Homily for Trinity 5

[1 Kings 19:11-21 / 1 Cor. 1:18-25 / Luke 5:1-11]

Elijah thought he’d done enough and was ready to retire from his prophetic calling when the Lord gave him three new commissions to carry out – and told him to stop fretting about the Church. It was the Lord’s Church and he’d take care of it. Elijah just needed to get on with what God had given him to do.

But if Elijah was seeking to retire, Peter was trying to evade the calling altogether. “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man.” True words, of course, but how utterly beside the point. As far beside the point as Elijah’s grandiose thinking that he was the only faithful person left in all Israel! The point is not that Peter is sinful. The point is that Jesus is gracious – a Lord of gifts overflowing for all. He’d shown that with the boatful of flopping fish and the torn nets that had been so carefully mended and stowed away earlier in the day. And so He wasn’t about to “go away” as Peter demanded. Instead, He wanted to take Peter and the others away with Him. To take Him on a grand fishing trip. Not for fish, though. “From now on you will catch people,” our Lord told Peter.

That word heartened them and up they got, Peter and Andrew, James and John, and they walked away from their past, from their income, from their families. They followed Jesus. Literally put one foot in front of the other and walked behind Him. And Jesus began their three year intensive, teaching them all about the net they would cast into sea of humanity to bring up a catch for the Kingdom of God – the net of the Gospel.

In today’s Epistle St. Paul does some pondering on this net. Folks have always looked at it a tad skeptically and wondered: You really think that you can do anything with THAT? “For the Word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

The Word of the Cross. That’s the net that the Lord Jesus put into Peter’s hands and Andrew’s and James’ and John’s – and it is what He has gone on putting into the hands of all His disciples in all the years since. A net of words, cast into a world drowning in words. But these words are different from all the rest. These words have divine power in them to grab hold of the hearts of men and haul them out of the sea of words in which they live and bring them into the boat of the Church where they learn to live from those words and from them alone.

This net is an affront to those who consider themselves “wise” in this world. That God would choose to save people through “the folly of what we preach.” Folly here refers not so much to men making fools of themselves in pulpits – we do that aplenty – but rather to the content that we are given to proclaim. The content of the Church’s message is the net cast into the world.

“Jews demands signs. Greeks seek wisdom. And we? We preach Christ crucified.” The message of the cross is not about any empty cross, no matter what some well-intentioned but misguided preacher told you in your youth. Empty crosses catch no one for the kingdom of God. Empty crosses can mean nothing more than the One who was nailed to them has been taken away. We do not preach an empty cross. We preach a cross on which hangs Christ Crucified. He makes the cross full of power and salvation, and not the cross itself. WHO is hanging on the cross and WHY He is hanging there forms the net, the story, we cast out into the world to haul in people for the Kingdom of God. So we’d best be clear about both.

Who is upon the Cross is “the Lord of glory.” If our second reading had not been so rudely cut off then in a few more verses, we’d have heard Paul say it: that if the Rulers of this world (meaning the demons) had understood this – what the Cross was set to effect – they would never have crucified the Lord of glory. The Lord of glory confesses that He who is on the Cross is the One who created us at the beginning, the One through whom all things were made. “He who hung the earth upon the waters is hung upon the Cross. He who is King of the angels is arrayed in a crown of thorns. He who wraps the heavens in clouds is wrapped in the purple of mockery.” So sings the Church in an ancient hymn for Good Friday.

That it is God in the flesh, the Eternal Son, who is hanging on the tree, our Maker -- that should lead us all to wonder indeed. But the message of the Cross goes deeper: from Who to Why. Why are You hanging there? Why do You permit this outrage? Why did You come into our flesh in the first place? Why, O Lord?”

Comes the answer: I came to be the Lamb of God who would carry away your sin and the sin of the world. I, who had no sin, came to bear your sins in My body on the tree so that you might die to sin and live for righteousness. I, who had no sin, came that I might be made sin for you, that in Me you might become the righteousness of God. I came to pour out my blood to blot out the handwriting of the Law that was against you. I came to be wounded for your transgressions, crushed for your iniquities, that upon me would rest the chastisement that brings you peace and that by My stripes you might be healed. I came because you – every one of you like sheep have gone astray, turning to your own way, and so the Lord has laid on Me the iniquity of you all. Since you were under the curse of the law – for cursed the man who does not continue in all the things written therein to do them – I came to become a curse for you, for cursed is everyone who hangs upon a tree. Thus I would free you from your curse by means of My own.

O Lord, we cry out: But why? Why would you do this for us? Why would you embrace this suffering and death, this terror and darkness, to free us from what was only our due? Comes the answer, sweet and unfathomable: Because I love you, because I want you to share with me the joys of a life that never ends, because I didn’t make you to live for a few measly years and then suffer and die; I made you to live in the joy of my Father’s house forever, and I am utterly committed to doing whatever it takes to bring you there. You matter to me, and I hold you precious. The proof of it is in the Body and Blood I give you so that you be forgiven and live forever in me.

That’s the net! That’s the story, which is no fiction though it is a narrative, that He gives us to cast into the world. And it is one powerful net, one powerful story. We know its power first hand, for it has plucked us up and landed us in the boat of the Church and we have come to believe and are being saved by the power of that story. But once in the boat, he bids us join in casting, to bring yet more and more to know this story, to love this Savior, and to find through faith in Him the life that never ends. “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” Armed with our holy net, we go forth from this place to cast it with joy, knowing that it is the power of God for salvation! Amen.