SERMON OF APRIL 18, 2010
M. Bruce McKay
Pilgrim–St. Luke’s United Church of Christ
“Fed to Follow”
Psalm 30; John 21:1-19
I knew it was over when I started coughing before my eyes were opened.
It was last Monday morning - my first day back at work after a wonderful week of vacation in Key West. No more not wearing a watch - no more sitting in the sun, swimming in the ocean, and enjoying late night dinners, in a funky, laid back place where everyone seemed to be on vacation.
I’d managed to suspend the ordinary, everyday routines of my life for a week after Easter. Throughout that week the memories of Easter morning were still fresh and alive - singing the first alleluias since February; the children in their Easter finery marching into the sanctuary with bright flowers and broad smiles; vibrant verses of “Christ the Lord is Risen Today”; the sound of the trumpet; the telling of the story; the mystery of the message that love is the victor and the end is life.
Lying in bed last Monday morning the memories of Easter and those of being on vacation blurred in the fuzziness of waking up with a cold and knowing that I needed to get up, put on my watch, and go back to work.
That’s what it was like for Simon Peter and the other disciples back in Galilee about two weeks after that first Easter morning.
After the women had returned from the tomb, when the disciples were gathered in a house in Jerusalem, behind locked doors, Jesus came and stood among them, saying, "Peace be with you, as God has sent me so I send you" (John 20:21).
Thomas, called the Twin, wasn't there when this happened. He said that he wouldn't believe that Christ had risen unless he saw the wounds created by his crucifixion. So a week later the same thing happened. The Risen Christ appeared again to Simon Peter and the rest of the disciples, including Thomas, who saw and believed.
Despite these direct encounters with their Risen Lord the disciples hadn’t received a game plan for what to do next. Jesus hadn’t given them any detailed guide as to what it meant for them to be his disciples following his death. All they knew was that somehow they were supposed to love one another as he loved them. They knew that they didn’t live by bread alone – and they knew that they didn’t live long without it.
So they did what I did last Monday morning. They went back to work.
Simon Peter said to them, “I’m going fishing.”
They said to him, “We’ll go with you.”
They went back to doing what they’d done before they’d met Jesus, let alone before they’d encountered the Risen Christ.
So here we are - two weeks after Easter - ready to settle in to business as usual in our own lives, in the life of the church and in the life of the world. The same bills need to be paid. The same fears need to be faced. The same anxieties eat away at us. The same questions confront us. The same problems persist.
The war in Iraq continues. The fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan rages on. Unemployment remains at record highs. Allegations of corruption continue to surface at the highest levels of both the public and private sectors (Goldman Sachs). Violence stalks our streets and people feel powerless when it comes to producing change.
The Easter crowd gives way to a more typical congregation. The flowers and trumpet are gone. We go back to the rituals and routines of our daily lives. We put on our watch or check our cell phone to make sure we’re on time for school, or work, or the other duties of our days.
The disciples go back to fishing. And we settle into our pew trying not to be too obvious about checking our watch or cell phone, to see when it will be time for whatever happens next.
And the Lord wants a word with us - just as the Lord wanted a word with them.
John tells us that that they fished all night, but caught nothing. And that’s when Jesus came to them – just after daybreak. Night is passing and a new day is breaking – a new world is taking shape in the midst of what seems like a very old world.
“Children,” he calls from shore, “You have no fish, have you?”
When they confirm the obvious he tells them to cast their net again and suddenly they have so many fish they can barely haul in the net. At this point the disciple whom Jesus loved, who’s traditionally understood to be John, the Son of Zebedee, recognizes Jesus and impetuous, impulsive Peter jumps into the water and makes his way to shore.
It’s at this point in the story when many of us are tempted to tune out because the Gospel story and our story seem so dissimilar.
Sure we know what it’s like to have to go back to work, or to school, or to whatever routines define our days - but how many of us have witnessed a miraculous catch of fish or any other miracle for that matter?
How many of us have seen the Risen Lord standing on a beach - or anywhere else for that matter?
How many of us have sat down to breakfast with the Risen Lord –or to any other meal with him for that matter?
The Gospel writer has anticipated these questions and addresses them in a curious sort of way.
Did you notice all the interesting, yet seemingly insignificant details in the story?
Jesus tells the disciples to cast their net on the right side of the boat – the starboard side. Peter puts his clothes on before jumping into the water and when he does this the boat is about a 100 yards from shore. They catch 153 fish.
Now some of these details may have some specific significance. For example, at that time people believed there were 153 nations in the world – suggesting that Peter and the others would find themselves fishing for people to the very ends of the earth.
But most of these details are there, my guess is, for another reason. And that is simply to affirm that these were ordinary people, going about their ordinary lives, in ordinary ways when something extra-ordinary happened.
Ordinary people, people like you and me, encountered the Risen Christ in the course of what they thought was business as usual.
The miraculous catch of fish was simply a way in which Jesus got the attention of his disciples to remind them who it is that feeds them.
Throughout the Gospels the disciples never catch any fish without the help of Jesus. (Lectionary Homiletics, April-May 2010, p. 26) Without his presence, without his love in their lives, they can’t live the lives they were created to live. The same is true for us. It’s the love of Jesus that feeds us with what we need to be who God created us to be. In case we’re tempted to think otherwise there is one additional detail in the story.
