C209 Epiphany 5

[00:00:05] Speaker A: You're listening to by the well, a lectionary based podcast for preachers recorded on the land of the Wurundjeri people. Hello everyone, I'm Robyn Whittaker and this is the episode for the fifth week of Epiphany. And joining me today is Adrian Jackson, whose name you might recognise as he produces this podcast, but we've got him on this side of the microphone this week. Adrian is elearning facilitator here at Pilgrim and also an alumni of the college where he majored in Biblical Studies. Adrian, tell people who don't know you a little bit about where you preach and how often. [00:00:46] Speaker B: Yeah, look, I'm a regular participant in my local Baptist church in Brunswick, inner city Melbourne, and occasionally preach there, usually when the pastors are away and they need someone to fill in. [00:00:58] Speaker A: Exactly. You're the fill in preacher. That's great. And today we're going to be discussing three of the four readings. We're going to start with Isaiah, chapter 6, verses 1 to 8 and option to add 9 to 13. 1 Corinthians 15, 1, 11. And the gospel is Luke, chapter 5, verses 1 to 11. So, Adrian, let's start with Isaiah 6. Give us a little bit of context about where we are at this point. [00:01:28] Speaker B: So the biblical narrative history that this story sits in is its place that King Isaiah's and the King Isaiah's reign, it says in the first verse there, which places it in the time that Judah is under control of the Assyrians. So at this point in time, they're a vassal state of the Assyrian empire. [00:01:48] Speaker A: Yep. And King Uzziah, I had to look this up, this was not something just normally in my brain, but reigned for about 50 years, was a very young king. So King of Judah, while they're a vassal state and not remembered particularly favorably. So you know, Amos and Hosea were active during his lifetime and now we've got this vision of Isaiah upon his death. So sort of key pivotal change moments going on. So let's get into the vision. Why? You know, this is sometimes it's a vision, it's sometimes called a call story. We might want to challenge that idea. But I think one of the things we're going to press in on today is the importance to read this in its context. So what is that context? What does it mean that this is a vassal state of Assyria? How might that help us change the reading? [00:02:45] Speaker B: Yeah, so in the ancient world, much like in the colonial era, you had nation states that become under an imperial rule and collecting taxes is an expensive, difficult affair. And if the will of a nation was to not pay those taxes, they could also cause ruling empire a lot of expense because warmongering is expensive. They have to redivert resources. So what Assyria, from archaeological evidence we believe did, was engaged the ruling class or the elite class in a kind of soft powered diplomacy. So they take the kind of ruling class and kind of invite them to visit the temple and dine with the rulers in Assyria and kind of just get on their good side as a kind of act of soft power diplomacy to encourage them to pay their taxes. [00:03:48] Speaker A: Yeah. And we're, and we're going to see then the influence of Assyrian religion on this text. Right. Or at least on the way God is depicted here. It's, it's echoing themes of the ancient, near ancient Eastern cultures. So, you know, God is imagined, we're told, sort of seated on a throne. So this is regal imagery typical of gods and kings. And the, the hem or the skirt of his robe fills the temple. So, you know, this is. So it's a, it's imagined. We might think of heaven immediately, but it's a vision, kind of a temple space and it's enormous. Right. So the first thing to know is God is very, very big. And we'll get to the seraphim in a moment. But how might that reflect other cultural, you know, how do you read that? [00:04:42] Speaker B: Yeah. So we have archaeological finds of Assyrian temples. We're not sure whether we have the one that matches exactly this time, but we have one that probably is 50 years earlier, so likely to have similar kind of religious influences. And you'll have a outer court and inner court of kind of what we're seeing in this narrative. And when a noble or ambassador comes from that vassal state and visits with the king, they get shown around by one of the court attendants and you'll have the architectural release telling a story, much like how stained glass tells stories in a lot of our churches of this is the key things you need to know about why Assyria has the divine right to take your taxes, basically. And so you've got this narrative and it's all glitz and glamour, designed to leave a strong influence on these ambassadors so that when they go back they can kind of tell this story and