The teenager had her driver’s license for only a few weeks. After much pleading, her father at last allowed her to borrow the brand new family car to go to the mall. She was very careful, staying under the speed limit all the way, and taking great pains to park the car in a safe place.
But on the way home, crunch! She never saw the other car. In an instant, the front bumper, left headlight, and part of the fender were reduced to a mass of crumpled metal. Oh, how she wanted to die! “Dad will have my head! I might as well as burn my driver’s license,” she thought to herself. “I’ll be grounded until I am old enough for social security.”
So she limped home in her father’s once beautiful sedan, terrified about the punishment that was in store for her. As she pulled into the driveway, her parents ran outside. From the looks on their faces, she knew this wasn’t going to be a happy homecoming. Dad ran past the damaged front end to help his daughter get out of the car.
“Dad, I’m sorry,” she stammered, but he wouldn’t let her finish. As he hugged her, he asked, “Are you all right? Were you hurt? Was anyone else hurt?” She began to cry, a bit surprised that her father was so understanding, and also a bit ashamed that she had expected so little from him.
I imagine that has happened to many of us. Just when we expected our parents to kill us for something we had done, they reacted with understanding, compassion, and immediate forgiveness. So it is with God, who always welcomes us back without a moment’s hesitation.
Like the famed cartoon character, Ziggy, we suffer from an inferiority complex when it comes to our relationship with God. We think that we are neither good enough nor wise enough to see ourselves as being holy. We shy away from God because we cannot imagine God loving us. But that is the beauty of God. Namely, God loves us unconditionally.
That is the valued lesson we can take to heart in today’s readings. We think of Isaiah, Paul and Peter as saints yet these passages suggest that all three men suffered from inferiority complexes as well. None of them saw themselves worthy enough to be in the sight of God.
Isaiah cried out, “Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips.” Paul could not forget that drunk with pride and self-righteousness, he did the work of the devil instead of God, so he said, “I am the least of the apostles; in fact, because I persecuted the church of God, I do not even deserve the name. But by the grace of God I am what I am.” Then there was Peter, who after the miraculous catch of fish, pleaded with Jesus, “Leave me, Lord. I am a sinful man.”
But their pleas fell on deaf ears. God did not leave them or punish them. To the contrary, God overlooked their claims of inadequacy, unworthiness, and sinfulness. God called them to change their lives and their world.
“Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” God asked. “Here I am,” they all responded, each in their own way. Isaiah is now remembered as one of the greatest prophets of the Hebrew Testament. Paul is remembered as one of the greatest evangelists of all times. And Peter is remembered as the first leader of the Church. However sinful they judged themselves to be, God still used them.
As the saying goes, God doesn’t make junk so a person’s worthiness is not an issue for God. What matters is our willingness to respond. Understanding that, Isaiah, Paul, and Peter ventured forth to celebrate the presence of God in their lives. With grace, humility, and trust, they helped many others ever since to realize that same divine presence in their lives as well.
Do you ever dread getting out of bed in the morning? Not because you are still tired but because there are things you must do that you don’t want to do? For whatever reason, you feel inadequate or not up to doing the task in question. So you pray, “Please, Lord, get someone else. Let me be.” Then you hit the snooze button and go back to sleep.
What if Isaiah, Paul and Peter had hit their “snooze buttons,” rolled over and closed their eyes to what God was asking of them? Perhaps, we wouldn’t be here today. Like them, we all have fears or feel unqualified. We wish the unpleasant things of life would drop out of sight. But they can be the very tools or events God uses to make saints out of us. As our parents likely told us, if we expect to grow up, then we must get out of bed when the alarm goes off and face the music. We must do the things God wants done.
So what might God have in mind for you? Most likely, God doesn’t have in mind the same thing that he asked of Isaiah, Paul or Peter, but still, in God’s plan of salvation, you are important. You may be the one person God has in mind to get the Good News of his son across to a certain person in your life. Don’t kid yourself; we are all called by God to do our part in his plan of salvation.
At any stage of life and at any age, the voice of God may come to you to pose the same question asked of Isaiah, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” Imagine what an impact we could have on our own community if we would all honestly respond, “Here I am; send me!”