TRINITY V
It is a happy coincidence that
the fifth Sunday after Trinity usually comes close to the Feast of St. Peter
the Apostle on June 29. It is instructive to compare the Gospel for St. Peter’s
Day on page 245 in the Prayer Book with today’s Gospel reading. The central text on St. Peter’s day is “Thou
art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” This is called “Peter’s Confession”
because it was a critical turning point, a hinge moment in the Gospel
narrative, as related by Matthew, Mark and Luke. John 6:68 is an equivalent moment, when Peter
declared, ”Lord, to whom shall we go, for thou hast the words of eternal
life.” In John’s Gospel, that was
Peter’s high point.
In today’s Gospel we have a
slight contrast, in Peter’s words, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O
Lord!” Do these words reflect a lack of
faith on Peter’s part, or an insufficient knowledge of God’s mercy and
loving-kindness? While Peter surely had
a knack for saying inappropriate things (think of his nattering on the mount
of transfiguration, or his cowardly behavior in Pilate’s courtyard), here in
Luke 5, he was not wrong at all. This
miracle and Peter’s response to it took
place early in the Gospel story, well before his great confession of faith.
This response recalls Isaiah’s reaction
to the heavenly vision in Isa. 6:5, “Woe is me! For I am lost: for I am a man
of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine
eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
Both Isaiah and Peter understood
that a real head-on confrontation with God Himself will give us a humiliating
self-awareness of ourselves as we are, frail and finite beings, damaged and
ruined by sin. It is both logical and
appropriate that when we come into God’s presence in His house, we fall to our
knees in reverence and adoration.
When we know who He is, then we
are bound to know who we are. That
knowledge will not be altogether comfortable.
But the good news for us in today’s reading from Luke 5 is that Jesus
did not grant Peter’s prayer, “Depart from me.”
The whole message of the Bible is that God has never departed from His
people and never will. We could devote
an entire sermon to the theme of Biblical prayers God in His mercy refused to
grant. Jesus did not depart from Peter,
but instead made him an Apostle. Neither
does Jesus depart from us. Like Peter,
we confess Him as the Son of the living God, who has the words of eternal life
for us. LKW
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