God on the Throne; God on the beach
(Free Version) Readings for the 5th Sunday After Epiphany- Isaiah 6:1-8; I Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11
You can find this week’s readings here.
Sometimes we may encounter God in the throne room, or at least in a vision of one. More often, we will meet Him on the beaches of our everyday lives. Our God is the one who steps into our everyday circumstances: our real everyday lives which are often full of fear, shame, and pain. In those spaces, God calls us into His abundant grace. God hears our confession, forgives our sin, changes us by communion with Himself, and sends us into a broken world. And as God sends us, he sends us to those very places…the everyday: with our neighbors, our co-workers, our family.
Like the ordinary Isaiah was called by God into the extraordinary throne room (Isaiah 6:1-8), so Paul, an enemy of Jesus, was invited to pass on the good news (1 Corinthians 15:1-11). The earthiness of Paul (and of all of us) was changed by the earthiness of resurrection. When Christ’s self-giving love, as revealed in his death and resurrection, is at the center of our lives, it changes everything.
Christ invites us to worship and to participate as he invites the world to worship. It may look like inviting someone to church, but It definitely looks like reminding people of who they were created to be…they were created to love, worship, and to desire something: God Himself. You will notice that, in our world, we are drawn to worship many other things: money, sex, power, status, success, fame, etc. The church is called to stand as the people who “gospel the gospel,” proclaiming the better story.
Christ hears our cries of brokenness and he invites us to participate as he hears cries of others. Christians are the forgiving people. We carry forgiveness wherever we go because we have been forgiven. When people open up about their shame and their failure, Christians ought not be the ones who turn our noses up. We are the ones who embrace and love.
Christ is transforming us and we are invited to participate in the transformation of the world. Because of Christ, the Church can be are a transforming presence in others’ lives. Like with Isaiah, this may be through the actual speaking of God’s Word; but it also may be through incarnational presence: sitting with someone in pain, loving them, serving them.
Like he did with the disciples (Luke 5:1-11), Christ calls the world into a different vocation. The church is not a self-help program. We are the people on mission. Our faith is active, and we invite the world to join in this Kingdom of healing. We do not get to join in the Kingdom because of our merits, because we are clean enough or good enough, but because of the unending grace of God.
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