Soli Deo
Gloria
What
if Jesus had listened to Simon Peter?
What if, when Peter had said, Depart
from me Lord, for I am a sinful man, Jesus had replied, You
know, Simon, you’re right.
You are a sinful man.
You’ve not loved God with your whole heart.
You’ve not loved your neighbor as yourself.
In fact, you’ve loved yourself far more than you’ve
loved God or your neighbor.
Your heart is like a serpent’s den, swarming with lust
and jealousy, spite and idolatry.
You aren’t fit for my company, Simon.
I will depart from you, just like you asked.
And be sure that I won’t come back until you clean up
your life and straighten yourself out.
Surely,
our Lord would have been completely justified if He had said
those things to Simon Peter. But where would Simon have been if
Jesus had told him that? The
phrase, up the creek
without a paddle, comes to mind.
For if our Lord had taken Simon at his word, if He had
abandoned Simon because of his sin, there would have been no
hope, no help, for Simon at all.
Proverbs 20.9 asks, Who
can say, “I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my
sin”? The
answer, of course, is no one.
Not Simon Peter. Not
you. Not me.
So if Jesus had told Simon, Clean
up your act first, and then we’ll talk, He would have been
telling him to do the impossible.
He would have been condemning him to die in his sin.
But
as today’s Gospel showed us, our Lord did not turn away from
Simon in disgust. How
could He who came to be the atoning sacrifice for the sins of
the world respond to sinners with aversion?
How could He who came in the flesh to be our peace with
God refuse to make peace with a sinner?
How could He who sat at table with tax collectors and
other sinners have turned His back on a sinner who was in great
despair?
Jesus
didn’t turn away from Simon as from something filthy and
unclean. He didn’t
tell Simon that once he’d progressed to a certain level of
sanctity then, and only then, they could have fellowship with
one another. No.
Jesus did something entirely different.
He absolved Simon Peter.
He forgave him his sin.
Romans
5.8 says, God
demonstrates His own love for us in that, while we were still
sinners, Christ died for us.
Jesus didn’t wait until our fallen, corrupt
race had improved to the point where we were worth dying for.
He did it while we were still sinners.
He did it when all we deserved was to be tossed like
garbage into the cosmic landfill of the wrath of God.
Jesus died on the Cross for the Charles Mansons and the
Adolf Hitlers and the Osama bin Ladens.
He died for the Janet Jacksons and the Justin Timberlakes.
He died for you and He died for me.
And He did it while we were still sinners.
And what Jesus did for Simon Peter He does for us too.
He absolves us. He
forgives our sin.
Look
at Simon Peter, brash, self-confident fisherman that he was.
He knew the ins and outs of earning a living from the
waters of the
Lake
of
Gennesaret
. He knew the best
time of day to catch fish and the best places to let down the
nets for a good catch. So
after Jesus used Simon’s boat as a floating pulpit, and told
him to put out into deep water for a catch, Simon was, to say
the least, skeptical. Wrong
time of day, wrong depth of water.
You may be a good
preacher, Master, but you don’t know fishing. We’ve
worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything.
Nevertheless, at Your word, I will let down the nets.
Here’s
an exercise in futility, Simon may have thought.
The fish won’t be
there. We’ll have
to clean the nets again. We’ll
have wasted all this time that could have been spent doing
something more profitable. What’s
the point?
Simon,
Simon, the point is this. That’s
no mere Man who asked to use your boat so He could preach to the
crowds who were pressing upon Him, eager to hear the Word of
God. That’s not an
ordinary mortal who bid you put out into deep water and let down
the nets. No, Simon,
this is the Son of the living God.
This is the Second Person of the Godhead become flesh.
This is the One who created the heavens and the earth,
the One who made the Lake of Gennesaret and the wood of the
trees from which your boat was made.
This is the One who made the fish you labor to catch and
who also made you. This
is the One at whose command the planets journey in their
courses, and the stars blaze forth with light in the depths of
the heavens. This is
the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, the Ancient of Days.
And He’s in the boat with you, Simon, and because of
Him you will see a wonder you never expected to see.
It
was a catch of fish unlike any other.
There were so many fish the nets were beginning to break.
There were so many fish that one boat couldn’t hold
them all; they had to signal for a second boat, and even then
the boats were so full of fish that they both began to sink.
And Simon saw it and he knew that such things don’t
happen in the ordinary course of events.
And he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, Depart from me, Lord, for I am a
sinful man.
There
in Jesus’ presence, it all came crowding in upon Simon, all
the careless curses and profanities he had ever uttered, all the
times he had coveted what belonged to someone else, all the
occasions he had overcharged for his fish in the marketplace,
all his failures to give due attention to the Word of God in the
synagogue. It all
came crowding in upon Simon, every sin an accusing finger
pointing him out as exactly what he confessed himself to be: a sinful man.
