Readings for the Day:
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Steve Rogers, before becoming Captain America, was a weak kid. He struggled to stand up to the bullies in his life and though he signed up for the draft in World War II, time and time again he was rejected because of his health.
Along comes Abraham Erskine, inventor of the Super Soldier Serum. He’s looking for a good candidate to test his finished serum on. When he sees Steve Rogers once again trying to sign up for the draft, he immediately calls on him to be part of the experiment.
The night before, Rogers asks Erskine, “Why me?” Erskine tells Rogers about his journey creating the serum, as well as his failures. What he learned is that the serum is best in the hands of someone who knows what it’s like not to have power, someone like Rogers. Ultimately, he chose Rogers because Rogers fits what he’s looking for.
In our readings today, we see the examples of Isaiah and Peter receiving their call. Both were like Steve Rogers, wondering why they were chosen. Both of them worried, when standing near the face of God, about being worthy.
Yet in both cases, God makes Isaiah and Peter worthy because they are the ones God is looking for. Before Isaiah hears the call directly from the voice of God in the temple, an angel, a seraph, touches a coal to the future prophet’s lips, wiping his guilt away. It is this moment that gives Isaiah the courage and strength to answer, “Here am I; send me.”
Simon Peter crosses the lake with Jesus, and seeing the miracle of the load of fishes in his nets where he was not able to catch any before, he knows that this is a man of God before him. Even though Peter tells Jesus to depart from him, for he is a sinful man, Jesus simply responds, “Do not be afraid.” Jesus goes on to give Peter his call, the task Jesus has intended for him, saying that from now on, Peter will be catching not fish, but people.
The call Isaiah and Peter receive in our readings today is not confined to them. We all have a call. We all have something God wants us to do. That task, that call is what Paul mentions to the Corinthians this morning. It is the call to go out and proclaim the Good News that Christ Jesus has died for our sins. In doing so, He has reconciled us to God and brought us back in relationship with our Lord again.
That call is what we answer in Baptism. It is that call that we are celebrating here today.
Our soon-to-be-baptized is young, young enough not to remember this moment later. There may be times in his life that he, like Isaiah and Peter and even Steve Rogers, wonders if he is in fact worthy.
The truth for all of us is that we are not. Isaiah and Peter were the first to admit their own sins. Even Steve Rogers questioned his own worthiness to accept power when he had none. We all come into the waters of Baptism with the need to be made whole, no matter how young or old we are. We all come to Baptism because it is the sign God uses for us that we have been made worthy by our Lord.
It is not because of our own worthiness that God calls to us. It is because God has tasks He is looking for us to fulfill, and there are gifts that God plans on giving us to accomplish those tasks. These are the same gifts Paul has been speaking to the Corinthians and to us about these past several weeks. We do not make ourselves worthy of those gifts. God does that work for us. The gifts we receive are a gift of grace, undeserved and unearned.
Our soon-to-be-baptized, thanks to his parents and godparents, will always have the reminder of that gift of Grace. He did nothing to be here, yet we present this gift of Baptism, a gift straight from God, to him anyways.
As our soon-to-be-baptized grows older, our hope is that he will hear God calling him to service to our Lord. Our hope is that through the life-long gift of Grace as a baptized member of this church, he will heed that call. Yet if there is difficulty, if there is a concern in himself over his worthiness, our hope is that we will be there to help guide him to God’s voice anyways.
Our hope is that we too, gathered here together in our life for the church, will also heed that call. It is true that we may be unworthy, but to God that doesn’t matter. What matters is that we heed the call because through God we are made worthy.