Three very different people. Three very different encounters with the divine.
We can perhaps relate most easily to Peter, since he met a man, Jesus (Lk 5:1-11). He agreed to help him out with a trip on his boat. A meeting well within our normal scope of experience. But then again it wasn’t. Peter had no idea who he was meeting and what that meeting meant for him. It took him 3 years of daily contact to begin to get an idea, and even then he kept getting it spectacularly wrong. Only after Jesus had left him in charge did he start to understand what had really happened.
Paul in a way had it easier (1 Cor 15:1-11). He came late to the party and knew what was going on before he arrived. That was why, as a devout Jew, he recognized the need to fight against what Jesus stood for – because it meant the end of Judaism as he had understood it. But his encounter with the divine took him three years to process – he dropped off the radar for that period, before reappearing and starting his work to figure out what it meant for the wider world. That work took him the rest of his life.
And Isaiah (despite the poetic imagery, which is maybe not so much to modern taste) – could that one be the example which is most relatable for us? (Is 6:1-2a, 3-8) He’s a person called by God, to do quite what he doesn’t know. He clearly knows he’s not ready for it – tangling with God stuff is way out of his league. But God is determined that he’s the one chosen for this job, whatever it may be. And how does Isaiah respond to the call?
“Here I am, send me”
Is this a confident, determined Isaiah – ready to take on whatever God has in mind? You could read it that way. You could also imagine a timid Isaiah – like the boy at the back of the class who knows the answer, and somehow feels he has to raise his hand when the teacher asks for volunteers, even though he’d really much rather not.
What all these encounters have in common is that the people involved didn’t ask for them, they had no idea at the time what they meant, and they took a long while to process. But once they were hooked, like the rest of the fish Jesus mentions, there was no getting away from that calling, from that relationship.
Every encounter with the divine is different, because every person is different. But ours probably also share those characteristics with the ones that came before. We probably don’t feel very confident about what we are getting into. And to all of us Jesus says “Do not be afraid” (Lk 5:10).