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5th Sunday of Ordinary Time C
February 7, 2016
Reading I: Isaiah 6:1-2a, 3-8
Responsorial Psalm 138:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 7-8
Reading II: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 or 15:3-8, 11
Gospel: Luke 5:1-11
I, the Lord of sea and sky,
I have heard My people cry.
All who dwell in dark and sin,
My hand will save.
I who made the stars of night,
I will make their darkness bright.
Who will bear My light to them?
Whom shall I send?
Here I am Lord, Is it I Lord?
I have heard You calling in the night.
I will go Lord, if You lead me.
I will hold Your people in my heart.
I, the Lord of snow and rain,
I have born my peoples pain.
I have wept for love of them, They turn away.
I will break their hearts of stone,
Give them hearts for love alone.
I will speak My word to them,
Whom shall I send?
Here I am Lord, Is it I Lord?
I have heard You calling in the night.
I will go Lord, if You lead me.
I will hold Your people in my heart.
I, the Lord of wind and flame,
I will tend the poor and lame.
I will set a feast for them,
My hand will save
Finest bread I will provide,
Till their hearts be satisfied.
I will give My life to them,
Whom shall I send?
Here I am Lord, Is it I Lord?
I have heard You calling in the night.
I will go Lord, if You lead me.
I will hold Your people in my heart.
http://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-here-i-am-lord
WHOM SHALL I SEND?
The signs in these readings are vivid and disturbing. A temple that fills with cloud as manifestation of the deity, of the impenetrable otherness of the deity, of the holiness of the deity. Isaiah recognising himself as 'impure' when he finds himself confronted by the holiness of Him Who Is. And so on.
We know them well, these signs and these calls to enlist men for some mission. But it is well to remember that they are signs. They are all signs, pointers to something, signs that need to be read. Some are signs in a specialist language and they need to be interpreted. Some are limited by their time and have to be expanded in our time: no longer is it first and only men.
Even Jesus is a sign, the "sacrament" to which all other signs and sacraments refer. Isaiah was called and sent on a mission. Peter and John and James and Andrew were called and sent on their mission. Paul was called and sent on his mission. Jesus was called, and commissioned by the Spirit at the hands of his cousin John when he showed up among the crowds at the river. These people were called by God and sent on their different missions: that is the historic fact. As signs these facts speak to us, and their message is that everyone is called, and sent, to others.
There's a wonderful modern hymn, “Here I Am, Lord” (1981) by Daniel Schutte S.J., with a haunting melody and a powerful challenge to those who dare to sing it: 'Whom shall I send?' 'Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord? I heard you calling in the night.'
Sung in church this hymn involves everyone in the call and in offering themselves to be sent. It also raises the question, why should God send anyone, as if the One who made the sea and sky would need helpers. We cannot really say God needed the people that were called and sent out. The need is all on our side. The sign is not written in divine language of God's need, but in human language spelling out our need.
We need the prophets, the apostles, the teachers, the healers. We need people to teach us and inspire us, to heal us and help us work out how to live our lives.
Why? Can't we just listen to the voice of God in our hearts? Yes, we can and we must. But somehow history shows that it doesn't work that way. Nature, the way we are made, clearly demands that children be given instruction first, then education as they develop the capacity to put thoughts together, then guidance as they take their place among the adults.
So too in this dimension of life which opens into a conversation with the divine Spirit. Here too people need instruction and education and guidance from other people until they learn how to listen in their hearts to the Spirit, how to grow out of childhood narcissism to adult loving, how to become the joyful singing people who can withstand the things that life throws at them. How, in the end, to become God's children.
The people whose calling we read about are not the only ones called. Their calling is a sign for all of us, for we are all called by the Father to be instructors, educators and guides, not to forget healers. As a result of making so much of the call of the apostles, and of the role they assumed in the early community, the notion has become embedded in our thinking that those who get a special call, those who have a vocation (we even use a special language for them) are the important ones in the community. While some are commissioned to specialist roles, the truth, as the hymn says, is that we are all called and sent to tell people about trust and hope and love, and to teach them and guide them as circumstances allow.
It was always common teaching that the religious and priests were to be a sign to the people. The recent failure of that sign has sent a deep shock through the community, the more so that people had come to rely on it too much as the sign of holiness in the community when at best it was never more than a sign of what might be.
Today the selection of those who might be called to a specialist role in the community is under discussion. Over recent centuries the record shows a strange distortion in how things are done. In early monasticism the ones who came knocking on the door were expected to prove themselves able to leave the world and the pursuit of life's normal goals, and to show that they were ready to take on the disciplined and constricted life of the monastery. With the rise of modern Congregations for nursing or teaching or evangelising, mission has taken priority over call.
In the beginning the monastic life was in itself sufficient sign to draw those who were called, but the new Congregations needed a steady supply of vocations to cope with the expanding works. Active recruitment became part of the agenda. Vocations were canvassed among children taught in the new schools, and special schools were set up as junior training colleges with the intention that a certain number at the end of their school years would apply to join the community. Vocations were canvassed from parish youth groups. In the process the specialist form of community life and mission was presented as an ideal way of the following of Christ, sometimes with ordinary family life being characterised as something less.
There is no doubt that many nuns and brothers and priests have lived fulfilled and happy lives after entering straight from school. However a culture has developed in the church which is not ideal, and in some instances is unhealthy. When everyone, from the oldest to the youngest, has left 'the world' in their teens, there is to put it mildly a lack of awareness of life's realities. In the training of priests separate programs had to be devised for “late vocations”, since mature men did not fit well into the seminary culture.
It is important to note the fact that Jesus chose adults, men with trades and professions, to be his disciples. I believe there is a difference between the way a person who has come to maturity in the world and then responds to the call to take on a specialist role in the community speaks and acts, compared to one who was brought up within the highly specialised life of a monastery or convent. Conviction that has developed in the world is different from conviction that has been absorbed from the environment.
The christian life is essentially a sign of contradiction to the world. Followers of Jesus are called to take risks, to live risky prophetic lives, always prone to getting killed as he was. Our world needs prophets, apostles, teachers, healers.
There is a crying need today for Christians to stand up and shout against blatant political lies, cover ups, gagging the truth, financial profligacy in all levels of govt, taking us to war, human rights abuses, refusal to be accountable...
The evils practised by our governments are so outrageous that people are left speechless. 'This can't be happening,' we think. 'I must have got it wrong.' No! Our parliament does pass laws that "make" human rights violations "legal", as in the recent case of returning a child rape victim to Nauru. Refugees are shipped back to the homeland they were forced by fear to escape from; the people are screwed by taxation to feed government waste; tens of thousands of homeless people incapable of looking after themselves are left sleeping on the streets. The list goes on, in spite of the protests of knowledgeable men and women, professionals and great numbers of ordinary folk.
I think the biggest call for us today is to stand up and speak out against the stream of propaganda flowing from governments and corporations and media manipulators, to be a sign of contradiction, even a voice crying in the wilderness. Truth, honesty, justice and what is right are suppressed, increasingly. Many people no longer know what is right. The power to make law is being used to twist and reprogram the nation's conscience.
The plaintive voice of God's agony is heard across the wilderness:
I have heard my people cry.
Whom shall I send?