Who? Me?
Commentary
I occasionally include short clips from a movie in order to illustrate a point. I always check and make sure our CCLI license covers films from that particular studio just to keep things fair and square. Either way, do not show the clip I’m about to reference — just quote it. Robert De Niro is credited not only with delivering the famous line, “Are you talking to me?” (Taxi Driver, 1976) but also inventing it on the spur of the moment. Locked in a room with the director, Martin Scorsese, and challenged to come up with something, he looked in the mirror and repeated “Are you talking to me?” over and over again, changing the emphasis, while both men began to realize this was absolute genius. People who have never seen or even heard of the film, recognize, laugh, or use the line! “Are you talking to me?”
In these three scriptures we may well ask God, “Are you talking to me?” in three, very distinct, ways. I imagine Isaiah, caught up in the divine throne room, is praying that the Lord is talking to anyone but him. James, the brother of the Lord, who at one time thought his brother was crazy and tried to bring him back to Nazareth, could have been caring for his mother in her grief over the loss of her son when he had the shock of his life! Jesus was talking to him. And some hard-working Galileans watched Jesus as he spoke to the crowds from their boat which he had commandeered, but they soon discovered his words were really directed at them, to leave everything and follow. The Lord was speaking to all three — and to us! How will we answer!
Isaiah 6:1-8 (9-13)
Forgive me if I jump from Taxi Driver to The Lord of the Rings. And I will refer to the novel, not the movie, which was a lot of fun, but it’s still not the book. J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of the book, spends hundreds of pages describing how Frodo the hobbit managed through many dangers, toils, and snares to get the Dark Lord’s ring of power to the safe haven of Rivendell. Once there, Frodo hoped to spend some time in well-deserved rest — but at the great council the next day the wise and learned discussed what to do with the Ring of Doom. They decide it is too evil for anyone to use or harbor, and their only course is to send someone to the forge in which it was made and destroy it in the fires of Mount Doom. Though Elrond spoke these words to everyone in the room, Frodo could not escape the dread that these words spoke direction to him. After a long silence Frodo says at last, “I will take the ring, though I do not know the way.”
Ultimately after great pain and suffering Frodo and his companion Samwise manage to get the ring to the Cracks of Doom — where Frodo fails in the quest and refuses to destroy it. Fortunately, a ruined ghost of a creature named Gollum, who had possessed the ring for centuries before he lost it, reclaims the ring and unintentionally falls into the abyss, destroying it in the process. Tolkien wrote to a friend about Frodo’s “failure,” stating that it was a triumph of grace — “for we do not know our own limits of natural strength (+ grace)…” — but that saying yes with humility and mercy opens the door to God completing the task. (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien: Revised and Expanded Edition, 2023, pp 460-462)
When we sing “Holy, Holy, Holy,” a wonderful hymn based on Isaiah 6:1-8, it is easy to joyfully sing of God’s glory, but Isaiah makes it clear that we would be knock-kneed and frightened if were to come into God’s presence in the manner of the prophet. “Whom shall I send?” asks God. I imagine that Isaiah is praying that the Lord is talking to anyone but him. At last, however, Isaiah replies, “Here I am, send me.” I don’t know how others hear the prophet’s voice, but I hear it as a plaintive wail, an admission of weakness, even unworthiness — nevertheless he answers the call. In a certain sense Isaiah failed. By the end of chapter 39, the nation has failed to respond to the crisis of faith. The temple and the nation are destroyed, the people are led away to exile, and according to tradition, though not the text of the biblical book, Isaiah was executed.
Even so, God’s mission is a success. The people will repent, and will be restored, and will return, and God will continue to take greater and greater risks, even to the vulnerable presence of God on earth, ending in death and resurrection.
I think a lot of us struggle when there is a long silence, and we feel what seems to be the Holy Spirit’s leading to say yes to God’s call. We keep hoping someone else will say yes and get us off the hook. And we know that failure is a real possibility.
But even our failures can contribute to God’s victory. Are you talking to me, Lord? Are you talking to me? I imagine Isaiah, caught up in the divine throne room, is praying that the Lord is talking to anyone but him, as surely as I am that God is speaking to me, and I hope someone else will pipe up and answer the call before I run out of excuses.