they tell the story that Assyria wants them to. [00:05:52] Speaker A: Yeah. But here I think we might have then an inversion of, of that. Right. So we've got now the God of Israel imagined very much in the way that some of these reliefs and we do have some that archaeological Archaeologists have uncovered where, you know, the feet of the gods are enormous. So the whole point is these are. These are bigger than you can imagine. And they'd be protected by warriors or animalistic creatures and other things which we're going to see in this text. The seraphim here. I love the seraphim, but please don't imagine sweet little white, fluffy angels. One way to translate this word. So seraphim is just a transliteration of the Hebrew. So seraph. And the im is. Is the plural. So seraphs are snakes or fiery snakes. Seraph also, in its verbal form, means to burn something. So one way to translate this would be that flying fiery snakes were stationed around him. This is a terrifying image. They've got six wings. They're covering very parts of their body. Some of the scholarship I read suggests that part of what they might be covering is themselves, because God is so terrifying. [00:07:07] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's where one of the key points of satire here is. So I think this text is probably echoing a narrative that has come back from Assyria by an ambassador. And the prophet's going, nah, we got to put a different spin on this. And one of the key changes we see here, verse against the release of these Assyrian equivalent of the seraphim is the Assyrian seraphim are holding buckets. And what they think is going on here is the attendants in the Assyrian court purify the king. So the ambassador comes in and defiles the king. So the king needs to be purified. Isaiah goes, no, that's not the case. God cannot be defiled by human hands. [00:07:57] Speaker A: God is holy. [00:07:58] Speaker B: And so holiness emanates from the throne. And Yahweh is so much more holy than any Assyrian God or any Assyrian king. And he's so holy that the seraphim. So these otherworldly beings are covering their eyes, they're covering their bodies, they're covering their feet. And Isaiah comes into this scene and is, I'm unclean. [00:08:28] Speaker A: Yes. So, and we're going to see this a little bit in various ways in all three of our readings today, this response to encountering the divine, even though the divine will appear in very different guises and recognizing there's something profoundly holy other about the divine is to become aware of one's own sinfulness or uncleanliness. And I don't want to necessarily conflate those two things. We need to be really careful here. But Isaiah's response to all of this and to this kind of cry of the creatures that the threefold holy is God. Right. And God is called here the Lord of armies, the Lord of hosts. So NRSV has hosts. I think we need to remember when we see the word hosts, it's actually referring to the Lord of the armies. So it's a claim of power and, and their voices kind of shake the pillars. And Isaiah's response is to. To despair, woe to me, I am undone. Or quite literally, this can mean woe to me. I'm struck dumb. I have nothing to say, nothing to contribute. Which is kind of a bit ironic as well. Right. In the face of this holiness. [00:09:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And in this case, we have Isaiah saying, my lips are unclean. And it's an easy kind of popular preaching analogy of speech and all of that kind of thing, but we're not really sure. Like, this is the only time we have this notion of lips being cleansed in biblical canon. [00:09:57] Speaker A: Quite unusual. [00:09:58] Speaker B: Which probably implies it's direct historical context. Like, I think also, like, if you're reading this in the nrsv, it's worth also going and finding a translation that puts the whole thing in rhythmic, pro. Rhythmic. This is, this is, this has meter to it. It's designed to be something that's repeated in an oral tradition. [00:10:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:10:20] Speaker B: This is messaging. [00:10:21] Speaker A: Yep. And I would read the lips. I mean, this whole scene is highly symbolic. Right. So we will get similar kinds of statements by other prophets like Jeremiah, around the unworthiness for the task, but here it's imagined around images of unclean lips, which we associate with speech and therefore, and purifying fire, so that the, the handing of the coal from these seraphim, these fiery creatures. I mean, this is. Again, let's not imagine this as some polite kind of. I'm just like burning coal on your lips is a horrible, painful act of purifying and fire purifiers. Right. But it's also deadly. And, you know, I guess I want to say