The Lectionary and Scripture Interpretation for Ordinary Time
Click here for more information.
Overview and Connections
Today is one of those rare days when all three readings relate, as opposed to most Sundays when the New Testament reading hangs out by itself while the Old Testament and Gospel readings complement one another.
Today is about The God who calls us and equips us for that call. The readings also illustrate what is a constant Biblical theme: knowing oneself unworthy in the divine presence. In all three readings, men are called and the call highlights their unworthiness. But God uses them anyway!
Isaiah 6:1-2a, 3-8
Last Sunday was the call of Jeremiah. Today is Isaiah’s call, and it comes from chapters 6-8, which are Isaiah’s memoirs. The purpose of this call narrative is to justify both Isaiah’s mission and message – both came directly from God. It’s a spectacular vision, but the emphasis, when paired with today’s Gospel, is not on the vision but rather on the call.
This vision contains three movements: theophany, purification, and response. This mirrors the spiritual life: at some point we meet and begin to experience God. That experience highlights to us our unworthiness and all the things that stand between us and God. If we’re growing and maturing, we begin to allow God to purify us of all that stands in the way. And then we have a choice to respond.
Although this process is traditionally described as three discrete movements, the reality is that it’s more like peeling layers of an onion. Rather than going through distinct steps, we are always moving in and out, back and forth among them all. We are always experiencing God anew, and being purified so that we can experience God more deeply. And we are always responding to that encounter in new and deeper ways.
Most likely, Isaiah was a priest by birth at the start of this narrative. If that’s the case, then his call comes in the context of his ordinary daily life at work. We tend to think we have to go somewhere else to find God: a retreat or mountaintop or desert or whatever. The reality is that God is always present and always making God’s self known in the context of our ordinary activities. We just don’t always pay attention.
The vision that Isaiah relates begins in very concrete circumstances. Jeremiah’s vision did this as well. Luke does this to talk about Jesus’ birth. Again and again we are reminded that God makes herself known in concrete ways. This is not meant to be a mythic story that could happen any time any where to any one (although it could and does, but that’s not Isaiah’s point). This is one man’s encounter with God, and it can be dated to 742BC, 150 years before the fall of Jerusalem and the exile.
Isaiah is in Solomon’s temple, which was the first temple before its destruction by Babylon. The main sanctuary measured about 180’ long and 90’ wide; about half a football field. Isaiah sees God seated on a throne above the temple, and the train of God’s garment alone fills half a football field. This is a vision that is visually large and overwhelming!
In v2 Jeremiah relates seeing not only the train of God’s garment but also the angels, the seraphim, meaning the fiery ones, the burning ones. They cover their feet, which, in the Old Testament is a euphemism for genetalia. They hover above the throne with two wings and they cover their faces and their sexual parts with the other wings. V3 shows them engaging in antiphonal praise, going back and forth. They sing “holy, holy, holy,” which is part of the Jewish liturgy then and today, just as it is a part of the Christian liturgy. The superlative language is a way to say that nothing is as holy as God.
In v4 we find noise, smoke, and fire. These are always indications of a theophany, an experience of the presence of God. These same elements were present when Moses met God on Mt. Sinai and also at the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts.
Everything indicates that God is present, and, in fact, Isaiah says he has seen God. Which is interesting because in Exodus 33, when Moses asks to see God, God says yes but… “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” Isaiah pronounces himself doomed, which in Hebrew means brought to silence, undone, and ruined.
The first reaction to encountering God and heading God’s call is a sense of unworthiness – we want to push God away. If we truly experience God, it is a humiliating experience because we begin to see what we are in comparison with God.
In vv6-7, though, God makes provisions for this by sending a seraphim to touch a live coal to Isaiah’s lips. This is a sacramental moment and must be read and understood through the eyes of faith. A burning coal in and of itself can’t do anything, just as a little water poured over your head doesn’t seem to do anything. But Isaiah experiences it through faith, just as we do baptism or the Eucharist, and it effects what it signifies.
The picture in v8 is that there’s been a council in heaven, and God now desires someone to go carry out the decisions of the council. God needs a messenger and Isaiah is moved to volunteer. V9-13 are not in the lectionary, but they contain the disturbing message that Isaiah is to carry: that God has seemingly deserted the Israelites and is giving them up to destruction, to defeat by Babylon. God is portrayed as one who will vent divine anger on the people for their lack of response. And yet, the vision shows God as seeking messengers, to always be calling his people back to himself.
Recall a time in your life when you saw very clearly your own sinfulness. How did you respond?
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
In this passage, Paul is speaking to those who deny a resurrection of the dead, and, by extension, were denying Christ’s resurrection. Most likely these were gnostic influences – the idea that the spirit is all that matters; the body does not matter. The gnostics held that their baptism had already resurrected them in spirit, and the body did not matter. They would extend this idea to say that nothing done with the body mattered.
The passage contains the earliest written creed that we have. By 54AD (just 20 years after the resurrection), this creed was fixed and used as a way everyone could talk about what they believed.
In v1 Paul says the Corinthians had received, a word indicating personal initiative. Paul had not just handed something to the community in Corinth, but they reached out to take it. This is an active receiving.
