Tune into the sermon from the Rev. Barbara Ballenger for the Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany, February 6, 2022.

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Today's readings are:

Isaiah 6:1-8, [9-13] 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 Luke 5:1-11 Psalm 138Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Epiphany/CEpi...

Super Mommy Strength

Rev. Barbara Ballenger

Feb. 6, 2022

When my daughter Hannah was 3 years old, she attended a Montessori preschool at the end of our street. Even though it was in walking distance from our house, it was at the top of a very long hill, and every day I'd walk with her up that hill to take her there.

And you know how 3 years old are. We'd get slower and slower as the hill got steeper and steeper. We'd get about halfway there and things would kind of grind to a halt. "Carry me, Mommy."

The thought of walking another step up that hill seemed impossible to her. The thought of carrying her the rest of the way seemed impossible to me.

And so I would take her hand in mine and I would say, "Hannah, what you need is some Super Mommy Strength." And I would squeeze her hand, and we would start walking really fast, and kind of power walk to the next stop sign. Then she'd slow down again, and I'd squeeze her hand again, and we'd power walk all the way up the hill together.

It got to where she'd ask for it along the way. "Can I have some Super Mommy Strength?" And often it worked often enough.

I've often thought that grace works like that. I'd do pretty well on my own steam, living my life of faith. And then a hill would get particularly steep, and I would slow down to a halt. And the thought of walking another step would feel impossible. And I would cry out to God - often to carry me. And more often than not there would arrive some extra energy, or assistance or aid, and I'd make it up that hill. Amazing grace.

But today's Scriptures are inviting me to think about grace a little differently, as I hear Paul say "By the grace of God I am what I am."

Not, "By the grace of God I get the rest of the job done." Or "By the grace of God, I go where I need to go." And thankfully not, "There but for the grace of God go I." (don't get me started on that one.)

But by the grace of God, I am what I am.

Our three Scriptures today give us three people of faith who become who they are because of a particular encounter with grace - Isaiah the prophet, Paul the apostle, Peter the disciple.

The grace that they encountered was more than a dose of divine strength to kind of top off their tanks. Each one of these men experienced a direct encounter with God--a theophany. And it wouldn't be the last. These encounters reveal a God who stays near, whose relationship with them makes it possible for them to become the people that God needs them to be so they can do the things God needs them to do.

Consider Isaiah. The passage is often referred to as the call of Isaiah; but actually, he's been at it awhile. This story is about a profound transformation that he undergoes so that he can enter the next leg of a difficult journey in the life of a prophet. He has this powerful vision of visiting the Court of God. And much like a dream where you look down and you realize you are not dressed for the occasion, or you realize perhaps you're not dressed at all, Isaiah remembers that no human can look upon God and live.

"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!" he cries.

Then there's this image that has always given me the willies - a winged seraph touches Isaiah's lips with a burning coal held in tongs lifted from a fire. And the angel says, "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed, and your sin is blotted out."

And with his unworthiness out of the way, Isaiah is available to go where God is sending him next, carrying a different message than he carried before.

Something similar happens to Paul when he encounters the risen Christ. The first thing that he has to face - after Jesus -- is his own sinfulness, his own short-sightedness. Despite his best intentions he had persecuted the Church of Christ. It takes Paul a while to see in the way that God desires him to see. But when he does, and those prejudices are out of the way, Paul is available to go where God is sending him next, with a different agenda than he carried before.

Which brings us to Peter. In the Gospel of Luke, this call story is not the first encounter that Peter has with Jesus. He has already witnessed Jesus' healing and his preaching. You might recall that Peter hosted Jesus in his own house and that Jesus healed his mother-in-law. Perhaps it's because of that hospitality that Jesus chooses Peter's boat to get into when Jesus wants an off-shore platform from which to preach. Perhaps that's why Peter accommodates Jesus' request to take him fishing after a long and fruitless night at that very task. Maybe Peter was just being hospitable.

And then fish after fish fill the nets. So many that they need other boats to help them haul them in. So many that the entire fleet is starting to go down under their weight.

Unlike the others who are simply amazed, Peter knows a theophany when he sees one. "Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man," he cries out at Jesus' feet.

"Don't be afraid," Jesus says. And with his fear out of the way, Peter is available to go where God is sending him next, doing a different kind of fishing than he did before.

Of all of them Paul describes it best: "By the grace of God, I am what I am." In each instance God stands with God's chosen face to face. And in the blazing truth of that encounter, an old life falls away and a new life begins. A new person emerges. And the walk with God continues anew.

Edward Campbell, writing in the Oxford Companion to the Bible, says that in the New Testament it's difficult to differentiate grace from the Holy Spirit, the presence of God. It will take 350 years or so for grace to be considered to be a thing, what Campbell calls "a kind of impersonal entity or quasi-physical force or power which lights upon those predestined to absorb it."

I like New Testament grace better. I think we can find ourselves in its presence, with perhaps a little less cinematography. By the grace of God, we are who we are. Because in some way we have found ourselves face to face with God or at least in the presence of God, and the truth of that relationship transforms us. We understand that we have not only been given a gift we didn't earn, we have been changed by it. And that gift is the presence of God, the ongoing relationship God chooses to have with us, God's constant walk with us.

And this is not just a gift for the individual, not the individual prophet or the apostle or the person in the pew. This is a gift that shapes the Church, that shapes the whole body of Christ. By the grace of God, we are who we are.

And so maybe on second thought, grace is a tiny bit like what happened when Hannah and I would walk up that long hill to preschool. It probably wasn't the Super Mommy Strength that did it. But rather the feeling of my hand in hers, the fact that we could stop to rest if need be, and the realization that she was no longer a baby who needed to be carried - but that she had become a girl who could make it up that hill on the power of her own two legs -as long as we were both going there together.

Amen.

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