let's not domesticate this scene. There is a lot of, you know, highly symbolic and quite terrifying imagery really going on here. [00:11:16] Speaker B: And it's also not just the prophet who is implicated as unclean lips, it's his whole people. So there's something. Something that is. There is not there on his own kind of calling. This is not just about Isaiah's calling, it's about the positioning of the people of Judah at this point in time. [00:11:37] Speaker A: Yeah. So we shouldn't read this too individualistically as just about Isaiah's call. And. Yeah, yeah. [00:11:43] Speaker B: Which is. Which is one of the reasons why we challenge this notion of it being a call the other one, of course, is it's not at the start of the book. [00:11:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Yes. Where we normally get the prophetic call narratives at the beginning of a. Yep. Yeah. And I mean in this season of epiphany too, the lectionary and the shape of the year is drawing our attention to thinking about how God appears. I mean, this begs so many questions for me. And we haven't even got to the additional verses, but our response to how do we recognize the holiness of God? What when we do have this sense of the divine or, you know, these moments of recognizing the divine, which epiphany is about, what does that do to us in terms of understanding our place before God? And it's not always this. Right. Sometimes we have experiences of the divine that are profoundly comforting, that are profoundly affirming. But here we have a story of being aware of God's, God's holiness, making one aware of one's own sort of insufficiency in the face of that. [00:12:49] Speaker B: And I think also this text context as political satire is also something we should be mindful of in our current context. Like this is a text in a time where you didn't have broadcast media. We're recording this a day after the presidential inauguration. We've got in our newsfeed images of the Capitol rotunda that are doing similar political messaging of state, power, authority, democracy, liberty, whatever you want to hear in those kind of images. This is the 7th century BC equivalent. [00:13:24] Speaker A: Yes. [00:13:25] Speaker B: And it doesn't have to be the state images. We have this in our kind of capitalist things like shopping centers do this. You walk into the shopping center, high ceiling, lots of light, pressurized, air conditioned rooms designed to draw us in. And I think this is an opportunity for us in our preaching to kind of call out those alternate messages of who's. Who's divine here. [00:13:51] Speaker A: Yes, yeah. And, and the claims to power. And, and also in that sense where our eyes get drawn, we can, we can be seduced into certain kinds of power or marvel at it. And yeah, this is, this is undoing in its context, undoing, as you say, the political claims of the Assyrians about whose God is truly God and where one's allegiance should lie. And you know, how, how as preachers we think about doing similar work in our own contexts, I think is really important. [00:14:24] Speaker B: We need to run onto the other text. But I think it's worth just noting that whole nine to 13, that's a bit. [00:14:30] Speaker A: Yes. [00:14:30] Speaker B: Optional. This isn't a kind of God is going to go raise the people. This is if you continue in this whole thing of falling limit to the Assyrian thing and paying your taxes to Assyrian rather than trusting yeah way Yahweh, this is the end result that's going to happen. Assyria will raise you. [00:14:50] Speaker A: Yeah. So this is, this is. And we'll perhaps circle back to this at the end because I think if we do think of these as responses to God and you know, not a call story, but part of those responses might be about how you follow and speak the words of God. Here. The words being commissioned to speak are not happy good news stories. It's pointing out consequences of. Yeah, move on. So Luke chapter 5, verses 1 to 11, which we should say up front. We only find this version or this particular story and set of things in Luke's Gospel. So some of it might seem familiar in that Matthew and Mark have stories about Peter and James and John leaving their boats and following Jesus, which is where this one ends up. John Gospel does something quite different with the calls. But this, this story that imagines Jesus teaching in a boat and then this miraculous catch of fish followed by a call to follow Jesus, we're going to see that there are several parts of this that are very Lucan and doing some quite different kinds of things. [00:16:04] Speaker B: And this sits in the Lucan narrative frame. Previously we've had Jesus go to Nazareth, preach in the synagogue, and they've gone, nah, we don't like this guy. And I've tried