It didn’t make sense.  I was given responsibility to do something for which I could not find a logical reason.  It just didn’t make sense.

I had just begun Air Force Officer Training School with twelve other members of my flight.  We had just moved into the Spartan dorm that was to be our home for ninety days of training.  If we survived training, we would be commissioned as brand new second lieutenants.  Our flight shared the floor with members of our senior flight.  We lived in community.  Each one of us had responsibility for some aspect of our community life together.  My job was to clean the laundry room – daily.  At first the directions seemed simple enough.  I was told, “Take the lint out of the laundry room.”  I walked over to the far end of the room where a washer and dryer stood and removed the lint trap from the dryer.  I scooped out the accumulated lint.  “No, No,” the upperclassman said, “All of the lint.”

I learned that I was solely responsible to daily ensure that every surface in the laundry room on my floor, used daily by 30 Officer Trainees was free of dirt, lint, and any other substance that could show up on a white glove including 325 square feet of floor space, a washing machine, a dryer with a lint trap, and a few other laundry related items.  I thought to myself, “Are you kidding me?  Remove all of the lint from the laundry room every single day?”  They were not kidding. 

I quickly learned how to keep a working laundry room free of all “lint.”  Once the floor was swept and the lint trap emptied, I brought out the yard stick and applied two inch masking tape across the length.  Then I got on my knees and taped the entire floor.  This method worked remarkably well until the night an upperclassman threw a load of laundry in the washing machine just before mandatory lights out and finished drying her laundry fifteen minutes before morning inspection.  Other than that incident, I daily passed inspection with flying colors.

Today is the fifth Sunday in the season of Epiphany, the season in which we remember the revelation of God to human beings.  We are presented today with the stories of Isaiah and St Peter and their respective encounters with the living God.  Isaiah lived eight centuries before the birth of Christ.  He was a prophet in Jerusalem .  Our Old Testament lesson tells the story of how God revealed himself to Isaiah and called him to be a prophet.  In a dramatic vision Isaiah found himself in the temple of God .  Surrounding God’s throne, winged heavenly creatures called out saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts.  The whole earth is full of his glory.”  Finding himself in the presence of the living God, Isaiah was overwhelmed.  He keenly felt his unworthiness and his sinfulness.  “Woe is me, I am lost…,” he said.  “I am a man of unclean lips.”  Once a winged heavenly creature touched his mouth with a coal from the altar Isaiah was cleansed and his sin forgiven.  When God said, “Who will go for us?”  Isaiah responded, “Here am I, send me.” 

Cleansed, Isaiah was joined to the life of God and ready to do God’s work.  What God told Isaiah to do next doesn’t make any sense.  He told Isaiah to dull the minds of the people, to stop their ears, to shut their eyes, to prevent them from hearing, seeing, and comprehending and to prevent them from being healed.  These are pretty harsh words.  The people had not kept God’s law and they were about to be destroyed and dispersed.  It was Isaiah’s responsibility, the prophet of God to tell them so.  And yet…God indicated to Isaiah that despite the destruction and dispersion, a remnant of people would remain and new life would spring forth. 

In our Gospel lesson, Peter also encountered God.  Unlike Isaiah to whom God revealed himself in a vision, God revealed himself to Peter in the person of Jesus Christ in a boat at the lakeshore.  Jesus was at the lake teaching the crowds who had come to hear him speak.  Peter let Jesus use his boat to speak to the crowds.  He directed Peter to put down his nets in an area where Peter had previously been unsuccessful catching fish.  When Peter placed his nets where Jesus told him to place them he caught so many fish that the nets began to break and the boats began to sink and Peter began to realize that he was in the presence of God.  Like Isaiah, Peter keenly felt his unworthiness and his sinfulness.  Like Isaiah, Peter joined the life of God and was given work to do, work that on the face of it doesn’t make sense.

Jesus told Peter that from now on, he would be catching people instead on fish.  Catching people?  There is no record in scripture that Peter received any more detail than that before he James, and John left everything and followed Jesus, the Son of God who was crucified, died and was buried for the sins of the world and three days later was raised from the dead.  Peter and the other disciples were witnesses to the Good News and spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout their world.  In so doing, they didn’t always get it right the first time.  They disagreed about things, like whether or not Gentiles had to become Jews in order to become Christians.  God led them by the power of the Holy Spirit poured out upon them at Pentecost and they remained faithful.  Peter, an ordinary fisherman, found himself engaged in the holy work of God, catching people instead of fish. 

Just like Isaiah and St Peter, we who have been joined to the life of the living God in the waters of Baptism have been cleansed, gifted by the Holy Spirit and given responsibility for God’s work and presence in the this world.  Work that sometimes just doesn’t make sense.  Just what is the work of God in the world?  God’s kingdom is being established on earth, the kingdom we pray for every time we pray the prayer our Lord taught us, “…thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  God’s work on earth is holy.  God’s work on earth is about nothing less than raising the dead and bringing life from death.  When we are joined to the life of God we discover that the holy, life-giving work God has called each of us to do, using the gifts each one of us has been given, is often messy, difficult, and dangerous.  Very often, it just doesn’t make sense to us. 

Just because the work we have been given by God doesn’t make sense, or makes us crazy or is messy, difficult or dangerous doesn’t make it any less holy.  After all, God in Christ came to earth as a baby, lived, died and was resurrected after three days for the very purpose of dying on a cross for the life of the world.  Through his shed blood on a cross, this holy work of Jesus, in accordance with the will of God the Father, was messy, difficult, and dangerous and, when it comes right down to it, doesn’t make rational sense.

It doesn’t make rational sense because the love of God does not operate that way.  God in His love will go to extreme measures to seek and save what was lost and to bring life from death -- measures in which we participate in small ways, measures from our perspective that do not always make sense.  The heart of God the Father deeply loves and yearns for the world He created, a world alienated from Him by sin.  God continues to go out into the world seeking that which was lost, seeking to bring the dead back to life, back into a loving relationship with Him and God calls us to join Him.  Joined to the life of God we participate in his work in the world.    

Through his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus destroyed death for us that we might have life with God who dearly loves us.  As we participate in the life of God, we are witnesses that God brings life to the dead.  As a pastor friend of mine said recently, “Sometimes the hardest part is convincing people that they are indeed dead.”  As we live out our lives in this world, we encounter the presence of God in many and various ways.  We encounter God through the embodied actions of family, friend, and stranger, when we gather for worship, and as we celebrate the Eucharist.

Ever since the fourth century, Christians have included a version of the words Isaiah heard during his vision of God in the Sanctus.  During our celebration of the Eucharist in just a little while we will sing together, “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of power and might.  Heaven and Earth are full of your glory…”  As we repeat these words once spoken by the winged heavenly creatures in the presence of Almighty God and His prophet Isaiah, we too are brought into the presence of the living God in Christ, truly present in the bread and wine. 

In God’s presence we are keenfully aware of our smallness compared with His glory.  We can find forgiveness, grace and strength to continue to participate in the life of God in the world – to bring the dead back to life.  This is holy work, messy work, difficult work, dangerous work, and at times work that doesn’t make sense to us.  Just like Peter and the disciples, we won’t always get it right, we will disagree about things.  As we participate in the life of God, as God more fully draws us into His life, the Holy Spirit will lead us into lives of faithful service and we will fully live into the presence of God, share in His holy work, the life of God in the world – nothing less than raising the dead to life.  Amen