He then reminds them in v2 that what they received is saving them. The verb tense here indicates an action that is presently going on. It’s not that they were saved in some past event, but that they are actively being saved right here, right now.
Paul then invokes his authority in v3, making it clear that he is in a line of authority; he himself received what he hands on. He didn’t make it up. Elsewhere he will tell us that he received this directly from Christ himself.
The creed itself is generally understood to span vv3b-5. In v4 it refers to Christ as raised in the perfect past tense, which indicates a past event with present consequences. Being raised from the dead was something that happened in the past, but it is still having an effect today. It is an ongoing process. Part of the creed in v5 mentions Peter (Cephas) as well as the Twelve. Vv6-7 then go on to mention other resurrection appearances, singling out James who was not one of the Twelve but was the leader of the church in Jerusalem.
And then in v8 Paul gets to his own vision of the resurrected Christ, who appeared to him as one born abnormally. This word is used only here in the New Testament, but it was a Greek word that means an aborted fetus being delivered dead, one which was ejected early from the womb and not ripe for a normal birth. Paul was saying that in a sense, he felt himself to be not mature or ready, but God appeared anyway.
In other places, Paul has recounted his Damascus road experience of God. In light of that, he knows himself to be sinful, to be the least, and in v9 he mentions his own primary sin of persecuting the church of God.
Like Isaiah’s vision, Paul’s life has shown three movements: theophany, purification, and response. V10 is the last movement of response. Paul has experienced God, he knows his sin, and he responds with the help of God’s grace. He even boasts about working harder for the gospel than anyone else he’s mentioned above – Peter, the Twelve, James, the apostles, and the 500.
The Creed Paul cites here is much simpler than either the Nicene or Apostles’ Creed which we know today. Consider spending some time meditating on and praying with this simplified version, which gets to the very core of our faith.
Paul considered his experience of God to have come before Paul was “ready.” Have you ever felt that way, that God has called you to something you are not equipped or prepared to do?
Luke 5:1-11
Last week Jesus contended with the religious leaders in his hometown of Nazareth who tried to kill him. Then he went north to Capernaum, an area of Gentiles. Peter has a house in there, and Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law. So we know that Peter has knowledge at this point of what Jesus can do. In the other gospels, one thing that seems missing is the question of why did the disciples follow Jesus? Luke seems to want to give context to that – to say this is why they followed him, at least initially.
Today’s reading was most likely a post-resurrection story, and it is very similar to John 21. But for Luke, this story was more about the context and motivation for the close inner group that followed Jesus. While the other gospels make it seem like Jesus appeared one day and the disciples just started following him, Luke wants order and connections. He wants to establish why these men followed Jesus.
Luke begins this story by what we calls the Lake of Gennesaret, also called the Sea of Tiberius, also called the Sea of Galilee. Only Luke uses the term Gennesaret which is the historical name of the district directly northwest of the Sea of Galilee. The body of water is more like what we would call a lake than a sea.
Fishing in the Sea of Galilee was traditionally done at night. The story opens in the morning, so they had been out all night working and now they were cleaning up for the day. They’re getting ready to go home and get some sleep, but Jesus, in v3, has other ideas. He asks them to take the boat back out a little ways from shore so that he has a speaking platform. Luke’s visual here is that all the people are leaning in, pressing in to hear what he has to say. Jesus gets in the boat and sits down, the posture of a teacher, because for Luke, Jesus is very much a Teacher. The emphasis in the story is that this is Peter’s boat. Early iconography depicted the church as an ark, or a boat, with Peter at the helm.
After Jesus teaches for a while, he suggests that Peter go back out and fish some more. Peter reminds Jesus that they were out fishing already and caught nothing. He doesn’t state the obvious: you don’t fish in the middle of the day. If you were reading this passage in the overall context of Luke, you might easily recall here Mary and Elizabeth – nothing is impossible for God! This is a story about a God who is always doing impossible things. One thing that caught my eye in v5 is when Peter says we worked hard. This is the same Greek word as Matthew 11:28, “Come to me all who are weary.” The word means “exhausting labor.” Peter says we’re weary! We’ve worked hard. But we’ll still do what you ask.
And then in v6, they bring in a plethora of fish. In John’s story they count them at 153 fish, which probably had significance to John’s community. But Luke here just says it was a lot. They signal to their business partners in the other boat for help. They are sinking, the word bathos, which is related to the word baptize. They are sinking under the weight of the catch, but they just keep hauling in more fish!
At some point, it dawns on Peter what has happened and who Jesus must be in light of that. There’s the recognition of a theophany, followed by the sense of unworthiness. Peter tells Jesus to depart. In The Message translates his response as, “Master, leave. I’m a sinner and can’t handle this holiness.” I’m not sure where Peter expected Jesus to go, seeing as they are in the middle of a lake.
V11 shows the final part of the pattern, the response: Peter, James, and John have experienced God and recognized who they are in relation to him. And they respond with metanoia, a major theme in Luke. This story doesn’t use that word, but it demonstrates the idea: a change of life, an about-face. There’s also an emphasis here on another Luke theme of detachment from material possessions.
What has been your response to the many callings of Christ in your own journey?
Copyrights and source information
© 2025 Kelly Sollinger