A reading from the book of Isaiah.
In the year of King Uzzah's death I saw the Lord seated on a high throne,
His train full to sanctuary.
Above him stood seraphs,
Each one with six wings,
And they cried out to one another in this way,
Holy,
Holy,
Holy is the Lord of hosts,
His glory fills the whole earth.
The foundations of the threshold shook with the voice of the one who cried out,
And the temple was filled with smoke.
I said,
What a wretched state am I in!
I am lost,
For I am a man of unclean lips,
And I live among a people of unclean lips,
And my eyes have looked at the king,
The Lord of hosts.
Then one of the seraphs flew to me,
Holding in his hand a live coal which he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs.
With this he touched my mouth and said,
See now,
This has touched your lips,
Your sin is taken away,
Your iniquity is purged.
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
Whom shall I send?
Who will be our messenger?
I answered,
Here I am,
Send me the word of the Lord.
A reading from the first letter of the Corinthians to the Corinthians.
Brothers,
I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you,
The gospel that you have received and in which you are firmly established,
Because the gospel will save you only if you keep believing exactly what I preached to you.
Believing anything else will not lead to anything.
Well then,
In the first place,
I taught you what I had been taught myself,
Namely that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures that he was buried and that he was raised to life on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.
That he appeared first to Cephas and secondly to the Twelve.
Next he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time,
Most of whom are still alive,
Though some have died.
Then he appeared to James and then to all the apostles.
And last of all he appeared to me too.
It was as though I was born when no one expected it.
I am the least of the apostles.
In fact,
Since I persecuted the church of God,
I hardly deserve the name apostle,
But by God's grace that is what I am,
And the grace that he gave me has not been fruitless.
On the contrary,
I,
Or rather the grace of God that is with me,
Have worked harder than any of the others.
But what matters is that I preach what they preach,
And this is what you all believed.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
The Lord be with you and with your spirit.
A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke.
Glory to you,
O Lord.
Jesus was standing one day by the lake of Gennesaret.
With the crowd pressing round him listening to the word of God.
When he caught sight of two boats close to the bank,
The fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets.
He got into one of the boats,
It was Simon's,
And asked him to put out a little 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 deep water and pay out your nets for a catch.
Master,
Simon replied,
We worked hard all night long and caught nothing.
But if you say so,
I will pay out the nets.
And when they had done this,
They netted such a huge number of fish that their nets began to tear.
So they signaled to their companions in the other boat to come and help them.
When these came,
They filled the two boats to sinking point.
When Simon Peter saw this,
He fell at the knees of Jesus saying,
Leave me,
Lord.
I am a sinful man.
For he and all his companions were completely overcome by the catch they had made.
So also were James and John,
Sons of Zebedee,
Who were Simon's partners.
But Jesus said to Simon,
Do not be afraid.
From now on,
It is men you will catch.
Then bringing their boats back to land,
They left everything and followed him.
The Gospel of the Lord.
I had to laugh or just giggle at the letter to the Corinthians.
We can see a bit of ego shining through.
Look at me.
I've worked harder than all the rest,
But my message is exactly the same.
And it is human to want to feel special.
And it is human to want to be acknowledged for what we do.
And I don't think it's necessarily wrong.
I think maybe it's a good driver for some of us to do things in life.
If we can just take another step back and see why am I special?
Why did God put me in certain situations,
Certain circumstances?
And we see almost the opposite happen in our Gospel reading,
Where Peter says,
Leave me,
Lord,
I am sinful.
I am not worthy.
And I think for me,
There's this whole spectrum in between where we fall,
Between feeling sometimes superior because the ego loves doing that.
The ego loves looking down on others and measuring up.
We live in a society where everything is a competition.
Who is number one always?
And it starts from school.
We are extremely competitive.
And again,
It's human nature because without that,
How would we survive?
Hundreds of years ago,
That was the only thing.
If you weren't competitive,
If you weren't first to the food,
You would die.
And yet we've now come to a point where there is food for most of us,
For many of us.
And we can then share that food and we can share our gifts and our message.
Like Jesus said,
We should.
And then we tend to lean over into that ego space of,
Let me give something from the goodness of my heart.
And let me just take a photo for Facebook while I'm at it so that people can see how good I am so that people can turn me into a saint.
And then back to Simon Peter,
Lord,
Leave me,
Leave me,
Lord.
I am a sinful man,
Which is all of us.
We all of us are sinful.
We all miss the mark of perfect harmony with God constantly.
And Jesus,
I don't think favored one over the other.
We spoke a couple of weeks ago about the body where the eye says,
I'm better than the foot or the foot says I'm better than the eye,
But God doesn't see those differences.
So in between,
Look at me and I say that tongue in cheek and leave me,
Lord,
For I am a sinner.
I'm a sinful man.
We find ourselves,
I think,
Oscillating between those things constantly.
And when we do an examine,
Examine at the end of the day,
We oftentimes find ourselves lacking and we love then to go into that self pity,
That wallowing in how bad we are.
Jesus says then to Simon,
Do not be afraid.
Do my work.
Catch me.
And that's so beautiful.
Jesus didn't say the yes,
Because of your sins,
You have to leave me.
You're not worthy of spreading my message.
Jesus says,
Do not be afraid.
So in spite of our sins,
Jesus still wants us to go and share the gospel and share his message of love that is unconditional.
And in the letter to the Corinthians,
This last bit,
What matters is that I preach what they preach.
And this is what you all believed.
So even from that space of a bit of ego coming out,
The message is the same.
And today is to me that celebration that no matter where we find ourselves in that spectrum of look at me and leave me,
Lord,
I'm a sinful man.
The expectation from Christ is still for us to share his message of unconditional love.
And it is an amazing blessing to be a part of an order such as the white-rope monks of Saint Benedict,
Because that is the focus on every live session that I do on Insight Timer.
I share this message that we share the sacraments to anybody who asks for them.
We don't ask you,
Are you worthy?
Because who is truly then worthy to receive these sacraments?
And with all of these oscillations between ego and feeling unworthy,
I think it is a profound blessing that we can come to our community and we can share in this message and we can share with each other the message of Christ that says,
Do not be afraid.
It is men you will catch.
So this week,
My focus going forward is going to be just becoming aware of where I am between look at me and leave me,
Lord,
And accepting that rather than fighting it,
Seeing it,
Acknowledging it,
And then saying,
Wherever I am,
Lord,
Send me.
Amen.