to throw him off a cliff. He's then gone, okay, I'm going to go elsewhere. He goes around to Galilee. He's does there's a healing narrative at Peter's mother. And then you've got the demoniacs who start proclaiming that Jesus is the son of God. [00:16:31] Speaker A: Yep. [00:16:32] Speaker B: So you've got the expected place where the epiphany should happen. Doesn't happen. So in his hometown he's rejected. The demons are proclaiming. And then he goes. And right before this passage, Jesus is preaching in the synagogues, but nothing happens there. So he comes to this situation on the side of the lake. [00:16:54] Speaker A: Yep. And. And the thing that strikes me, and of course, you know, Luke is shaping the narrative according to the story he wants to tell. So I'm always, you know, it's not that there's no historical kernel to it, but you know, Luke is telling a story, but we. Jesus hasn't called disciples at this point, and yet he's presented as having this massive following. So our scene opens with him. He's in this new place. He's standing by the lake or the sea and the crowd is pressing in on him so much that he gets into a boat and pushes off a bit from the shore and teaches from there. So we've got this scene of sort of kind of massive group recognition or something is drawing people to Jesus, even if they don't know quite what. And he. And it primarily starts as a teaching scene, and it's only when he finishes teaching that we get this. He talks to Simon, whose boat it seems to be, go out to deep water and. And this kind of catch. And Simon's answer is curious here, I think, because, you know, he. He basically acknowledges Jesus as master or Lord, we've worked all night. We've done nothing but, okay, if you say it, we'll do it. So it's almost a creeping epiphany for me in that there's already recognition that Jesus is something special because of his teaching. And now we're going to get the Big bang mirror, miraculous catch of too. [00:18:19] Speaker B: Many fish, which I think is also this kind of thing of Jesus isn't just a good teacher. Like, that's just kind of taken as granted here. His teachings drawing clouds. Yeah. So this is like, it's more than a teacher. And we don't come into what that more is in the rest of this passage. [00:18:37] Speaker A: So if we think of. I don't know what. What you think is being revealed here, Adrian. Like, if this miracle, if we want to call it that, is. Is sort of symbolizing something, you know, you've got massive abundance that Jesus can provide. So many fish that nets are breaking and boats are sinking, which, if you actually think of nets breaking and boat sinking is maybe not a blessing. Like, it's. It's abundant, but it's not easy. But again, the response to it is to recognize Jesus as something kind of holy. And Simon Peter says that famous thing about, you know, go away, depart from me, Lord, I'm a sinful man. What do you make of this sort of. If this isn't. If we think of this as an epiphany of Jesus, what's being. [00:19:22] Speaker B: Yeah, look, I think it's interesting that Jesus encounters these fishermen at their jobs, and for whatever reason, they've done a pretty bad job that night. It would be. I think it'd be pretty unusual for trained fishermen to have a completely unsuccessful night. [00:19:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:19:39] Speaker B: And so, for whatever reason, they're despondent. Like, imagine cleaning up all your fishing gear in the morning after a night on them, and you've got nothing to take home, and that's their livelihood. [00:19:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:53] Speaker B: And then this kind of carpenter, stonemason from Nazareth says, try fishing a different way in the middle of the day. Like these are nets that. The kind of like fishing theory here is you fish with these types of nets at night because during the day the fish can see them. [00:20:12] Speaker A: Yeah. So I mean, I do think Luke is such a clever storyteller because we're getting these massive inversions and comparisons. Right. So we've gone from them, like you say, the implausibility of them catching absolutely nothing. But that's the language use it Luke uses. So we go from nothing to so much it's almost a problem. And then when we get to the end of the passage, we're going to go actually back to nothing. But the world has changed. We'll get to that in a moment. So we have, you know, in here is the kind of call of, of Peter, James and John. And I'm fascinated in. In Luke's version we get this little line in verse 10, do not be afraid. From now on you'll be catching people. So there's something about the Jesus revealed that can so kind of flip the normal patterns of work and catching fish and what expected that they are actually