Jesus didn’t need any of the 153 fish that his disciples caught to feed them. He already had a fire going and was already cooking fish on it, before he asked them to bring some of the fish they’d just caught to shore.
The key to this story isn’t the number or the size of the fish but who’s being fed and who’s doing the feeding.
It was the Risen Jesus who fed his first followers with that breakfast on the beach in Galilee.
It was the Risen Jesus who fed them with the blessed assurance that his love for them was stronger even than death.
It was the Risen Jesus who found them and fed them just as things were getting back to the normal course of their ordinary, everyday lives.
And it is the Risen Jesus who finds us and feeds us just as things are getting back to the normal course of our ordinary, everyday lives.
During Bible Study, a few weeks after Easter, I once asked people if they’d encountered the Risen Christ in any way since Easter morning.
One person mentioned walking to the drug store from her house a few days after Easter and meeting an older woman along the way who just started talking to her.
After a brief conversation she went on her way and was standing at a corner, waiting to cross the street. At that point another older woman began talking to her. When she was in the drug store the same thing happened again, for the third time. In each case the older woman described a problem she was facing and the person in Bible Study assured her things would work out.
“It was the strangest thing,” she said, “It was as though Jesus himself was present in each of these encounters. I think he wants me to look for ways to work with older people who are feeling lost and alone.”
“When they had finished breakfast (after Jesus had fed them) he said to Simon Peter, `Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?’”
Peter said to him, “Yes Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.”
This exchange occurs two more times, with Jesus telling Peter to “Tend my sheep” and “Feed my sheep.”
Jesus asks if Peter loves him 3 times and gives him the opportunity to respond 3 times offsetting the three times that Peter had denied knowing who Jesus was, one of which had also occurred around a charcoal fire.
Peter’s failure to be faithful in the past in no way prevented Jesus from entrusting him with the opportunity to be faithful in the future.
In the same way, no matter how faithful or unfaithful we’ve been in the past, Jesus entrusts us with the opportunity to follow him into the future.
Jesus fed Peter with breakfast on the beach. He fed him with both fish and forgiveness so that he might follow him into the future, no matter what the future may hold.
“When you grow old,” he told Peter, “you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.”
During my first semester in seminary I came across this passage for the first time and fastened myself to it – more than any other passage in the Bible.
I had a hunch that God was calling me to be a pastor but had far more questions than answers. One thing I was sure about was that getting up in front of people every week was something that I definitely didn’t want to do.
Unlike José, who’d had many years of experience as a pastor before going to seminary, I’d never been in front of people in worship before I found myself studying to be a minister. I hadn’t said a prayer, read a passage from Scripture, or even made an announcement in church, let alone preach a sermon before I found myself in seminary. Anticipating what it would be like being up in front of people, I found myself having panic attacks in class. My heart would start racing so fast I couldn’t speak and my palms got so sweaty I would have gladly opted for the “no sweat surgery” advertised during Sabres games.
What got me through those classes (in addition to some good friends and a good pastoral counselor) was this passage where Jesus assures Peter that he would be led to a place where he did not wish to go.
Well into that first semester, when the panic attacks had diminished but not disappeared, I was attending a mid-week service in the seminary chapel. We were standing around the altar sharing communion and singing “Let Us Break Bread Together.”
When it came to the part where it says, “When I fall on my knees with my face to the rising sun, O Lord, have mercy on me,” I suddenly felt so grateful for knowing the merciful love of Jesus in my life that I wanted to do what the song said – and fall on my knees.
Summoning all my Scottish determination not to make a spectacle of myself, I didn’t let the Spirit get the upper hand and stayed standing – but I did receive the bread and the cup and knew then – as I’ve known ever since – that it was OK to stretch out my hands and allow someone else to lead me where I did not wish to go.
Our Risen Lord feeds us with all we’ll ever need to follow him – wherever he may lead – even to places we do not wish to go.
Our Risen Lord feeds us to follow him – not just on the mountaintops or in the valleys of our lives but along the plateaus as well – in the course of our daily rituals and ordinary routines.
Our Risen Lord feeds us to follow him in our personal relationships and in our public lives as those who know that we can’t love kindness without also doing justice in our walk with God.
Our Risen Lord feeds us and then says simply, very simply, “Follow me!”
Amen!
He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side; He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: "Follow thou me!" and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is. Albert Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, p.403.
Six Recognitions of the Lord (4 and 5)
By Mary Oliver
4.
Of course I have always known you
are present in the clouds, and the
black oak I especially adore, and the
wings of the birds. Buy you are preset
too in the body, listening to the body,
teaching it to life, instead of all
that touching, with disembodied joy.
We do not do this easily. We have
Lived so long in the heaven of touch,
And we maintain our mutability, our
Physicality, even as we begin to
Apprehend the other world. Slowly we
Make our appreciative response,
Slowly appreciation swells to
Astonishment. And we enter the dialogue
of our lives that is beyond all under-
Standing or conclusion. It is mystery.
It is love of God. It is obedience.
5.
Oh, feed my this day, Holy Spirit, with
the fragrance of the fields and the
freshness of the oceans which you have
made, and help me to hear and to hold
in all dearness those exacting and wonderful
words of our Lord Christ Jesus, saying:
Follow me.
