Joel D. Kline
April 25, 2004
Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren
The Third Sunday of Easter
This is a great time of year. After the cold and barrenness of winter, each spring day can be an adventure, with nature greening all around us, new buds emerging and blossoms unfolding. The very things that at other times of the year may well be perceived as something of a nuisance are seen during spring as signs of beauty and hope. At our home in Fort Wayne Janice and I had a flowering crab apple tree that required more care and trimming than I was eager to provide, and that later in the summer dropped scads of crab apples that made lawn care more difficult. But for about a week or so each spring that tree was absolutely gorgeous, so much so that I would find myself wishing that the tree could maintain such beauty year round.
Who among us does not have times when we would like to hold on to life just as it now is? This is true not only with the beauty of spring, but in our deepest relationships as well. It is sometimes hard to accept change in those we most care about. Parents frequently struggle with letting go and allowing their children space to mature and blossom as unique individuals in their own right. There are times when it is threatening to us to watch those whom we love move in new directions. This is true not only as those we care about face times of struggle and pain, but also when they are embracing new opportunities, considering new challenges, embarking upon new chapters in their lives. Perhaps our fear is that the newness may lead them further away, rather than closer to us.
In the aftermath of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection the early disciples are little able to make sense of it all. There is a feel of promise and hope, of course, as they consider what it might mean for them that Christ is risen and is present with them. But at the same time, there is a gnawing fear that too much will change. Will relationship with this risen Christ return them to a familiar life, the life the disciples knew with Jesus before the crucifixion, or will they be led in new and perhaps uncomfortable directions? Other questions also swirl in the hearts and minds of the disciples: What will it mean for us to be a community of Christ’s people with Jesus no longer among us in the same way? How shall we experience the presence—and the absence—of Jesus? Will more—or less—now be demanded of us? And how will we endure, should we encounter the same kind of resistance and hostility that Jesus encountered as part of his earthly ministry?
We understand that kind of anxiety about life, don’t we? In my former pastorate the congregation made a decision to move to two Sunday morning worship services, and the impact on the life of the church was significant. Familiar patterns were interrupted. For some, the offering of a more contemporary style of worship in the second service felt like criticism of the more traditional style of the earlier service. For others, the influx of new people, while exciting, also raised levels of discomfort. Would the new folk embrace the faith as we understand it—the “Brethren” way? Would we become two congregations within one, with persons developing loyalty to one service or the other? Even some minor changes in the sanctuary were problematic for some. Nothing seemed familiar anymore. Along the way, voices began to be raised, yearning for the way things used to be. Change can be difficult for us.
Peter and several of the other disciples, questions and uncertainty churning within them, yearn to return to the familiar, to the tried and true, to business as usual. And so they go fishing, in an effort to recapture life as it was before encountering Jesus. They go at night—a natural time to go, enabling them to have their catch ready to sell to early-morning customers. And yet, as John Killinger reminds us in A Devotional Guide to John, night and darkness carry significant symbolism in John’s Gospel, representing the world and its opposition to God. So, writes Killinger, “when the disciples catch nothing, we know why: they were fishing on their own power.” Try as they may, it would not work for the disciples to return to the way things were. Too much had happened. Too much water over the dam! The disciples were no longer the same people they had been, prior to living with Jesus.
Indeed, the disciples discover that when they try to return to “normal” life, the risen Jesus does not leave them alone, but instead reveals himself to them yet another time. And so we have this rather remarkable story in which Jesus, whom Peter and the others do not yet recognize, calls out to the disciples while they are still out on the water and frustrated from a night’s unsuccessful venture. But when Jesus urges them to throw out their nets one more time, and this time they pull in a huge catch of fish, the disciples understand that the stranger on the shore is not a stranger at all; it is the risen Jesus. Peter swims ashore, and Jesus prepares breakfast.
The story is reminiscent of the account of Peter’s initial call to discipleship, recorded in Luke 5. In both stories, an overwhelming catch of fish points figuratively to the abundance of God’s grace and compassion, and in each story the disciples are called to join with Jesus in living and proclaiming the wonder of God’s love for all manner of people.
