I’m here
Sometimes when I’m looking through the readings for a particular service, some phrases or even words just pop out and when I was thinking about this morning, that happened a lot !
And I want to think of three of them this morning – one from each of our readings. From the Old Testament reading (Isaiah 6:1-8) we hear of God calling, ‘Whom shall I send and who will go for us?’ and Isaiah responds, ‘Here am I send me’.
From Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians (15: 1-11), ‘By the grace of God, I am what I am’, and finally from the gospel (Luke 5:1-11), Jesus said, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’
So, three verses but each of them, I think, linked together, and each are relevant to us now. There’s a true account which is used in the diocesan welcome course, ‘Croeso’, which recounts the experiences of Nicky Cruz who would go on to become a gang leader in New York, when he arrived in the city as a teenager from Puerto Rico. It says,
‘Moving on down the street I stopped in front of a Church. A heavy iron gate had been pulled across the front doors and it was fastened with a chain and padlock. I stood in front of the grey building, looking up at the steeple which pointed towards the heavens. The cold stone walls and dark stained glass windows huddled for protection behind the iron fence. The statue of a man with a kind face and sad eyes peered through the locked gate. His arms were outstretched and covered with snow. But he was locked in, and I was locked out…’
The life of Nicky Cruz was later changed though by God working through the persistence and faith of a preacher called David Wilkerson. He offered Nicky Cruz a welcome into a relationship with Jesus which eventually changed his life for ever and led to him becoming a preacher himself.
The invitation and welcome offered by David Wilkerson wasn’t easy. One part of the story recalls this exchange,
“Nicky Cruz: You come near me and I'll kill you!
David Wilkerson: Yeah, you could do that. You could cut me up into a thousand pieces and lay them in the street, and every piece will still love you.”
You may be wondering what this has to do with those 3 verses I shared earlier and the answer is everything.
Firstly, we think of that verse from Isaiah. God is asking for someone to work with him and Isaiah says, ‘Here I am!’ Today, those of us tied up in church life often worry about the amount of things there are to do. And we can worry that the burden keeps falling on the few. But this reading reminds us that rather than being a burden, when we are working for God, it is a privilege and it’s not something forced on us, but an invitation from God to work together…
It's easy to be distracted by events and things to do, I really understand that, but we can forget why we’re doing these things in the first place. We are called to be ambassadors for God, privileged to serve the one who loves us enough to die for us…
And that is the question for each of us day by day as God invites us to work with him, to enjoy a closer relationship with him. Are we willing to say, ‘Here I am!’
Do we see God as locked inside the walls of a church or behind a locked gate that we can’t approach as Nicky Cruz saw. If we do then we are invited to recognise that it isn’t God who puts up those barriers – his love is limitless and he can break down with that invitation to us, any barriers…
So, our call is to go closer, to let God into our lives, to listen and pray, to read the bible, to see Jesus and think of the wonderful works of God which we see around us every day, and to remember, that even with our imperfections, God sees us as one of those wonderful works…
The second verse is from Paul in that 1st letter to the Corinthians, ‘By the grace of God, I am what I am.’ As many of you will know Paul had a pretty dramatic conversion experience with him literally hearing the call of God. His life was transformed and he became an incredible missionary and evangelist dedicating his life to telling people about Jesus…
He wasn’t always overly modest, and many have considered whether he really believed the words also contained in the reading today, ‘I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.’ But whether he did or didn’t there was no question that he was totally committed to this life of service, this life of sharing good news that needs to be heard.
And he did as him, ‘By the grace of God, I am what I am.’ And that is a critical point of acceptance for all of us. I said earlier that God sees each of us as being part of his wonderful work, and he wants us to be the people we are called to be, the people that he wants us to be, the people enjoying the gifts laid out for us by God…
Nicky Cruz saw in that statue someone attractive, but someone who was distant and unreachable…. David Wilkerson, as he was threatened by Nicky Cruz said, ‘you could cut me into a thousand pieces and every piece will still love you’. In those words God was visible, in those words Nicky Cruz was recognising, albeit slowly, that God was calling him as he was…
And that is how God calls each one of us, he calls us as we are…. And from there God can and will use us and that is exciting! We might think we’re not good at something or other, we might think that we should just be quiet because we don’t know enough, but God can use us, and God calls us – again we link back to that reading from Isaiah and our willingness to say, ‘Here I am’.
And then thirdly we have that final verse from the gospel reading. Jesus said, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’
David Wilkerson, the preacher in the Nicky Cruz story was a country church minister. He didn’t know the big city but he felt God calling him to go to New York and to work on the streets speaking to the gangs. This was a dangerous calling for anyone, even the most streetwise of Christian ministers, but with little knowledge of New York or gangs he went.
And God used him powerfully. And to think of a little context of this verse where Jesus said, do not be afraid, from now on you will be catching people, it’s worth thinking of the rest of the reading. Jesus got into one of the boats on the lake to speak to the crowds who had gathered to listen to him.
When he finished, he told the fisherman to go out into the deep water and let down their nets. They didn’t want to do it, they had been out already for hours and caught nothing, but, listening to Jesus, they did it. And, of course, we can probably guess what happened – they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break!
When they listened to Jesus, when they trusted him, when they didn’t put their faith in their own work, they were blessed abundantly. And that is what God does for us when we listen to and respond to the invitation he gives us to let him into our lives more and more.
So, three questions to finish,
Are we willing to listen to God and respond to his call with the words, ‘Here I am!’
Next, recognising who we are and that we are loved and welcomed by God just as we are, are we willing to let him work in, with and through us…
And finally, are we willing to put out our nets into the deep water and trust that God will provide whatever is right at that time? Because the verse I chose from the gospel was about not being afraid, from now on you will be catching people.
Ultimately as we recognise God’s call, as we celebrate the privilege of being his ambassador, as we recognise all around us the gifts provided in the world around us and the people around us, we have good news to share, not news that is going to restrict people’s lives, not news that is going to burden them, but news that is truly positively life changing.
Jesus is here always, and he invites us to respond to his love today and every day. AMEN
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