Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 8, 2004

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

In the movie Wayne’s World there’s a scene in which Wayne (played by Mike Myers of Austin Powers fame, or infamy if you prefer) and Garth (played by Dana Carvey) have gotten backstage passes at an Alice Cooper concert. Alice Cooper, in case you don’t know, is a freakish heavy rock performer known for, among other things, biting the heads off chickens during his act. Wayne and Garth consider him (yes, Alice Cooper is a man) to be at least a demigod, is not actually the Second Coming of Christ. When Cooper actually invites our two cool guy wannabe anti-heroes to hang out with him and his retinue, they drop to their knees in exaggerated obeisance, fall on their faces with their arms outstretched, palms down to the floor, and intone: "We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!"

I was immediately reminded of this bit of broad, and actually quite funny, comedy when I read the three Scripture lessons that we heard this morning. (I used three rather than our usual two because all three fit my theme this morning so well I couldn’t decide which one to leave out.) In all three readings, God appears to people who plead: I’m not worthy! God, however, like Alice Cooper in the movie, doesn’t care and asks them to hang out, more or less, anyway. Let’s take a closer look.

In the story we heard from the Book of Isaiah, Isaiah tells of a powerful vision of God in heaven, seated on a mighty throne and attended by fantastic, six-winged creatures. Isaiah essentially goes into a Wayne and Garth routine. He cries: "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips...." In other words, he cries in the presence of the Lord God: I’m not worthy! I’m not worthy!

So too with Paul. The passage we heard from 1 Corinthians is Paul’s proclamation of the Resurrection and the post-Resurrection appearances of Christ to the Apostles. He includes his account of Christ’s appearance to him. He says: "Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God." Can’t you just see and hear him? The risen Christ appears to him on the road to Damascus. He falls to his knees, prostrates himself, and shouts: "I’m not worthy! I’m not worthy!"

And then there’s Peter in our Gospel story from Luke. This is Luke’s version of Jesus’ call of the first disciples. Luke got the story from Mark, but he’s changed it. In Mark, Jesus just walks up to the fishermen, says something like "Hey guys, come on! Follow me!" And they do. Just like that. Maybe Luke found that as unbelievable a real life story as I do, so he put in a miracle story to explain why they would leave everything and go off with this total stranger. Peter, here still called Simon, and other fishermen had been fishing all night and had caught nothing. Jesus comes along preaching. He commandeered Peter’s boat to preach from, which seems a bit cheeky although it doesn’t seem to have bothered Peter. Then Jesus told Peter to try the nets again. I guess Peter figured he had nothing to lose. He probably didn’t figure he had much to gain either. Maybe he just thought: Well. The crowd seems to like this guy, whoever he is, so I’ll humor him. He put the nets down and caught so many fish that the boat nearly sank. Peter was impressed to say the least. And what did he do? Another Wayne and Garth routine: Luke says: "When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’" Or in other words: "I’m not worthy! I’m not worthy!"

Now of course there’s a big difference between the "We’re not worthy" of Wayne and Garth and the variations on that theme of Isaiah, Paul, and Peter. Wayne and Garth were in the presence of a mere mortal, and a quite strange one at that. Mike Myers, the genius behind Wayne’s World, was doing a send up of the exaggerated adulation popular music fans show toward the stars of that genre of what passes for music these days. Of course Wayne and Garth, nerdy as they are, were worthy of being in the presence of Alice Cooper. Anyone is. There’s nothing special, and certainly nothing godlike, about Alice Cooper.

With Isaiah, Paul, and Peter it was different. They were, in different ways, in the presence of the one true God. Isaiah is recounting the kind of vision experience that nearly all of the prophets of Israel had, a vision of being in the presence of Yahweh and of being sent by Yahweh to bring God’s word to Israel. Paul had a vision experience of the risen Christ. Christ appeared to him in visible form, spoke to him, and made him the Apostle to the Gentiles. Paul was in the presence of the living God, Jesus Christ Resurrected. Peter was in the presence of the living person Jesus of Nazareth. For us Christians at least, that means he was in the presence of God Incarnate. All three then were in the immediate presence of the Divine in one form or another--quite a bit different from being in the presence of some over-hyped, self-important idol of children who ought to know better.

So we shouldn’t be too quick to write off their "we’re not worthy" reactions. I mean, who is worthy to stand in the presence of God? No one. We can take Isaiah, Paul, and Peter at their word. Isaiah said "I am a man of unclean lips." Presumably that means he had uttered blasphemies against the Lord. Unworthy! We know about Paul. As Saul of Tarsus he persecuted the followers of The Way, the earliest followers of Jesus Christ. Unworthy! Peter said "I am a sinful man." We don’t know what his sin was in detail, but we know Peter as a rough and ready man with a quick temper and a fickle nature. Unworthy!

Now, maybe we haven’t persecuted the Church of Christ the way Paul did. On the other hand, we haven’t always been exactly faithful to it either, or at least I haven’t. Unworthy! Which of us has not uttered blasphemies? Maybe some of you haven’t, but I have and I suspect many of you have too. Unworthy! Which of us has never lost his or her temper with a fellow human being, or been faithless in one way or another in our relationships? I sure know I have, and I suspect most of you have too. Unworthy! Isaiah, Paul, and Peter were right. They were unworthy, and so are we.

That doesn’t sound like very good news. I’m sure you didn’t come here this morning to be told you’re unworthy. Please understand. By saying that I don’t mean to condemn you or myself. I’m merely asking you to look honestly at yourself, and asking me to look honestly at myself, and to acknowledge that, as Paul says elsewhere, all sin and fall short of the glory of God. In other words, all are unworthy.

But here’s the good news: It doesn’t matter! Look at the three giants of the faith we just wrote off as unworthy. What did they do? Isaiah became probably the greatest of all the Hebrew prophets. He brought the Word of God to the people of God, calling them away from idolatry and faithlessness and warning them of the dire consequences of their faithless lives. Those words still ring true with us today, more than 2,500 years later. Paul became the Apostle to the Gentiles. In a very real sense, he invented Christianity as we know it. He was more responsible than anyone else for the spread of Christianity through the Roman Empire; and it is because it spread through the Roman Empire and became the official religion of the Empire that we are Christians today. Peter became first the leader of the church in Jerusalem. Our tradition teaches that he went on to Rome and became the head of the church in the capital of the Empire, dying a martyr’s death for the faith.

You see, in human eyes they were unworthy, every last one of them. In God’s eyes, however, that didn’t matter. God saw through their unworthiness, forgave it, and used them for great works in the service of God in the world. They became, of their own free will, God’s instruments in the world. Because of them, and because of untold millions of other unworthy people, God’s word spread through the earth, and God’s work got done. God used these unworthy people to further God’s purposes in the world.

And God is using, and will use, us too. We are a small band of sinners, men and women of limited resources, skills, talents, time, and energy. If we had to be worthy, God would have nothing to do with us. But remember the good news: It doesn’t matter! God sees through our unworthiness, forgives it, and wants to us use to further God’s purposes in the world. Let’s get on with it! Amen.