Biblical
Words [589]
Isaiah 6:1-8, (9-13); Psalm 138; I Corinthians
15:1-11; Luke
5:1-11
When humans encounter God’s
revelation, there is danger, great awe, and a reversal in the direction of
their lives.
The reading from
the prophets continues the call narratives of the Israelite prophets, this time
with Isaiah’s vision of God in overwhelming power in the Jerusalem
This passage has
long been one of the traditional readings for Trinity Sunday, where the
heavenly chant of the triple “Holy, Holy, Holy” is understood to express a
threefold mystery in the Most High.
Here, however, our text is used in Epiphany season because it is a great
account of the revelation of God.
“Epiphany” technically means “appearance,” but for practical purposes it
means revelation.
The common thread
of the lectionary readings for this Sunday emphasizes, not only the awesomeness
of the revelation, but also the response to revelation by the people who
are called.
In Isaiah’s case,
the prophet is overwhelmed by the revelation, confessing, “Woe is me! I am lost …”
The revelation forces the human to see that there is a great chasm
between one’s current world and the holy realm of God’s activity.
The action that
follows, however, moves the prophet from the side of the unholy people
over to the ranks of those who carry God’s messages and do God’s will (the
members of the heavenly council). That
is, after the seraph has touched his lips with an incense coal, Isaiah is
purified, and now he can hear what is said in the council of God’s servants and
is even able to present himself for duty when he is needed.
The result of
Isaiah’s going over to the other side is that he has a message for his people
that, at first sight, is devastating and demoralizing. He is to say to them, “Hear, indeed, but do
not understand; / See, indeed, but do not grasp” (Isaiah 6:9, New Jewish
Publication Society translation). In
practical terms, this means, “Keep looking in the wrong places, keep doing what
you are doing, because that is guaranteed to lead you to disastrous
results.”
Part of the
privilege of being included in God’s council of servants is that divine
strategies may be explained to you. (For
an intriguing comic-tragic illustration of this, see I Kings 22:1-23,
especially verses 19-23.) God gives
further instructions to Isaiah that explain why this misguided people is to be
encouraged in their ways:
Dull that people’s mind,
Stop its ears,
And seal its eyes –
Lest, seeing with its eyes
And hearing with its ears,
It also grasp with its mind,
And repent and save itself. (Verse 10, NJPS)
The message
in the heavenly council is finally a word of salvation – when it provokes a
true repentance and reversal of direction by the prophet’s people.
Psalm 138.
The Psalm reading has pale echoes of the
God who called Isaiah. The speaker of
the psalm has experienced deliverance by God: “On the day I called, you answered me, / you
increased my strength of soul” (verse 3, NRSV
The speaker’s
response is to sing thanks and praise before heavenly beings (“gods,” like
Isaiah’s seraphs) and to bow down toward the temple, where God’s name is
exalted on high (verses 1-2). A
dimension of world sovereignty is revealed when the speaker expects “all the
kings of the earth” to sing of the Lord’s “glory,” which in the Isaiah reading
fills all the earth.
This singer
(perhaps a female voice, a Zion voice) knows that the lofty God pays attention
to the lowly folk (verse 6), and she herself speaks more on the side of the
people than of the heavenly council when she says, “Though I walk in the midst
of trouble, / you preserve me against the wrath of my enemies; / you stretch
out your hand, / and your right hand delivers me” (verse 7).
God’s
deliverance from distress IS this psalmist’s revelation, and she expects her
song of response to be shared even by the world’s kings.
I
Corinthians 15:1-11.
The Epistle reading is one of the most
revealing passages about earliest Christianity in the New Testament. It is about the supreme revelation of God to
the followers of Jesus – the gospel of the Risen Jesus.
Paul reminds
the Corinthians of the radical core of that gospel as proclaimed by the earliest
disciples as well as himself. That core
gospel is: “that Christ died for our
sins in accordance with the scriptures,…and that he was raised on the third day
in accordance with the scriptures…” (verses 3 and 4, NRSV ). The first syllable of the gospel message is
the forgiveness of sins – but the basis for believing that our sins are
forgiven is the message of the resurrection, which Paul goes on to recite.
Paul’s
statement here is the earliest direct testimony to the resurrection of Jesus. All the narratives of the empty tomb in the
Gospels are from second generation Jesus followers, later than 70 CE. Paul is writing around 55 CE and reporting commonly
known traditions from much earlier (“I handed on to you…what I in turn had
received,” verse 3). Paul reminds the
Corinthians of what they had heard before, about how the risen Jesus had
appeared to certain of his followers proving to them that he was risen and
exercising power at the right hand of God (compare Romans
1:3-5 ).
In this
passage Paul gives three lines of personal experience of the risen Jesus
(verses 5-8). He is not describing empty
tomb events, as the women of Galilee reported in the
later Gospels. He is attributing to
Peter and James the kind of vision of the heavenly Jesus that he, Paul, had
experienced. (According to Galatians,
Paul had talked with Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, a few years after
Paul’s revelation experience, Galatians 1:18-19 .)
Paul’s review
for the Corinthians groups the appearances of Jesus into three revelations,
each originating with one of the major figures:
·
Peter, and associated with him
“the twelve” as well as a mass vision by five hundred folks, many still alive
(verses 5-6; the last item an early version of a Pentecost tradition).
·
James, the brother of Jesus, and associated
with him “all the apostles” (verse 7; "apostles" associated with James in Jerusalem are those sent out by James on sacred missions, as in Acts 15:19 -20, 25-27, they are not the same
as “the twelve”).
·
And finally Paul himself, who knew
only the risen Jesus and not the Jesus who proclaimed the kingdom in Galilee,
but whose experience of Jesus was preached powerfully to numerous assemblies
(churches) in Galatia, Greece, and Asia (see especially Galatians 1:11-17 and
3:1).
Thus, the
revelation experiences of the key figures – Peter, James, and Paul – came to authorize
the main lines of early Christian tradition.
Experiencing the risen Jesus was the foundation revelation for the
gospel as it was common to all Jesus’ followers.
The Gospel reading is Luke’s version of how Peter was called to be a
disciple.
Like the
story of Jesus returning to Nazareth 4:16 -30), Luke’s account is
different from the one in Mark. Mark
(1:16-19) told how Jesus, before he had started his healing and teaching in
Galilee, walked along the shore of the lake and called two pairs of fishermen –
simply said the word and they came.
Luke tells a
more extended story about fishing. (A variation on this story appears in John
21:4-14
This amazing
catch of fish – in extremely unlikely circumstances – is the revelation to
Peter. He responds in the manner of
Isaiah: “Go away from me Lord, for I am a
sinful man!” (verse 8).
An awesome
event has occurred, and – like the Isaiah revelation – it creates two sides;
the Lord is on one side and sinful people on the other. Peter’s instinct tells him this is an
overwhelming force, frightening and condemning.
Jesus’ response to Peter’s outcry is, “Do not be afraid,” even though
this is a scary thing, “from now on you will be catching people [instead of
fish]” (verse 10, NRSV
The
revelation anticipates what lies in the future:
after long periods of unfruitful labor in the old places, the word of
the Lord leads the fishermen into deep water and to enormous catches.
Simon Peter’s response to the revelation and its call
was, “when they brought their boats ashore, they left everything and followed
him” (verse 11). 
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