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Jacob, the younger brother of Jesus, (usually referred to as James the brother of the Lord in scripture), had every reason to question whether Jesus really knew what he was doing. To take up this ministry, to travel not only across Galilee where folks were normal but also to head down south to Judea, where people talked with an accent and thought they were better than anyone else, to criticize religious leaders who had the power and the money and would do anything to protect it, and most of all to leave the family in the lurch, abandoning the family economy which required all hands on deck, leaving Jacob in charge, and causing everyone, neighbors, friends, relatives, and the rest of the family to wonder if Jesus wasn’t just a bit off his rocker — it’s a bit much.
The family, including Jacob, went after Jesus to talk some sense into him, but Jesus, instead of immediately dropping everything to receive them when he was told they were present, left his mother crying and the other shaken when he said, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?”
There is no reason to think of Jacob/James as a disciple of his brother Jesus until after the death and resurrection.
In this passage, Paul lists an impressive cast of characters who were witnesses to the resurrection (although he leaves out the women who were the first to proclaim this glorious event), like Cephas, the twelve, or five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, He concludes this foundational passage with self-deprecating remarks — “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” (8-9)
This is what we preachers often focus on — Paul, the least of all the apostles — but I’m more astounded by Paul’s simple declaration, “Then he appeared to James….” (7) James would have been the dutiful son, carrying for his mother Mary who was grieving for the horrifyingly brutal death of his older brother Jesus, perhaps resenting Jesus for causing all this pain to her even as he lamented his brother’s death — when the Risen Lord appeared to him.
How did Jesus appear to his brother? Walking out of the early morning mists? The wavering figure coming into focus? Could he believe his own eyes, or did he discredit the experience at first? Did he drop to his knees?
What a shock! Are you talking to me? Are you, brother who is now Risen Lord and far more than James ever credited him with, talking to me? What could he say? What did Jesus command?
Why? I rejected you. Why are you receiving me?
James went on to become the leader of the Jerusalem Christians. He was referred to as “James the Just” by non-Christians, and when he was murdered by the religious authorities in 62 AD, his death was lamented by non-believers as well as his community of faith.
My guess is that many of us may have at one time looked at people we knew and shook our heads, wondering what has come over people we knew, their lives changed, a strange joy in their eyes, as they serve a Risen Lord who sounds just a little ridiculous to us. Don’t people understand that church is a place for dignity and quietness, hemmed in within a single morning once a week. Isn’t Easter about getting together with family and friends for dinner, and kids looking for plastic eggs filled with candy?
And then the Lord talks to us. Are you talking to me? Are you talking to me?
Jesus is talking to us. Jesus is calling us. And so are the friends who on fire for the Sermon on the Mount, for turning the other cheek, for living a life worthy of the calling — for Jesus!
Luke 5:1-11
People can be passionate about fishing as a way of life and be philosophical about a day when they catch nothing. It’s like that popular bumper sticker says, “A bad day fishing is better than a good day at work.” And if you don’t fish as a way of life (I don’t) you’re probably passionate about something or other (I am, several things) so even if you don’t share the same passion as one who fishes, you can understand the passion because you are passionate about other things.
However, it’s a totally other experience if you fish for a living, if your livelihood depends on your performance, if a bad day fishing means going without the daily necessities of life, and if several bad days puts you and your family at risk. And the same with whatever it is we do, even when we love it — do we really need an outsider telling us how to do our job?
Luke’s description of Jesus calling his first disciples allows us to ask on more than one occasion — “Are you talking to me?” Now we don’t learn until partway through this passage that Simon Peter had worked all night long before this story begins and all to no avail. They haven’t caught a thing. He and the sons of Zebedee, James and John, were cleaning up after a futile night with no catch. They are exhausted, no doubt, and sleepy, but Jesus, who is surrounded by people who want to hear him speak — and the future disciples probably resent the presence of these great crowds that can only get in their way — they’re not at the shore for fun, this is their workplace — and they had to wonder — who is this guy who commandeers one of our boats as if we should drop everything to help out a civilian ? They just want to call it a day so they can start all over again tomorrow night. You want what? You want me to take you out to see in my boat and keep it moored and steady while you teach the crowds. Are you talking to me? Are you talking to me?
Just who are you? Who do you think you are? Are you really talking to me.
But there is something about Jesus that commands — respect? Obedience?
And when he is done Jesus gives instructions about fishing, even though he is the carpenter’s son, and despite Simon Peter’s confession that they’ve already had a futile night they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to burst.” (6) Soon the other partners in the business had to help to prevent the nets from bursting.
And if this wasn’t enough, Jesus then states, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” (10) And they do. Are you talking to me?
