February 7, 2010
SCRIPTURE Main theme, call. Paul mentions his call, Isaiah also and Jesus calls disciples. Also, a sense of unworthiness is common to all.
Isaiah 6:1-8 (9-13): Isaiah records the experience of his calling, which occurred in the temple when the symbols came "alive."
- Why not at beginning of book? Answer: First 5 chapters give a background leading up to vision
-Why used on Trinity Sunday? Answer: God speaks to us in different ways
-Hymn, Holy, Holy, Holy
-Only by divine invitation do we come to God
-We too are called to be a Divine Ambassador.
-Frederick Buechner, "the world's deep hunger and our deep gladness meet." (vocation)-Is not what we are told we are but, what we are!
-Michelangelo says the beautiful sculptures he created were already there, inside the stones. He simply removed the excess to reveal the precious essence.
-Here and there and now and then, I find a new being with in me...sometimes hidden sometimes manifest. Buechner
-You cannot chose your calling, your calling chooses you. Al Mandino
-What you can become, you already are.-Humility is true knowledge of self.-We cannot produce our own worth. (We already have it)
-We are all chosen....we forget to RSVP.
-God can do great things through imperfect people.
-If God
can make an ugly seed with a bit of earth and air and dew and rain, sunshine
and shade, a flower so wonderfully fair. What can God do with a soul like you
and me with the Bible, faith and prayer. (source unknown) Luke 5:1-11:
A sudden miraculous catch of fish
in deep water reveals the divine power of Jesus; and Simon (Peter), James; and
John leave everything to follow him. -These verses are actually the
introduction to a larger block of material, 5:1-6:17 Bratcher -two
boats: Both boats are needed later in the story at verse 7 Dan Nelson -Isaiah 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!" The psalmist "walks in the
midst of trouble." Paul is "unfit to be called an apostle." And Peter begs
Jesus "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man." For each the confession
of unworthiness is met by grace.
Isaiah’s sin is blotted out and he is the one whom Yahweh sends with a
message for others who are unworthy. The psalmist is preserved from the wrath
of his enemies and delivered by the Lord. By the grace of God Paul claims the
designation of "apostle" and proclaims the Gospel. And Peter is told that he
will be catching people.ibid
-The fishermen are themselves caught by Jesus and given a new vocation.
-We don’t mend, tend
or haul the net; rather, by God’s grace we become the net.
Frederick Niedner
-Jesus' net was his teachings.
-awe-full or awful living."
-for Jesus, "up"
often means "down" and "down" often means "up."
Father
Gerry Pierse, C.Ss.R.
-"…to become a
disciple means ceasing to find the basis for one's life in earthly things
and finding the basis for life in God alone." (Borg, 75)
- "The wrong question: What will make our church grow? The right
question: What is keeping our church from growing?"
Rick Warren (The Purpose Driven Church)
-Warren also points out that God does not
want us just to be faithful, but also to be fruitful.
-It is not too good to be near a chief.
Aftican
-It isn't good to be too near God.
He/she asked too much, He/she knows too much. He/she demands too much,
etc....
-They lost their lives and won new ones.
-All men should strive to learn before they die/ what they are running
from and to and why. (James Thurber).
Possible sermon out line:
Rules to be a good fisherman: (goes for fishing for people too)
1. You've got to have a fishing pole or rod & reel.. (tools).
2. Got to have the right bait...(motivation)
3. Got to go where the fish are...
4. You got to be patient...
-Where previously Simon addressed Jesus as "master," now Simon addresses Jesus as "Lord."
SERMON A TOUGH DECISION Deciding what your life's work is and deciding to do it is the most important decision you and I ever make. The following quotes could and probably should have a big impact on our decision. What do you Think? Lindy
*But I know up to now I have been paddling around in the shallows of life Anders
*When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him."
*Like Simon Peter, we stand today at the crossroads of life. Will we go about tending nets? Or will we hear the words of Jesus addressed to us.
*Religion is easy, discipleship is more difficult.
*Our chief want in life is someone who will make us do what we can do. (Emerson)
*You don't have to look for ways to carry the cross...just chose love, truth and justice and suffering will come.
*A religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, is worth nothing.
*Discipleship simply means life which springs from grace Clifford Wiliams
*You will not preach values to the people out there. You will go out there and live those values and that will be the only teaching and preaching that will take place.
*Go from leave world and join church to enter world and be church.
* Sometimes the power of the cross is refusing to use power.
*Faith makes things possible, not easy.
*Go to any book store and you'll find lots of items pushing the warm fuzzies of the faith but little about the hard challenges
of living out the Christian faith in a fallen world.
*A Disciple Gives Up What He Cannot Keep to Gain What He Cannot Lose.
*We are meant to be the bearers of light. Gomes
*Vocation is where joy meets need.
*see light of Christ in you.
*Vocation: recognize God's clain on your life. Gomes
*God's work is our work.
*Be an engine of transformation.
*not the past but the future calls.
