Robert Barron - Graced Sinners on Mission
Peace be with you. Friends, we come to the fifth Sunday Ordinary Time, and the church gives us a wonderful pairing of readings. The first reading from the sixth chapter of the prophet Isaiah and the Gospel from the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, and I say they’re paired or parallel readings, and they both speak to what I think are key elements in the spiritual life. Over the years I’ve identified, having looked through the scriptures and the great spiritual teachers, three great moments in the Christian spiritual life. The first one is the breakthrough of grace. It has to begin with grace or we’re on the wrong foot. But then in light of grace, there’s the acknowledgement of sin.
There’s the call to conversion. And then after that, finally there’s mission. Grace breaks through, we become aware of our sin, we deal with that, and now we’re sent on mission. And you see it beautifully exemplified in these two readings. So I want to just walk through that with you today. So Isaiah says this, «In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord». I love first of all, that he remembers exactly when it was. These moments of breakthrough, when we become aware of God in a very deep and penetrating way, we remember when that happened. So «In the year the King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord». And listen how he describes the experience. He’s seated on a high and lofty throne with the train of his garment filling the temple.
Now, what you see here in symbolic language is a commonplace in the spiritual tradition, namely, when we encounter God, we experience God as first of all, utterly transcendent to us. So on the high and lofty throne, he’s beyond whatever we can control or manipulate. He transcends our knowledge, our will, etc. God is other. We speak of God being totaliter aliter, totally other, not like anything in the world. But at the same time, the train of his garment fills the temple. So high and lofty throne, but also available also in all things. God is ungraspable, yes, but God is also at the same time, unavoidable. I can’t control God, but at the same time, I can’t run from God.
Where can I run from your love? I climb to the heavens. You’re there. I go to the depth of the earth. Even there your right hand holds me up. There’s no escaping from God. God is that which could be neither manipulated nor avoided. Then we hear this, «There were seraphim stationed above». Of course, the seraphim famously in the Hebrew means those who are on fire, they’re on fire because they’re so close to the divine essence, the heat and intensity of the divine essence, and so they have caught fire from it. Think of the burning bush. Think of the day of Pentecost when fire is used as a symbol of proximity to God.
So the seraphim cried to each other. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh in the Hebrew. We mimic them, don’t we? At every mass before the Eucharistic prayer, holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power, and might. Kadosh, other, other, other. Again, don’t think you can manipulate or control God. Make God do what you want. Make God serve your purposes. No, no, no, no, no. If we’re dealing with the breakthrough of grace, it’s always a power that’s wonderfully out of our control, out of our control. How about this. «At the sound of that cry,» so the seraphim crying to each other. «At the sound of it, the frame of the door shook and the house was filled with smoke».
That shaking of the door frame, well, that’s what it’s like when God breaks into our lives. We’re not in control anymore. This world of ours is shaken. The shaking of the foundations is something that all the great mystics witness too. It means God has come to reorient things. If we think we’re in control of our lives and we got it all figured out, I’m going to do A, then B, then C, and here’s the goal. No, no. All that gets shaken in the presence of God. And then beautifully, «The house was filled with smoke». People have made fun of me from Chicago to California now to Minnesota because I love incense at Mass. Maybe I use a little too much sometimes, but I’ve always found it such a beautiful symbol.
The smoke rising, like our prayers rising to heaven, but the smoke has another valence. It’s also meant to symbolize the fact that God can’t be seen. Smoke gets in your eyes and smoke obscures and it blocks things. Well, that’s appropriate for holy matters. I don’t look at God with these sort of eagle eyes of mine where I can analyze and examine and experiment upon. No, no, no, smoke, smoke, smoke fills the place because God is the sovereign Lord, kadosh, other on a high and lofty throne. But yet this whole time, what are we seeing? God is making himself available. That’s the experience of the breakthrough of grace. Well then listen.
Here’s step number two. «Then I said,» this is Isaiah speaking, «'Woe is me. I’m doomed. I’m a man of unclean lips living among a people of unclean lips. Yet my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts.'» That unclean lips is kind of an idiom at the time just to mean I’m unclean. I’m a sinner. I mean, I’m not worthy of this experience. But notice please, the inner logic of this. It’s not as though the spiritual life is beginning with an acknowledgement of sin. I think that’s when you get off on the wrong foot. If you start the spiritual life with your own sin, in a way, you’re putting yourself in too prominent a position. The spiritual life begins with grace, the breakthrough of grace, and then it’s in light of grace that we understand that we’re sinners. I’ve said this to you before, but Chesterton’s famous line is, «There are saints in my religion that just means people that know they are sinners».