A man full of sin, full of guilt, death, and
condemnation. A man
full of fear and shame, in the presence of a Man who is the Lord
Almighty, the One whom the seraphim laud and magnify as holy,
holy, holy.
Is
it any wonder that Simon, so aware of his failures before God,
so aware of the sin which made him unclean in God’s eyes,
should plead with Jesus, Depart from me, Lord? Simon’s
experience was like Isaiah’s, who in the year that King Uzziah died,
saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and lifted up, and the
train of His robe filled the temple.
Seeing the vision, Isaiah cried out, Woe
is me, for I am ruined. Because
I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of
unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.
And Simon Peter, seeing that great catch of fish,
cried out in a similar manner, Depart
from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.
In the presence of God, Isaiah and Simon each
became aware of their sin, their uncleanness, the complete
inadequacy of their attempts to do good and thus recommend
themselves to a holy and righteous God.
And
so it is with you and me.
We don’t have to be spectacular sinners to earn for
ourselves the wrath of God.
We earn that wrath because of what we are, fallen
creatures who are by nature sinful and unclean.
We earn that wrath by the minor sins we commit every day
with scarcely a thought of, Oh,
I really shouldn’t do this.
We earn it by our lies and half-truths, by our
professions of faithfulness to God when our hearts are sometimes
far from Him. We
earn it by our failures in the home and on the job and here at
church. And if we
only knew it, if we could only see it, we would cry out with
Isaiah, Woe is me! I am ruined!
And we would cry out with Simon Peter, Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!
But
Isaiah was not ruined. His
sin was atoned for; he was absolved, forgiven, his guilt taken
away, by a live coal from the altar of God which touched his
lips. And our Lord
Jesus Christ did not depart from Simon, for Simon too was
absolved. Fear
not, Jesus told him.
Fear
not! The Scripture says that fear
has to do with punishment.
Kneeling
there at the very knees of God made Man, Simon feared punishment
for his sins. But
the One at whose knees he knelt was the One who would take
Simon’s place under the wrath of God when He went to the Cross
to die for the sins of the world.
Jesus would take the punishment we sinners deserve.
There
on the Cross, Jesus Christ, the Holy One of Israel, would become
the “sin-full
man” in the place of sinners everywhere.
Our gracious Lord would become full of Isaiah’s sins,
and Simon Peter’s sins, and Judas’ sins, and Charles
Manson’s, and Adolf Hitler’s, and Osama bin Laden’s, and
your sins and my sins. All
that load of sin and guilt would be taken away from us sinners
and imputed to Jesus, because that’s His work as the Lamb of
God who takes away the sin of the world.
Jesus came for sinners – not to condemn them, but to
save them by His death and resurrection.
He came for sinners, not to cast them into hell, but to
dwell among them in love and mercy and grace.
And
so He dwells among us today in His Word and Sacraments.
He dwells among us when I proclaim His Gospel to you, the
Good News of salvation by which you are forgiven and saved.
He dwells among us in the declaration that as a called
and ordained servant of the Word I forgive you your sins, for
the sake of His suffering and death.
He dwells among us, and gives us from the Altar of God
His very Body and Blood to eat and drink for the remission of
all our sins. See, this has touched your lips;
your guilt is taken away, your sin atoned for.
Fear
not! Jesus does not
depart from you because of your sin.
Take comfort and be of good cheer, you who are weary and
heavy-laden beneath the burden of your sin. You are baptized.
You’ve been united to the Triune God as a member of His
family. And so He
bids you to repent and confess your sins. He absolves you; He
restores you to fellowship with Himself.
He did it for Isaiah.
He did it for Simon Peter, despite his three-fold denial
that he even knew Jesus. He
does it for you and me and for all who look in faith to Him as
their Savior. You
are forgiven, for Jesus’ sake.
The
holy Christian Church is the community of those who trust in
Jesus alone for the forgiveness of their sin, and who find that
forgiveness in His Word and Sacrament.
That’s why the Church is holy – only because of
Jesus. And so
clothed in the righteousness of her Savior, the Church goes
forth, doing the work her Lord has given her to do, preaching
and baptizing and absolving sins and celebrating the Sacrament.
And doing these things, she catches in her nets men,
women, and children, from every nation, tribe and tongue, so
that they too might be with Jesus and know the joy and peace of
His forgiveness.
Our
Lord Jesus Christ came for sinners.
He who died and was raised again comes to you with
forgiveness, love and mercy.
He comes to you in Word and Sacrament to cleanse you of
the guilt and stain of sin.
And He will never, ever depart from you. He
came for you.
In Nomine Patris. . .