*A relationship is more of an assignment than a choice.*Christ calls me beyond my boundaries. Spong*Religion is the means not ends. We are called not to be religious which is easy but to be spiritual people Gomes
*"To become a disciple means ceasing to find the basis for one's life in earthly things and finding the basis for life in God alone" . Borg,
*Not what we do but what we set in motion.
*your destiny is to become more and more what we were meant to be from the beginning - like Jesus. karl Barth
* "A pastor's job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." J. Vernon MaGee
*There are no entrepreneurs in ministry, only partners. B.B. Taylor.
*Sometimes our culture, with its values, does not help
*“Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? Isaiah 43:18 (NRSV)
QUOTES
- What you see is what you get!.
-"My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure." Abraham Lincoln
-Failure is an event, never a person. (William Brown, Welcome Stress!)
-failure was the "opportunity to begin again, more intelligently." Henry Ford
-You must have long-range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short-term failures. Charles Noble
- A priest who had spent a fruitless day fishing picked our three fat fish in the market. "Before you wrap them, toss them to me, one by one. That way I'll be able to tell the monsignor I caught them and I'll be speaking the truth." Bass Mitchell
HUMOR
-You must believe in God in spite of what the clergy say. (B. Jewett)
- The woman who mistook the CD-ROM drive on her computer for a retractable cup holder
-A little boy was reciting the 23rd psalm when he got to the last part of verse 4
and said, "Thy rod and thy reel, they comfort me..." Bass Mitchell
-If you have tried to do something and failed, you are vastly better off than if you tried to do nothing and succeeded
-A fisherman walked past a game warden with a line of fish over his back. The game warden said, "Great looking fish. Where'd you get them?" The fisherman said, "Come with me, and I'll show you." He took the game warden out in his boat, took out a stick of dynamite, lit it, and threw it in the water. After a big shuddering blast, hundreds of fish came to the surface. The game warden said, "That's the most illegal way I ever saw of catching fish,and you're coming in with me." The fisherman took out another stick of dynamite, lit it, handed it to the game warden, and said, "Ya gonna talk or you gonna fish?" Bass Mitchell
ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Viktor Frankl, a Viennese psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz, wrote about it later and the relevance of his observations continues to intrigue me. Frankl observed that when men and women live without hope, when life has no meaningful goal except its end, life begins to dissolve ... strength dissipates, as does the all-important will to live. He wrote:
"Any attempt to restore a person's inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal."
[Man's Search for Meaning, p. 76-77]
Frankl discovered that a source of
the will to live and not simply sitting around in despair, putting in time,
waiting to die, was having a goal, a purpose. The goal didn't need to be
some lofty ambition, to write a symphony, or discover the cure for cancer,
or establish freedom and justice for all. In that dreadful situation, the
life-giving goal was to do what needed to be done now, here and now: to help
this man, to share food with this woman, to comfort this child. The ones who
could rise above what was happening to them by forces beyond their control,
the ones who did what they had to do, not only seemed to live, they seemed to
live more fully, began to talk with one another again and to remember and to
write poetry and gather to sing songs: the children drew pictures, the
musicians formed string quartets. There is something about knowing what you
need to do—knowing what your work is—that adds a spiritual depth to life,
regardless of the circumstances in which it is being lived.
John Buchanan "Your Life's
Work" (sermon)
2 Bill Cosby realized in the eighth grade he wanted to be a comedian, when he got laughs telling his classmates what it was like growing up with his brothers in a poor part of Philadelphia. Says Cosby: "With my teacher's permission, I walked to the front of the classroom and faced my first audience. 'I share a bed with my little brother,' I began, 'but he's not little enough.' The laughter hit me like a drug. 'Y'see, he keeps touching me, and I don't like a bed that feels like a bus.' More laughter. 'And sometime he thinks the bed is a boxing ring, but he never goes to a neutral corner.' Their laughter was even a sweeter sound than the tinkle of change in my father's pants. It was the only vocational guidance I would ever need."
3. We all need to have our own personal garage sale and get rid of those unnecessary things we tend to hold on to. Lindy
CHILDREN
1. Compare the story of Simon Peter fishing all night and Edison finding just the right filament for his light bulb. (thousands of materials were tried)
2. Our life's choice. What do you think should determine our choice? (our God given gifts,
PRAYER PHRASES
- We give thanks for your call and the many many ways it comes to us. We pray for the courage to answer your call. Send us forth to take us this call in your name.
- Prayer by Ignatius. I am no longer my own but thine O lord/ put me to what thou wilt/ rank me with whom thou wilt/ put me to doing / put me to suffering/ let me be employed for thee/ let me be laid aside for thee./ Let me be exalted for thee/ let me be laid low for thee/ let me be full; let me be empty/ let me have all things; let me have nothing./ I'd heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal/ and now oh glorious and blessed God/ thou art mine and I am thine/ so be it/ and the covenant which I have made on earth let it be ratified in heaven. This prayer is a modern version of prayer by Ignatius. Often credited to John Wesley.