See, it’s a very important point. It’s not just being glib there. It’s the saint. The one who’s directed his life toward the light is the one whose most aware of his sin. Just as with these bright lights shining on me right now, I can see the imperfections in my glasses better than if I were facing away from them. So it goes, if we direct our lives toward the light, the light’s broken in shining upon us. We say things like this, «no, no, no. I’m a man of unclean lips. I’m not worthy Lord of this». I think of all those years I spent in seminary work, and it was inevitable. At some point in seminary formation, every young guy will say, «Look, I’m not worthy of this. I can’t be a priest. I can’t be handling sacred things, and I’m not worthy of it».
And I would say, «Look, that’s the movement of grace. I’d be nervous if you never came to that point. If you just blithely entered the priesthood with full confidence in all your abilities and worthiness. Come on. It’s grace working in you that makes you say, I’m a man of unclean lips. I’m not worthy of this». But see, the Lord is not interested in keeping us stuck in our sin. No, no. He’s interested in forgiving us and changing us and so beautifully, «Then one of the seraphim flew to me holding an ember, taken with the tongs from the altar. He touched my mouth with it and said, 'See, now that this has touched your lips, your wickedness is removed. Your sin is purged.'» Here’s the purgative way. We’re aware of our sin, but now through God’s grace, the sin is purged away from us. That’s essential to the spiritual life.
That’s the second step. And then the last one. «Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'whom shall I send? Who will go for us? ' 'Here I am, I said. Send me.'» Step one, grace breaks through with all of the smoke and the otherness and the seraphim and high and lofty throne. In light of that grace, we’re aware of our sin. I’m a man of unclean lips. The sin having been purged, now mission. Nobody in the Bible is ever given an experience of God without being sent on a mission. The idea now is Isaiah, as you’ve been touched and changed and transformed by grace, you become now an agent of grace to your world. Okay, so the three steps.
Now, just briefly, if we look at the gospel, it’s Luke chapter five, very beginning. It’s this call of Peter. So Jesus sees the two boats along the lake, and then it just says, «Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, he asked to put out a short distance from the shore». Then he says to Peter, «Now duc in altum,» go out into the deep. Notice. He doesn’t ask for permission. He doesn’t say, «Hey, may I get into your boat»? No, no. He enters Peter’s boat and the boat of a first century Galilean fisherman, that was his whole life. That was his livelihood. Jesus breaks in, he enters in and then begins commanding. Look, he’s the Lord Jesus, right? He’s not someone to put off on a shelf as a little decorative element of your life. No, no. He’s the Lord Jesus. Peter’s experienced here a breakthrough of grace and the command which John Paul II love so much, duc in altum.
See, because we spend most of our lives, we sinners, fussing around in the shallows of life. No, no. When grace enters our lives and Christ begins commanding us, he wants us into deeper waters. That’s where the life is. And of course, they take in this miraculous draft of fishes. That’s a sign of what happens fellow sinners, when grace breaks through and we allow Christ to command us. Life, life, life in all of its abundance. So grace, having broken through, what does Peter say? «Simon and Peter saw this. He fell at the knees of Jesus and said, 'Depart from me, Lord. I’m a sinful man.'» Right. Same thing we saw with Isaiah. Same thing.
First, the grace and then the profound awareness of sin. And again, it would be strange, wouldn’t it? If Peter didn’t have the sense of radical unworthiness. Who am I? Who am I that the Lord would break into my life, would lead me into the depths where there’s life upon life upon life. I’m not worthy of this. I’m worthy of punishment. Well, right. We all are. Every sinner should say that. But see, the light was shining on St. Peter, and so «Lord, leave me. I’m a sinful man». What does Jesus say to him?
Now, step three, «Jesus said to Simon, 'Do not be afraid. From now on, you’ll be catching men.' When they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him». Okay. Breakthrough of grace, followed by deep acknowledgement of sin, followed finally by mission. And again, it is inevitable in the Bible, Old Testament and new. I do not know an exception to that principle. No one has an experience of God without finally being sent, and think now of the mission of Peter, which is to be the captain of this bark of Peter that we call the church, which has made its way now through the stormy waters of time and space, up and down the centuries to the present day on this great mission of what?
Bringing the grace of Christ to the world as Peter experienced it. So now the church becomes the bearer of that experience to others. «From now on, you’ll be catching men». Look, that’s all of us, everybody. Everyone listen to me. You’re Isaiah, you’re Simon Peter. Let the grace take hold of you. Let it then work on you unto the forgiveness of your sins, and finally allow that grace to send you on mission. As far as I’m concerned, here’s the whole Christian spiritual life. And God bless you.