A Sermon from Falmouth Congregational Church…

A Sermon offered by the Rev. Ian F. “Jack” Steeves in the public worship service of the Falmouth Congregational Church United Church of Christ in Falmouth, Maine on the Third Sunday of Easter, April 18, 2010. The scripture reading was John 21:1-19.

“That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord!’” (John 21:7)

“The First Morning of the New Life”

The disciple John says it all, “It is the Lord!” The first aim of today’s gospel story is to declare the reality of the Resurrection. There he is; the Risen Lord, not a mirage in the early morning, nor a figment of their bereaved imaginations, nor a ghost. There he is; Jesus was standing on the beach, ready to cook breakfast.

In one of his last earthly get-togethers with his disciples, Jesus almost re-creates the scene where they had first met three years earlier. It is the same lake, the same lack of fish, the same fishermen. But how times and events had changed them all.

Days after they had experienced things so terrible and so mysterious that they were incapable of fully assimilating them, Simon Peter speaks for all of them, “I am going fishing.” To do what he was trained to do, what he had always done, and it was a way of getting back his hold on things.

You and I are no different. Many of us have found a restored sanity in the face of loss and sorrow by resuming the routines we know best. Very often, breaking out of our emotional prison frees others who are close to us. It is a ready chorus of Andrew and the others who say, “We will go with you.”

True, it is a disastrous trip. It had been disastrous, three years earlier. “They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing” (21:3).

There is no guarantee that our first attempts at rebuilding a shattered life will be successful. We may fail to think clearly. We may be impulsive, even manic in thought and action. We can be so desperate to prove a new day and life that we exhaust ourselves and dissolve into a flood of tears. What is important is that, disastrous first results aside, the first morning of our new life has begun. We have taken the first steps. The new morning of the next chapter of life has opened. John says of the disciples’ experience, “Just after day break, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus” (21:4).

So with us, when we are living in the first moments of emotional recovery, we still perceive life through a hazy residue of our agony, physical and emotional weariness. We do not necessarily identify the Christ. We see only an old friend who has dropped by and brought lunch. We hear only a voice on the phone, or read a curious message on e-mail, or just the mailman with a more traditional letter or card. It is still only daybreak and everything is still half hidden in a mist of conflicting thoughts and emotions.

The unidentified figure asks a question that on first hearing is not terribly helpful. “Have you any fish?” Yet, the question allows them to declare their sense of frustration and failure. “NO!” We really do not like such an admission. Where are the fish? They are still in the lake.

The risen Lord then says quietly, “Try again! Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” His words are almost parental. Yet, there is a certainty and a power that something will be achieved. “Try again!”

It happened again just like it did three years earlier (Luke 5). There is a net full of fish and the sudden realization: “It is the Lord!” Peter jumps into the water. The others come to shore dragging the net full of fish behind them.

Three spiritual gifts are evidenced in their varied responses.

In John’s short exclamation (“It is the Lord!”) we see the gift of insight and identification. It is intuitive and can be ecstatic.

In Peter’s jump into the lake, we see the gift of action, in keeping with his personality, unthinking and impulsive.

In the other disciples, we see the gift of faithfulness and practicality, if sometimes uninspired work. While one shouts and another jumps, someone has to pull in the net.

Each person and every gift is needed in that group and in every congregation that seeks the presence of the Christ. It is not magic, but it is a mystery, a mystery that Christ honors our human need to contribute to our own spiritual formation, which he is carrying out. “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” So Christ, in his dealings with us, calls us to bring our gifts and our insights, however paltry or uncertain; our energies however faltering.

Christ accepts the unpredictability of each individual and the frequent frustration of group involvement. He possesses power, insight, wisdom; yet he insists on gathering us and drawing out our lesser powers, lesser insights, and still lesser wisdom. Here on the early morning beach, in breakfast offering bread and fish, our Lord shows this to the disciples and to us.

There is an element in Christ’s question to Peter that can easily be missed. He takes Peter aside and says, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” Jesus seems to imply “love me” but do not ignore your companions. Our Lord, as we meet him in the morning scripture on this morning beach, admonishes us to involve others, to honor the gifts of others, even if they seem so ordinary and so limited.

Three times Peter is asked the penetrating question: “Do you love me?” It involves self-assessment, accountability, and responsibility. The Lord is dealing with something in Peter that is both strength and weakness. He offers Peter a vivid portrait of Peter as he is still in his prime, and then there is a flash forward to an older age of weakness and dependence.

Jesus is shaping Peter for his future tasks, trying to show this fiercely independent man that dependence does not only begin when we no longer can avoid it. Dependence, in the best sense of our being interdependent on one another, is the essence of being human. Only when we realize this truth, can we also realize whom we follow and toward what personal transformation we are being led.

The early Christians could not forget Peter’s story because they saw themselves in it. Is there anyone present this morning, who can not see himself or herself in the exchange between Jesus and Peter? He still says,” Follow me!”

To follow someone is to share the same road or way, to face and embrace the unknown and the dangers of the journey.

If you follow Christ, you have to give up your demand for human certainty and control of time, place and events. It will mean you have to surrender your prejudices and your phobias, and your most holy held notions of what it means to be a “Christian” or a “Congregation.” It will mean that you bump up against your political and theological differences with others, and it might mean you have to give more money or more of yourselves.

What truly counts is the future. It is not where you have been that matters, but where you are going, not whether you have made mistakes (you have), but whether you are ready to try again to create a future. “Follow me!”