Super Gospel

Tonight, I’m told, there’s some kind of sports contest on T.V. I won’t be watching. I’m planning something that should be more fun. The Pastor’s Book Group is getting together to talk about sin.

Pastors used to be the experts on sin. If folks weren’t sure what was a sin and what wasn’t, they asked us. We were the guardians of public decency. We’re the ones who urged DJ’s not to play rock-and-roll and made sure the camera frame didn’t descend past Elvis’ belt buckle when he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. We preachers used to be the last line of defense against encroaching secularism.

Not any more. According to opinion polls, clergy have slipped several notches down the ranks of trusted professions. We used to be number one. Now we’re down to 6^th place -- behind nurses, pharmacists, veterinarians, medical doctors, and K-12 teachers. Pretty soon we’ll have slipped to rock bottom with car salesmen, HMO managers, and (dead last) telemarketers.

I’m not sure who among my colleagues has wrought the most damage to clerical credibility – televangelists caught with their pants down, priests arrested for child molestation, or born-again preachers who denounce same-sex marriage but fail to mention that the divorce rate for born-again Christians is higher than that of non-Christians.

It doesn’t really matter who knocked us preachers off our pedestals. The point is, we’re sinners, too. What the Apostle Paul said about his own generation applies perfectly well to ours: "None is righteous, no not one. . . all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:10, 23).

Did you notice the thread that runs through all three of the readings this morning? It’s the awareness of our sinfulness in the presence of the Holy One.

Scene I

Isaiah has a vision of God, seated upon his throne in the temple, his train filling the sacred precincts while winged Seraphim sing "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts!" Isaiah falls down and cries,

No cozy, cuddly deity here, but a God whose glory fills the temple, a God whose otherness buckles knees and turns hearts to water. For Isaiah it is impossible to be in the presence of God without being struck not only by the awareness of his own sinfulness, but also of his participation in a society which is thoroughly corrupt. "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips."

"Sin is only understood to be sin," writes Fleming Rutledge, "when God is understood to be God." (The Bible and the New York Times, p. 89).

Scene II

All night long Simon Peter and his crewmates have been fishing. Cast out the net, haul it back empty. Cast out the net, haul it back empty. All the night long. He and his mates are washing their nets on shore when Jesus gets into Simon’s boat and asks him to put out a little from the shore. Jesus uses Simon’s boat as his teaching platform, sitting in the bow and addressing the crowds from the boat.

When class had been dismissed, Jesus suggests Simon go further out from shore where the water is deep. "Let down your nets for a catch," Jesus says. Simon knows that would be a waste of time and effort, but he goes along. Cast out the net, haul it back -- but this time it isn’t empty. It is so full he has to signal men in the other boat to row out and help him haul the net ashore.

Simon Peter looks at that net, teeming with more fish than he’d ever seen in a single haul. ". . . he [falls] down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man’" (Luke 5:8).

Though he is not in the temple at Jerusalem, but rather on the shore of Lake Gennesaret with the tools of his trade pulled up upon the sand, Simon realizes that he is side by side with Isaiah. He is in the presence of the One who is holy, and with Isaiah, he falls on his knees. "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man."

Scene III

Paul writes to the church in Corinth. It is imperative to convince them not only that Jesus Christ is risen, but also that they will one day share in his resurrection. "Remember what I preached to you – what was handed on to me. Christ died for our sins, he was buried, and he was raised on the third day, and he appeared to Peter and then to the other twelve, and then to others – more than five hundred of them. Then to James and then to the other apostles, and then . . . and then . . ."

Paul recalls that day on the road to Damascus. He was on his way to hound and arrest more followers of that heretic Jesus, that blasphemer and criminal who died shamefully on a cross, when Paul, like Isaiah and Peter, found himself standing in the presence of the holy One. He saw the risen Christ. He heard his voice. "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" (Acts 9:4).

Even now, years later, Paul shivers at the wonder and the shame of that moment. The criminal turned out to be the Son of God. The blasphemer turned out to be the living Christ, the savior of both Jew and Gentile. Paul dips his pen and writes,

And then with a steady hand, Paul completes his sentence. "But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain" (15:10).

To know God as God, to know God as holy, to know God as Jesus Christ, risen and alive, is to know one’s self to be a sinner.

When I was confirmed in the old Southern Presbyterian Church at the age of 12, my father, the pastor (who, being my father, knew the answer to the question had to be "Yes") asked me,

"Do you acknowledge yourself to be a sinner in the sight of God, justly deserving his displeasure, and without hope save in his sovereign mercy?"

To be a Christian is to say with Isaiah, and Peter, and Paul, and all the baptized, "Yes! That’s me! You’ve got my number, alright. I’m a person of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, and if it were up to me alone, that’s where I’d stay. But now that I have come face to face with God’s holiness, which would be totally unbearable if it weren’t accompanied by God’s mercy, I don’t want to live there anymore.

"Yes, I’m a sinner. In some sense, I’ll always be a sinner, but I don’t have to be the same kind of sinner. I want to be the kind of sinner who lives in relationship with God, who admits who I am, and knows that God has every right to obliterate me, to turn his back on me, to have no more to do with me or my kind.

"I want what I can never deserve. I want the impossible: to be God’s child again, to be God’s ambassador, to be useful for God’s purposes. I’m a crooked stick, to be sure, but maybe God, being God, might draw a straight line even with the crooked stick that’s me."

Look what happened in each of these cases before us.

In Isaiah’s case, God asked for volunteers. "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" "Here am I," said Isaiah, "Send me" (Isaiah 6:8).

In Peter’s case, Jesus said to him, "Do not be afraid; from now on, you will be catching people" (Luke 5;11). And off Peter went, leaving his old nets behind.

In Paul’s case, Jesus told him to go on to Damascus for some in-service training. It wasn’t long before Saul, the persecutor of the church, had become Paul, apostle to the Gentiles.

To be a Christian is to say "Woe is me, for I am a person of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips." To be a Christian is to say, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am an sinner." To be a Christian is to say, "I am the least of all . . ."

And to be a Christian is to say, "But by the grace of God I am what I am, and God’s grace toward me has not been in vain." It is to take up God’s work in Christ and acknowledge that whatever good I might accomplish is not my doing, but "the grace of God that is within me."

Here’s the gospel truth, beloved: You and I are sinners called to work for a God who is holy. This gospel saves us from both arrogance and despair. It frees us from bondage to a culture that doesn’t want to be challenged and empowers us to challenge it anyway. It should make us modest about our own righteousness and optimistic about the good that God’s grace can accomplish within and through us.

"While we were yet sinners Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).

That Good News is both God’s call to repentance and God’s assurance of grace. It’s not the Super Bowl. It’s better. It’s the Super Gospel.