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It was a long time ago. My confirmation was on Pentecost 1957, in a German Lutheran congregation in Tullahoma Tenn. My class mates had names like Ingrid Arnold, Ingo Deutsch, Armin Windmuller, and there was Becky…

The pastor’s hand lay heavy on my head as I waited for the Seraphs and the voice of the Almighty.

Fast forward to Atlanta Ga. St. John’s Lutheran Church in 1969. Again, the hand of my pastor, in addition to that of the Bishop and others rested on my head as I was ordained…

I waited for the Seraphs, the celestial voice…

Four years earlier in the psychologist's office as I was being “interviewed” he asked “how did God call you?”

Was it on the phone? That was before the movie “O God” with George Burns playing God and John Denver hearing voices from God.

I don’t remember what I said that day, but I can tell you that there was a war going on in a place called Vietnam and I did not want to go there… not because I am pacifist but because I did not believe what we were being told about the Communist takeover of SE Asia, by then the Nixon White House.

Seminary and a theological education seemed infinitely more real and honest than the domino theory and Vietnam.

I tell you this because I wanted you to know something of how I came to be a pastor because the lessons today all speak of God’s calling to follow him.

Isaiah (God’s helper) tells us he was “interviewed” by God for a possible job as a preacher in Israel.

He tells us that what he saw were Seraphs with six wings. One set covered their face, a second set their feet – actually the translator got it wrong – you can use your less than puritan imagination and you know what I mean. These beasts, with 3 sets of wings sing perpetually… Holy, Holy, Holy is Yahweh.

We are told that the foundations of the place shook.  The temple is filled with a cloud. And about that time, the would-be preacher said woe is me…

I couldn’t find a good translation of Woe... but the rest of the man’s words say it all. I am a man of unclean lips. I live among a people of unclean lips.

God would not hear any of it, but has one these snakes grab live coals from the altar and touch Isaiah’s lips…

Isaiah is forgiven… as his lips are cauterized.

He then volunteers to preach, and for the rest of that chapter God gives him his sermon outline…

The call of Simon also known as Peter “the rock” and the others comes from a more domesticated God than the God of Isaiah … less apocalyptic.

Holiness is made known, not in flying serpents, aflame with live coals; holiness is found on a lakeshore, in a boat that is taking on water because the cargo is over the posted weight limit of the little vessel.

All of the lessons speak of a sense of awe, terror, wonder, sin and forgiveness – in the face of the holy One we know by the name of God.

Where have you had a similar experience that could be seen as an encounter with God?

Or are we reduced to the narrative in a book we know as the Bible?

Where have our “woe is me” and maybe a “yes, send me…” come together?

For me that moment came not so much in the way Isaiah or Peter experienced God, as through the structure of the organized church.

I was baptized as an infant. And over the years came to understand that the water and God’s tears for me are one and the same…

Later there was ordination in a beautiful Lutheran church in down town Atlanta Ga. The same pastor who confirmed me was there again… he now lives in a little town in foothills of the Cumberland Mountains.

Over the years I came to know God in those areas of my life, where I am called to be a part of something bigger than my self…

bigger than my family, bigger than the Eagles or Phillies, bigger than politics… bigger even than in religion in the formal sense of that word.

I experience God in taking on the causes of people, those who cannot or will not stand up for themselves, either individually or collectively.

In the 60's it was civil rights… the place was Ogelthorp, Ga. I was asked to preach to a little congregation – after the sermon the Call Committee told me that they had run off the last candidate for the position because he was a Negro.

No Seraphs, no burning coal, only dusty shoes covered with Georgia clay, as I told them that as much as I wanted to be their  pastor I could not,  as  long as the sign in front of the church that announced “Everyone Welcome” did not mean everyone.

In that moment I knew, as I have never known before, what my baptism was all about.

It was about being part of something bigger than myself, bigger than Ogelthorp, bigger than my need to find a job to support a family, It was about grace and a God whose love gave me a reason to get up in the morning.

In the 70’s it was Vietnam.  A clergy friend and I drove all night to march in DC to protest American involvement in SE Asia…

Since then I have answered God’s call by speaking up for those with a different sexual orientation than mine, and now my cause is the homeless of Cape May.

I want more than ANYTHING for each of you to find similar moments of confession and conviction, as the presence of God comes to you and calls to you from wherever He finds you… in the temple like Isaiah or in a sinking boat full of fish.

I want more than anything for this congregation to be the place where God makes it happen. Amen