That’s interesting enough, but Jesus is also talking to us. Do not focus so much on the apostles and their response and then forget that we should all be saying, “Are you talking to me?”
Be afraid. Be very afraid. Because when it comes to giving an answer, we are not given a choice. The answer is yes. The disciples “left everything and followed him.” (11)
In these three scriptures we may well ask God, “Are you talking to me?” in three, very distinct, ways. I imagine Isaiah, caught up in the divine throne room, is praying that the Lord is talking to anyone but him. James, the brother of the Lord, who at one time thought his brother was crazy and tried to bring him back to Nazareth, could have been caring for his mother in her grief over the loss of her son when he had the shock of his life! Jesus was talking to him. And some hard-working Galileans watched Jesus as he spoke to the crowds from their boat which he had commandeered, but they soon discovered his words were really directed at them, to leave everything and follow. The Lord was speaking to all three — and to us! How will we answer!
Isaiah 6:1-8 (9-13)
Forgive me if I jump from Taxi Driver to The Lord of the Rings. And I will refer to the novel, not the movie, which was a lot of fun, but it’s still not the book. J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of the book, spends hundreds of pages describing how Frodo the hobbit managed through many dangers, toils, and snares to get the Dark Lord’s ring of power to the safe haven of Rivendell. Once there, Frodo hoped to spend some time in well-deserved rest — but at the great council the next day the wise and learned discussed what to do with the Ring of Doom. They decide it is too evil for anyone to use or harbor, and their only course is to send someone to the forge in which it was made and destroy it in the fires of Mount Doom. Though Elrond spoke these words to everyone in the room, Frodo could not escape the dread that these words spoke direction to him. After a long silence Frodo says at last, “I will take the ring, though I do not know the way.”
Ultimately after great pain and suffering Frodo and his companion Samwise manage to get the ring to the Cracks of Doom — where Frodo fails in the quest and refuses to destroy it. Fortunately, a ruined ghost of a creature named Gollum, who had possessed the ring for centuries before he lost it, reclaims the ring and unintentionally falls into the abyss, destroying it in the process. Tolkien wrote to a friend about Frodo’s “failure,” stating that it was a triumph of grace — “for we do not know our own limits of natural strength (+ grace)…” — but that saying yes with humility and mercy opens the door to God completing the task. (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien: Revised and Expanded Edition, 2023, pp 460-462)
When we sing “Holy, Holy, Holy,” a wonderful hymn based on Isaiah 6:1-8, it is easy to joyfully sing of God’s glory, but Isaiah makes it clear that we would be knock-kneed and frightened if were to come into God’s presence in the manner of the prophet. “Whom shall I send?” asks God. I imagine that Isaiah is praying that the Lord is talking to anyone but him. At last, however, Isaiah replies, “Here I am, send me.” I don’t know how others hear the prophet’s voice, but I hear it as a plaintive wail, an admission of weakness, even unworthiness — nevertheless he answers the call. In a certain sense Isaiah failed. By the end of chapter 39, the nation has failed to respond to the crisis of faith. The temple and the nation are destroyed, the people are led away to exile, and according to tradition, though not the text of the biblical book, Isaiah was executed.
Even so, God’s mission is a success. The people will repent, and will be restored, and will return, and God will continue to take greater and greater risks, even to the vulnerable presence of God on earth, ending in death and resurrection.
I think a lot of us struggle when there is a long silence, and we feel what seems to be the Holy Spirit’s leading to say yes to God’s call. We keep hoping someone else will say yes and get us off the hook. And we know that failure is a real possibility.
But even our failures can contribute to God’s victory. Are you talking to me, Lord? Are you talking to me? I imagine Isaiah, caught up in the divine throne room, is praying that the Lord is talking to anyone but him, as surely as I am that God is speaking to me, and I hope someone else will pipe up and answer the call before I run out of excuses.
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Jacob, the younger brother of Jesus, (usually referred to as James the brother of the Lord in scripture), had every reason to question whether Jesus really knew what he was doing. To take up this ministry, to travel not only across Galilee where folks were normal but also to head down south to Judea, where people talked with an accent and thought they were better than anyone else, to criticize religious leaders who had the power and the money and would do anything to protect it, and most of all to leave the family in the lurch, abandoning the family economy which required all hands on deck, leaving Jacob in charge, and causing everyone, neighbors, friends, relatives, and the rest of the family to wonder if Jesus wasn’t just a bit off his rocker — it’s a bit much.