afraid. Some. This, this guy's beyond any kind of normal understanding. Yeah. [00:21:14] Speaker B: Which although like what have, what's Peter noticed here? Like nothing has happened in this story in, on the scale we've just come from this passage in Isaiah where you've got these absolutely divine sovereign thing of the whole host of heaven almost in this kind of encounter. And here we have. They just happen to catch a bunch of fish during the day. And here for the first time we have Simon Peter, named as Peter, and he abandons his, his colleagues like the worst colleague ever. Right here. They're dealing with the busiest five minutes. [00:21:57] Speaker A: Of their career trying to save the boats. [00:22:00] Speaker B: And Simon Peters off having this moment with Jesus. [00:22:03] Speaker A: Oh, it's nice he's having a moment. [00:22:06] Speaker B: But I think it's. There's something in this kind of the quotidian, the everyday occurrence that is a very different epiphany. [00:22:16] Speaker A: Yes. [00:22:17] Speaker B: Jesus encounters humanity in a very different way to the divine encounters we see in the Hebrew Bible. [00:22:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think if we, if we're comparing this or putting this alongside Isaiah, and maybe one preaching theme is to think about the way that we encounter God. We've got Isaiah, you know, God in a temple, typically very, very big, you know, all the things we associate with that kind of, you know, exposure to the divine. Here, here Jesus as God is breaking into ordinary Working life amongst ordinary people who don't really know who he is. And yet in the midst of these very human everyday things like catching food to feed your family and your business, God is somehow revealed in a way that's actually quite disruptive. [00:23:12] Speaker B: And then you have this irony in this call of, hey, I can support all of your business needs right here. [00:23:19] Speaker A: Yep. [00:23:20] Speaker B: But then when they do choose to follow Jesus, they leave this entire massive catch or appear to like the texture says they left everything. And the implication is they leave the boats, their colleagues, the catch. Yeah, like they don't. Like the capitalist mindset goes, we're going to go and sell all this stuff. We can go take a holiday for a few months. They don't even seem to do that to take this holiday. [00:23:46] Speaker A: No, they don't. So Luke adds this little word we do not find in any other the gospel stories that talk about, you know, them leaving their nets and following Jesus. He adds this panter, everything, they left everything. So again, this narrative arc takes us from they caught absolutely nothing to they caught so much they didn't know what to do with it. And then they'll leave again with absolutely nothing except they're now following Jesus. And it's almost like a let's wait and see what, what happens now. [00:24:14] Speaker B: Yeah. And this is, this is worth bookmarking in the context of us going through Luke this year. That Luke has a whole bunch of stuff about worldly possessions, wealth, and the message here seems to be, as long as it doesn't capture you, your needs being met is not a bad thing. [00:24:33] Speaker A: No, no, Luke will do lots with wealth and I don't think it's these anti wealth, but he's anti wealth that is not being shared and used for the good. I assume these fish were probably not wasted in an ancient world where people often lived pretty hand to mouth. Maybe others took the fish and everyone had a lot to eat that day and made a bit of money. But there is also. Yeah, again, none of these are easy stories. We can read them as great stories. But when I think about, like, what is being asked of us as readers, if we're being asked to emulate the disciples here, to walk away from wealth, prosperity, you know, the most successful day of work you've had for a very long time and leave everything. It's a pretty massive ask. If you'd like to know more about by the well or any of our hosts, please visit bythewell.com au1 Corinthians 15:1 11. Here Paul's in a beginning of A famous chapter where Paul, really. Where he's going with the argument is to talk about the resurrection and why it's absolutely important and significant in life of faith to believe in an actual bodily resurrection of Christ. But we won't get there. That's next week. What do you notice in this reading, Adrian? [00:26:10] Speaker B: Well, I think in. In this whole context of epiphany, Paul's encounter is very different. I was told by. Yes, it's. And that's more our positioning. We encounter the risen Christ through the word of the church. [00:26:27] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. To what's been told to us, what's handed on to us. Yep. So in. In