Isaiah 6:1-8 (NRSV Updated Edition)
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty, and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said,
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said, “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 one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said, “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”
Luke 5:1-11 (NRSV)
Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.
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"[In verse 8,] Luke throws what some commentators say is a mistake, because he refers to Peter as Simon Peter. And Jesus hasn't yet called him Peter. That happens a few chapters later in Luke's Gospel. In the other places, Luke has quite correctly referred to him as Simon but here he says, “But when Simon Peter saw it he fell down at Jesus and he's saying, ‘Get away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.’”
"Now I don't think it's a mistake at all. I think that Luke is showing the vocation of Simon, and the process of him becoming Peter at its starting place. And its starting place is a vision, very much like the Isaiah vision, which is the text we have in our first reading, and it's the important text for this passage, in which Isaiah sees the Lord high and lifted up. And he says, “I am undone, I am cut, I am a man with unclean lips.” So he explains his unworthiness, and that he is told: go and preach, go and preach.
"This is where Peter comes into being, this is the beginning of the formation of the oracle, and it's the first sign we get of that Isaiah text in Luke-Acts. That is our text, the vision of the Holy One with the fire in the Holy Place and the shock of the sinful prophet as it were. That is going to come up again very much in the first chapters of the Acts of the Apostles where the Lord is high and lifted up and the smoke later fills the house. It's where the fullness of this vision is enacted amongst the apostolic group: that's what Pentecost is all about.
[...]
"[Jesus is] saying, “Listen, there's much much more where that comes from. I'm giving you something attractive so that you can see you're going to be able to do what is your work, but do it more fully. It's not [that] I'm saying you do something completely different, I'm sending you to do something that is more of what you do best, that's the work of the fisher of people.”
"And strangely this must have had a huge impact on them, the realisation that they had seen a sign of the Lord who was showing them something that was going to happen, which both fit into what they were doing best but was offering them so much more than they could imagine, that they left everything and followed him. So the first hint that Peter's vocation is going to point to something oracular, far greater than he, and amazingly, through the sign of the fish, he and his partner's starting to move into it.
[...]
"The 'away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man' is not anything to do with wallowing in sin. I hope that one of the things we are being taught by the Holy Spirit as we are nourished by the Word is the distance between who we are and the holiness of what we're being given. Not so as to make us ashamed or distraught or crushed or annihilated, but I think that there's something completely authentic in the realisation that we really aren't up to talking about these things - they are so much more alive, exciting, dynamic than what we can say [...]
“Away from me, I am a sinful man. But on the other hand, no, please not away from me. As a sinful man, enable me to show the respectful love of your Word, your teaching, and the life you offer.”
- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9djTq9R964I)
[For further discussion and reflection on this week's lectionary texts, see also: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/epiphany5c/]
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