The family, including Jacob, went after Jesus to talk some sense into him, but Jesus, instead of immediately dropping everything to receive them when he was told they were present, left his mother crying and the other shaken when he said, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?”
There is no reason to think of Jacob/James as a disciple of his brother Jesus until after the death and resurrection.
In this passage, Paul lists an impressive cast of characters who were witnesses to the resurrection (although he leaves out the women who were the first to proclaim this glorious event), like Cephas, the twelve, or five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, He concludes this foundational passage with self-deprecating remarks — “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” (8-9)
This is what we preachers often focus on — Paul, the least of all the apostles — but I’m more astounded by Paul’s simple declaration, “Then he appeared to James….” (7) James would have been the dutiful son, carrying for his mother Mary who was grieving for the horrifyingly brutal death of his older brother Jesus, perhaps resenting Jesus for causing all this pain to her even as he lamented his brother’s death — when the Risen Lord appeared to him.
How did Jesus appear to his brother? Walking out of the early morning mists? The wavering figure coming into focus? Could he believe his own eyes, or did he discredit the experience at first? Did he drop to his knees?
What a shock! Are you talking to me? Are you, brother who is now Risen Lord and far more than James ever credited him with, talking to me? What could he say? What did Jesus command?
Why? I rejected you. Why are you receiving me?
James went on to become the leader of the Jerusalem Christians. He was referred to as “James the Just” by non-Christians, and when he was murdered by the religious authorities in 62 AD, his death was lamented by non-believers as well as his community of faith.
My guess is that many of us may have at one time looked at people we knew and shook our heads, wondering what has come over people we knew, their lives changed, a strange joy in their eyes, as they serve a Risen Lord who sounds just a little ridiculous to us. Don’t people understand that church is a place for dignity and quietness, hemmed in within a single morning once a week. Isn’t Easter about getting together with family and friends for dinner, and kids looking for plastic eggs filled with candy?
And then the Lord talks to us. Are you talking to me? Are you talking to me?
Jesus is talking to us. Jesus is calling us. And so are the friends who on fire for the Sermon on the Mount, for turning the other cheek, for living a life worthy of the calling — for Jesus!
Luke 5:1-11
People can be passionate about fishing as a way of life and be philosophical about a day when they catch nothing. It’s like that popular bumper sticker says, “A bad day fishing is better than a good day at work.” And if you don’t fish as a way of life (I don’t) you’re probably passionate about something or other (I am, several things) so even if you don’t share the same passion as one who fishes, you can understand the passion because you are passionate about other things.
However, it’s a totally other experience if you fish for a living, if your livelihood depends on your performance, if a bad day fishing means going without the daily necessities of life, and if several bad days puts you and your family at risk. And the same with whatever it is we do, even when we love it — do we really need an outsider telling us how to do our job?
Luke’s description of Jesus calling his first disciples allows us to ask on more than one occasion — “Are you talking to me?” Now we don’t learn until partway through this passage that Simon Peter had worked all night long before this story begins and all to no avail. They haven’t caught a thing. He and the sons of Zebedee, James and John, were cleaning up after a futile night with no catch. They are exhausted, no doubt, and sleepy, but Jesus, who is surrounded by people who want to hear him speak — and the future disciples probably resent the presence of these great crowds that can only get in their way — they’re not at the shore for fun, this is their workplace — and they had to wonder — who is this guy who commandeers one of our boats as if we should drop everything to help out a civilian ? They just want to call it a day so they can start all over again tomorrow night. You want what? You want me to take you out to see in my boat and keep it moored and steady while you teach the crowds. Are you talking to me? Are you talking to me?
Just who are you? Who do you think you are? Are you really talking to me.
But there is something about Jesus that commands — respect? Obedience?
And when he is done Jesus gives instructions about fishing, even though he is the carpenter’s son, and despite Simon Peter’s confession that they’ve already had a futile night they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to burst.” (6) Soon the other partners in the business had to help to prevent the nets from bursting.
And if this wasn’t enough, Jesus then states, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” (10) And they do. Are you talking to me?
That’s interesting enough, but Jesus is also talking to us. Do not focus so much on the apostles and their response and then forget that we should all be saying, “Are you talking to me?”
Be afraid. Be very afraid. Because when it comes to giving an answer, we are not given a choice. The answer is yes. The disciples “left everything and followed him.” (11)