a sense, Paul here. Yeah. Offers a more realistic model for the Christians that would follow. And we need to note that appearance and. And sort of seeing or experiencing Jesus is. Is going to be an absolutely pivotal claim. But if we can go back a bit, what. One of the sort of little interesting historical things I think that could also be a whole sermon is if you trace the. That's in verses three to about six. What we have here is evidence of very early. And remember first Corinthians, written before the Gospels, probably in the 50s, very early creedal formula or statements that would appear later in various forms in the Apostolic and Nicene Creeds. So absolutely core to the expression of early Christianity. And in Greek, it's the hotties. So if we get rid of all the superfluous words, we've got a claim from Paul that the gospel that he handed on is that Christ died, that he was buried, that he was raised, and that he appeared. So people witnessed the resurrection. [00:27:38] Speaker B: And this is all in accordance with the Scriptures. [00:27:40] Speaker A: Yes. And so there's additional words. You could unpack each of those. What does it mean to die on behalf of our sins? You know, what does it mean that it's in accordance as Scriptures. But, you know, that's your basic framing. Died, buried, raised, appeared. And the later creeds will pick up, particularly on the died, buried, raised. They probably take the appeared for granted, given that Christianity is now spread. [00:28:04] Speaker B: And Paul uses this in this chapter as. This is the foundation of his argument. You guys already believe this. [00:28:10] Speaker A: Yes. [00:28:11] Speaker B: And so that's just the foundation of this whole debate about what resurrection form looks like. But the key thing here is you believe that Jesus was the one who died, was buried, and raised again on the third day. [00:28:25] Speaker A: Yep. This is our common shared belief. Yep. No matter what other disputes have been going on in First Corinthians. The other thing I want to point out here that I think is Quite fascinating is this language of appearance. He will catalog in quite a lot of detail that Jesus appeared to Kephas or Peter, then the 12, then 500 other witnesses, some of whom are still alive. So he's really building a case of proofs here. Then James, then all the apostles, and then. And we get this bizarre sentence in verse eight to one, untimely born. And the word he uses here is this echotrauma word. It literally means to one premature, premature, aborted, miscarried, still, like, it's. It's not necessarily a happy word. It's. It's like one almost ejected from the womb prematurely and in not a good way. And that's how he talks about himself. [00:29:21] Speaker B: Which is a play on Paul's name, which means the short little one. [00:29:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Yes. So. And. And we get very humble Paul here, you know, the least of the apostles unfit to be called an apostle. So he's owning up to his role in persecuting the church. So I think there's two really important things here. One is that the appearance he talks about Christ appearing to me is actually very different to all those others. So he puts himself in a line. But the other appearances, at least according to the Gospels and Acts, were actual appearances of the risen Jesus on earth. Paul has a vision. Right. So his experience of the appearance of Jesus is through vision, not through sort of earthly encounter. But I think the other real emphasis is here is that even though he is literally the least fit person, he, by grace, also gets to encounter God through Jesus. [00:30:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:17] Speaker A: So in the last one minute, what would you preach this week, or what theme emerges for you, Adrian? [00:30:24] Speaker B: I think I would preach encounter with God is otherworldly and kind of puts kind of worldly power, worldly status in dim relief and critique other competing interests in our lives against those kind of claims of divine meeting needs. [00:30:47] Speaker A: And I think I would maybe put the emphasis on how we respond to an encounter with God. These are obviously not mutually exclusive, but what does it mean to confront one's own unworthiness? And the flip side of that is grace. And the fact that despite our unworthiness, we are still called to participate in this great adventure with God. So. And we've got some interesting things to play with in Paul and Isaiah and the disciples in Luke. Thanks for being with us, Adrian. [00:31:19] Speaker B: Great to be here. [00:31:23] Speaker A: By the well is brought to you by Pilgrim Theological College and the Uniting Church in Australia. It's produced by Adrienne Jackson. Thanks for listening.