When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

When I was in seminary, Dr. Karl Menninger, who was at the time a widely respected psychiatrist, wrote a book entitled “Whatever Became of Sin?”.

Dr. Menninger’s thesis was that the concept of sin had disappeared from our lives. We replaced it with ways to treat people, ways to understand people, ways to educate people, ways to raise people’s consciousness, ways to accept people with all of their flaws and shortcomings and errors and inabilities and mistakes, but we stopped talking sinners and we stopped talking about sin. And we haven’t really started again, have we?

Scripture is clear. Our Reformed tradition is abundantly clear. Yet we don’t really know how to talk about sin, do we? And yet, not talking about sin doesn’t make it go away.

In fact not talking about sin makes forgiveness and restoration almost impossible. Now I need to be careful here and I know it, because Sin is ugly, Sin is painful, Sin is offensive.

There was a time, five or six years ago, when I preached a sermon about my sinfulness, my own sinfulness, I confessed the times in my life when I had spoken about people who were different than me: women, gays, Jews, blacks, Asians, Arabs and I confessed that I had used words – jokes, slurs, you know the words – I had used words to prove myself – as a white, male, Christian, American – superior to them. And in that sermon I said “no more”, I promised God and you that, to the best of my ability, I would not participate in those sins to exist any longer.

Well, there are people who left here that day and never came back. That happens when we talk about sin, Dr. Menninger said that’s why we don’t like to talk about it.

Sin has that kind of impact, it is ugly, painful and offensive.

And we don’t want that kind of stuff in our lives, our Church life or our individual lives.

We want to be happy, but sometimes we have to choose between happy and holy and sometimes we need to use the word sin.

Peter did.

He fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

Jesus had commandeered his boat as a floating pulpit and when he was done he told them to drop the nets again and you can almost hear Peter’s sigh: “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”

So it goes with the work of God through the centuries, we work at things and work at things and there are so many times that we come up empty and we are – like those fisherman in their boats – tired and wet and weary and God says why don’t you let down your nets and we don’t feel like it.

We’ve been there and we’ve done that and we don’t feel like doing it again.

We don’t feel like understanding difficult people, one more time.

We don’t feel like forgiving people who hurt us, one more time.

We don’t feel like doing any of the things that are a part of our lives as parents or as children or as friends or as neighbors or as citizens or as Christians, we just want to get some sleep and stay warm and look after our own business.

And the voice of God comes to us through someone, and you know it is the voice of God because it is telling you to go try again to do the things that you know you ought to be doing, even when they didn’t work before.

I know that it is popular and humorous to say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

But isn’t that also the very description of faithful Christian living?

Isn’t that what hope both implies and demands of us?

Those of you who are parents, how many times do you say: clean your room and brush your teeth and do your homework and say your prayers and mind your manners? And, suddenly one day you realize that it worked and your nets are loaded up with blessings beyond measure. But that won’t happen if you aren’t insane enough to do and say those same things over and over and expect different results.

And isn’t that what Peter’s experience was all about?

Lower your nets? Peter knew that it was hopeless, he knew it was an impossible dream, he certainly knew more about fishing than this carpenter rabbi, and yet he did it anyway and discovered the holy moment in his most common activity and it drove him to worship at the feet of Christ.

But please notice, he did not worship with praise and joy, When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

In the presence of Christ, Peter saw his own sinfulness.

And Isaiah’s story is the same, and different.

Isaiah’s call came to him during worship. He was in the temple and he saw things that I have never seen, flying creatures singing to each other of God’s glory and his senses were assaulted by the sights and sounds and smells and touches of the temple. And it drove Isaiah out of the temple and into the marketplace with a message of gloom, a message not of full nets, but of burned cities, a message of disaster in the secular world of nations and economies.

Where Peter’s encounter of holiness started with his service and led to his worship, Isaiah’s started with worship and led to service, it can happen either way.

But in both cases they were humbled by the encounter with God.

Peter said “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.”

Isaiah said “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.”

And what of us?

And what is it – if anything - that humbles us and makes us aware of our sinful nature?

I can only speak for myself, but each morning and each evening, I have a silent conversation with the sinner in my mirror, Mr. Other Me, who reminds me of my daily sins of commission, those things I have done that were not in any way helpful to God and my daily sins of omission, those things I could have done to make someone’s load lighter . . . and I didn’t.

And I know, with Peter, that I am a sinful man, my greed, my pride, my ego, my insecurities, my fears, my prejudices, my lack of faith, they are all symptoms of my deeply diseased soul: I am a sinful man.

And I don’t want to excuse it, I don’t want to explain it away, I don’t want to deny it, I don’t want to rationalize my way around it by saying “I’m not as bad as some people” or “I’m better that I used to be”. That gets me nowhere, I’ve tried it.

I want to confess my sin to God.

And I do.

I want God to forgive my sin.

And he does.

And the holiness that accused me, comforts me; the holiness that exposed my sin, reveals my forgiveness.

And my heart breaks for all of the people I know who can’t confess their sinfulness, those who cling to a weak notion of being “good enough”, those who won’t be humbled and fail to experience that holiness of God that allows each of us to see the sinner in their mirror.

And it isn’t just individual, I know, with Isaiah, that I live among a sinful people.

Yes, I know, this is one of those “be careful Jack” moments.

But if you go home and you look in the mirror and you don’t see a sinner, then you haven’t encountered the holiness of God.

The word sin, in scripture, means to “miss the mark”, like an arrow flying past the target, a pass thrown too far for the receiver to catch.

Have we hit the mark every time? As spouses? As parents? As friends? As children? As siblings? As workers? As Christians? As a nation?

And when we have missed, is it ever our fault?

Have you listened to the President, the Republicans, the Democrats any of them? Blaming each other, pouting like children, they all start out by saying “this is not a time for pointing fingers” and then the finger-pointing starts.

I see it in families, in our denomination, in our communities and our state.

These are stressful times and everyone wants someone to blame.

But God’s holiness is all around us and it sends us to the mirror.

You may discover it, as Isaiah did, in worship when God touches your heart with the song of the choir, a reading from scripture, a smile from a friend or someone who should be your friend, a thought from a sermon, and suddenly it’s holy around you and you know that God is with you and you know, as Isaiah did, that no matter what is going on in that world out there, our God will preserve the seed of his love and the day will come when children and old folks and working people will all be safe under the wings of his love, and what else can you do but serve him and help to bring that about?

You may discover it, as Peter did, where you work and live and play and study and you may be going through the same old, same old things and God touches your heart by using you, as you are with your skills and failures and strengths and shortcomings, and suddenly it’s holy around you and you know that God is with you and you know, Peter did, that the hopeless has become a reality, and the impossible has happened, and that you have more blessings that you could possibly deserve and what else can you do but worship him in gratitude for all that he has done?

It is the holiness of God.

And whenever and wherever we encounter the holiness of God we need to meet it with worship and with service, we need to pray and to act, and to humble ourselves in the recognition that no matter how many times we faithfully try and fail, we need to continue to try because there will come, for us, the time when we will get different results.

That’s not insanity, that’s Christianity.

That is a life built upon hope and upon faithfulness, a live committed to worship and to service with the sure expectation of encountering the holiness of God.

We will get different results when we realize who and what we are.

When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”