Reverence, Awe, and Call

"Go away from me, Lord!"  So says Simon Peter in yesterday's reading from Luke. A lot of us would love to meet Jesus in the flesh and can't imagine trying to shoo Jesus away if we ever did. Peter says it's because he is a "sinful man." He is a rough and tumble fisherman, an occupation assumed to be filled with irreverent, irreligious sorts. Perhaps that's why Peter says, "Go away."

Of course the prophet Isaiah says something similar when he encounters God in the Temple. "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" Isaiah is no uncouth fisherman, but he responds pretty much as Peter does.

In the Bible, there is a great deal of reverence, awe, even fear about encountering the Divine. People thought that God's holiness did not mix well with humans. There's even a story about a man struck dead when he reached out and touched the Ark of the Covenant, despite his only wanting to keep it from falling. The presence of God is a wild and dangerous thing.

Perhaps there is something primitive in this ancient reverence of God, one that insisted on special preparations before getting too close. For Jews, this meant not even speaking one of their most treasured possessions, the personal name of God, YHWH.

Most of us are much more casual in our approach to God. For some this may be because of a deep and abiding relationship. For others, could it be a sense of equality with God? Most of us create God in our own image at times, and why would we have much awe for such a God.

Still, Jesus' response to Peter is very different from what Isaiah experienced. Then a seraph took a coal from the altar and touched it to Isaiah's lips to purify him. But Jesus simply says to Peter, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people." With Jesus, the "otherness" of God still exists, but it feels more easily bridged. There is no cleansing ritual, just a call to follow.

As a pastor, I've rarely witnessed the sort of awe and reverence shown by Isaiah or Peter when they encounter divine presence. I'm not sure what that means. Have we rarely encountered God? Is our experience too wispy and ethereal to seem real? Or, as some have suggested, have churches trafficked more in "talk about God" than actual "experience of God?"

One place that I do see a great deal of deference, of keeping God at a safe distance, is in the very topic of this gospel passage. Jesus' call to share the good new, to catch people, literally terrifies many Christians that I know. They don't know their faith well enough, some say. They are still exploring and figuring things out and not ready to speak to anyone about their faith. Similar objections are often raised when people are asked to teach or lead a project or guide some aspect of the church's work.

I wonder if there is not a connection between our caution about Jesus' call and our rare experience of awe and reverence for the divine. Has our tendency to think of faith in intellectual terms, ideas to learn and understand, shackled us in ways we don't realize?

In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, "For faith is only real when there is obedience, never without it, and faith only becomes faith in the act of obedience." Simon Peter has been wowed by Jesus' presence prior to his obedience, but that is not always the case in the gospels. Routinely Jesus simply calls as he passes by, and some drop everything and follow. They get wowed later.

I wonder if the call to follow Jesus is not the more typical opening for us to encounter God's presence and power, and we get to be wowed later. Of course that requires taking a chance. Or, as Bonhoeffer said, it has a cost.

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