and mentors, God persistently kept calling me to ministry.  Every time I heard their encouragement, fear and panic would wash over me.    

But deeper yet, I also felt unworthy.  Because of other factors in my life, I felt inferior to those around me.  There were few things that terrified me more than the prospect of full-time ministry.  I simply did not feel I was a good enough person.  Like a great barrier, whenever I considered ministry, I kept bouncing off the wall of unworthiness. 

I believe God’s call to discipleship comes everyday, and I believe it is easy to avoid and evade God’s call.  Oh, perhaps God’s call doesn’t always come with a booming voice, but rather comes in quiet whispers in ordinary ways in the midst of our daily work, interacting with others at home, and while at play.  It might come as a call: to be compassionate when someone asks for your listening ear to unload a burden; to have the courage to stand up in the face of an unjust or unfair situation at work; to be unselfish about your own agenda when your child or any child asks for your time and presence; to do the right thing in a situation where numerous other voices are tempting you to do the wrong thing; to name the name of Jesus at an appropriate moment.  The call to follow the Lord Jesus comes in every time and place, often in ordinary and quiet ways.  I believe God’s call to discipleship saturates our daily and ordinary lives.  The call to discipleship is personal but never private.  It is personal and public. 

Many things can deafen us to God’s call or keep us from following and responding in positive way, but none are more powerful than a sense of inadequacy and unworthiness - and the fear and hesitation these twin dynamos can leave in their wake.  When the call came to Isaiah and Peter, the temptation for them was to make it about them and their inadequacy and unworthiness.  If it was up to them alone, it is likely they would not have heeded God’s call.

So what did God do?  Did God chastise Isaiah and Peter for feeling as they did?  Did God tell them to shape up and straighten out their attitudes so they could be capable of heeding the call?   Did God give up on them?  The answer is “No” to all of the above.  God came to them and met them right where they were and addressed their deepest need.  God overwhelmed them with grace. 

For Isaiah God sent a seraph with a hot coal and touched the lips of Isaiah.  Instead of being vaporized by the awesome presence and touch of God, as Isaiah obviously expected, he was forgiven, cleansed, empowered and set free.

For Peter, on his knees in the sand confessing his own unworthiness, Jesus told him not to fear, that he would empower him and set him free to be a disciple catching people for the kingdom.

In both instances the focus shifted from the inadequacy of Isaiah and Peter to the adequacy of God; from the unworthiness of these disciple candidates to the worthiness of God.  For both Isaiah and Peter there was an over-abundance of God’s grace that flowed over and into their lives. 

“Master, we have worked all night long and have caught nothing.”   Isn’t that just the point?  Those words could have come out of your mouth and mine. In fact, they have!   “Lord, I have worked my fingers to the bone trying hard to be your disciple, but I have precious little to show for it.  I feel like a failure.  I feel inadequate.  I feel unworthy.” 

“Put out into the deeper and let down your nets for a catch.”  “Ok, if you say so Lord.”  In other words Jesus was saying to Peter and saying to us, “Being a faithful disciple is not first of all about you and your ability to make yourself worthy and adequate, but it’s about me.”

I’ll let you in on a little secret.  I have never stood here, or in a place very much like it in 31 years I’ve been doing it, where a little voice hasn’t whispered in my ear, “Joe, what on earth are you doing?  Who do you think you are standing there speaking the word of God?  How presumptuous!”    

And, of course, the little voice is right.  What am I doing?  Who do I think I am?  It is presumptuous, that is, if it is based on my own ability to make myself worthy and adequate.  But it is not!  My standing here is the direct result of the grace of God washing over me and God’s promise that he is adequate; that he is worthy, and his adequacy and worthiness is given to me as a gift with a promise that he will work through me, as unworthy and inadequate as I am.  The same holds true for you in your mission and ministry at home, at work and at play.  

What is the line that we sometimes sing in our traditional liturgy?  “Worthy is Christ, the lamb who was slain, whose blood set us free to be people of God.” 

Discipleship begins at the foot of the cross where with Isaiah and like Peter, we fall on our knees with a sense of unworthiness and inadequacy in the face of such incomprehensible love and over-abundance of grace.  It is there the awesome words are spoken, “You are forgiven, do not fear, your guilt is departed and your sin blotted out.”   You are given the free gift of Christ adequacy and worthiness, and you are empowered to be his disciple.

I pray that as we gather at this table of grace this morning you will be over-whelmed with the over-abundance of grace that is here for you. “The body of Christ broken for you. The blood of Christ shed for you.”  With God’s gifts of grace filling and empowering you, now you are ready to hear again, without fear, the call of the Lord, “Whom shall I send?  Who will go?”  Awakened to God’s call and set free by God’s grace, I pray we will respond, “Here I am!  Send me!”