Standing in the Presence of the Transcendent

Homiiy for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

In the first reading for this Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, we read of a vision or dream of Isaiah the prophet. In his vision he is transported to heaven where he sees the Lord God seated on a throne. His reaction to this is predictable because the Israelites believed that no man could look upon God and live. Isaiah exclaims: “Woe is me; I am doomed. I am a man of unclean lips living among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” He immediately recognizes that he stands before something completely different or other than he. He stands before the transcendent God of Israel.

In the second reading from the First Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul is teaching the members of this community the basics of the Christian faith. In the course of this teaching, he speaks of how the Lord Jesus, after his resurrection from the dead, appeared to the various apostles and disciples he had commissioned during his life. He then proceeds to tell us what has happened to him: “Last of all, as to one born abnormally, he appeared to me. For I am the least of the apostles, not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” Like Isaiah, St. Paul recognizes that he has been singularly recognized through a vision of the glorified body of Jesus.

The Gospel text for today taken from the Gospel of Saint Luke gives us an elongated version of the call of the first four apostles: Peter, Andrew, James, and John. In the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, Jesus simply approaches them on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and calls them to follow him. However, St. Luke’s version of this call is preceded by one of the more astounding miracles of Jesus. Because he is being pressed by the crowd that has gathered to hear him, Jesus gets into Peter’s boat without an invitation and proceeds to continue teaching the crowd on the shore. Obviously, Peter also hears this rather remarkable Rabbi as he preaches. When Jesus asks him to put out into deep water and to lower his nets for a catch, Peter says: “"Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets." The nets are filled with so many fish that the nets are on the brink of tearing, and the catch of fish threatens to sink the boats. At that point, Peter realizes that he is in the presence of something much greater than he is. Like Isaiah and Paul, he utters some astonishing words: “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”

Human encounter with the transcendent God has always been difficult. The material world is shaken by the transcendent God. This God is totally other. Nothing in our universe comes close to the reality of a God who is not dependent upon our material reality. Yet it is this transcendent God of which we have lost cognizance. We have become so wrapped up in our own desires, in our own will, in our possessions, and in our opinions that we are unable to fathom the existence of something outside of our experience. In the case of Isaiah, Paul, and Peter, their experience of God evokes from them statements that they have not even imagined.

The transcendent responds to these statements with mercy and kindness. Isaiah’s unclean lips are purified after which God sends him to be his prophet. St. Paul’s determination to persecute those who have come to accept Jesus withers, and he goes on to become the most important preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Peter’s confession of being a sinful man is ignored as Jesus enlists him as an instrument through which Jesus will draw others. Eventually, this sinful man will become the rock on which Jesus will build his Church. Each of these men reacts to the transcendent with humility and awe.

However, in our postmodern world we have lost the ability to stand in awe of a God who is wholly out of our sway. In an unrestrained celebration of choice, the human will is worshiped as the ultimate reality. There is no standard of truth and goodness outside of us, before which our wills must bow. We make the truth. We concoct what is good. And “nobody has any right to tell me what to do.” The human will has no duty, no responsibility, no obedience to any authority other than itself.

We think we celebrate openness: but it is an openness only to the projections of our own lips and minds. Rarely are we open to the wholly other—some other that transcends the mirror images of our ego, class, ideology, nation, or any other pet particularity. This kind of openness is precisely not to transcendence. It is a hankering after our own constructions, those effigies we feel comfortable with, those icons that make us feel secure, those ego-clones that confirm our self-importance.

True transcendence is something else altogether. Isaiah knew he was in the presence of some reality higher and loftier than any human or earthly throne. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. All the earth is filled with God’s glory.” Isaiah’s earthly house shook and billowed with smoke.

Paul’s will to destroy the Christian community is completely eradicated by his experience of the transcendent God. He no longer follows his own choices but gives himself as a slave to the Gospel. No man willingly enters into a state of slavery, but Paul recognizes that his choices and his ego no longer count for anything.

The quality of this transcendent experience is uncannily matched in Luke’s Gospel story of the great fish catch. After preaching to the disciples and the crowds, Jesus tells Simon to “put out into deep water and lower the nets.” Simon’s resistance is due to the fact that he and his fellows, for all of their own efforts fishing through the night, have caught nothing. Obviously, there is nothing out there. “But if you say so, I will lower the nets.” Herein is the openness of Peter despite the meager evidence of his experience, to a will other than his own. And this brought such a great, unexpected catch that even the apostles’ resources were at the breaking point. Their fishing nets nearly ripped apart. They caught more than their craft could hold. Their boats almost sank. In the presence of this superb show of power beyond human reckoning, Peter adores the awesome mystery he has witnessed and is suddenly conscious of his sinfulness just as Isaiah did. “Leave me, Lord; I am a sinful man.”

The moment we recognize our inadequacy, our sin, our smallness before the greatness of the transcendent God, we are capable of truly being called out of ourselves. Christ’s manifestation of transcendent power was not for the sake of stirring human anxiety and fear. Christ wants to call us to a life mission far beyond the expectations of our constricted categories.

Only when we recognize God as both transcendent and immanent, both beyond our imaginations and yet also human, will we ever be what we are called to be. As long as we continue to hold onto our own desires, our own ego-centered, and – dare I say it – our desire to control the world around us, we will continue to flounder, to refuse to obey God’s law and God’s will. Each day, as we pray the Lord’s prayer, we ask that God’s will be done both in heaven and on earth. Yet this will never happen until we are able to embrace God’s transcendence, God’s will, and God’s commandments. Jesus has given us an example of this way of life, and it must become our way of life or we are doomed not only in our present moment but also in the next life.