On the beach after serving breakfast, Jesus turns anew to the disciples—the same followers who had forsaken him when the going got tough, who were nowhere to be found when Jesus was crucified, who cowered behind closed doors in the aftermath of that crucifixion—to these very disciples Jesus once again issues an invitation to follow him. Indeed, Jesus places his mission right back in their laps. To Peter, the one who had boasted only a short time before Jesus’ arrest that he would follow Jesus anywhere, even laying down his life for Jesus; to Peter, the one who only hours later three times denied even knowing Jesus; to this same Peter Jesus now asks, “Do you love me?” Not once, but three times Peter is given opportunity to affirm his love and loyalty, and each time Peter insists, “Lord, you know that I love you.”
There is something rehabilitating for Peter about this unexpected exchange with Jesus. Along with the sense of forgiveness, Peter three times hears Jesus reaffirm his calling. Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. It is as if Jesus is saying to Peter, “Yes, I know that you do love me. Now accept my forgiveness and embrace anew the calling to care for all those for whom I care.”
Forgiveness, challenge, and commission become one for Peter—deeply intertwined experiences. Pondering this text from John 21, biblical scholar N. T. Wright observes:
The fishing, the feeding, the forgiveness and the challenge are all shot through with a sense of something accomplished now to be worked out, something achieved now to be implemented, something which Jesus has done that must now sweep Peter and the rest along in the tidal wave of new life, new possibilities.
In other words, Easter is not the end, but the beginning. What God has accomplished at Easter—the surprising resurrection—is not a once-and-done event, but a call to join with the risen Christ in living and proclaiming the unexpected possibilities of new life.
A few years back I read of a school system in a large city that had a program to help children keep up with their schoolwork during stays in area hospitals. One day a teacher assigned to the program received a call to visit a particular student, but no details were given to her about the youngster’s condition. She checked in with the student’s regular classroom teacher, who explained that the class was currently studying nouns and adverbs. But neither the classroom teacher nor the one who requested she call upon the student let the visiting teacher know that the boy had been severely burned and was therefore in nearly insufferable pain. Upon arriving in the hospital room, the teacher was shaken by the student’s condition, but managed to stammer that she had been sent by the school to help him learn nouns and adverbs. Then, not knowing how else to handle the dismaying situation, she hurried through the lesson. As you might expect, she was certain that she had bungled the effort.
Returning the following day, a nurse stopped her in the hall before she entered the room, questioning, “What did you do to that boy?” Immediately the teacher was on the defensive, and tried to apologize. But the nurse interrupted her. “You don’t understand what I mean. We’ve been very worried about him, but ever since you left him yesterday, his whole attitude has changed. He’s fighting back, responding to treatment. It’s as though he suddenly decided to live.”
Two weeks later, after significant healing, the young student was able to explain that he had given up until the teacher arrived. When she began a routine lesson on grammar, he concluded that there must be reason to push on. After all, reasoned the boy, “They wouldn’t send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a dying boy, would they?”
The power of the unexpected. The hospitalized student little anticipated the coming of a teacher to reintroduce the routine into a very uncommon experience. On the other hand, seeking to find the routine, Peter and the other disciples little expect anything but the routine. Perhaps the message is that our unpredictable God is able to work in a host of different settings and experiences—sometimes through us, sometimes in us and among us, sometimes in spite of us. Whatever the case, the presence of the risen Christ makes all the difference. Melanie Morrison writes in The Stuff of Recognition, “Yes, life goes on as usual—meals are eaten, bread is still broken, but everything is different now because Christ is here, in the midst of the usual, the taken-for-granted.”
Much as I might sometimes prefer it otherwise, truth is, we are perhaps more likely to be surprised by the risen Christ in a hospital room, or while out fishing, or in the midst of routine week-day responsibilities, than we are on Sunday mornings, even with well-crafted sermons and thoughtful worship services. Even when we little expect it, the risen Jesus may well intrude upon our lives, inviting and even coaxing us along the journey toward new life. Along the way, we glimpse a vision of a new world coming—a world of justice, love and peace. And we hear the call to discipleship. The risen Christ comes to us, seeks us, forgives us, sets us free, and gives us work to do. Shall we not, even now, embrace the power of unexpected grace and unanticipated challenge?
God of peace and healing and grace, as you send rain to nourish the earth and to feed all living things, so we pray that your healing river would flow throughout all humankind and all creation. To our world which continues to rely upon military weapons for security and strength, send healing waters of forgiveness, healing waters of renewed trust in your and your kingdom.
God, we are thirsty—thirsty for an end to our self-centeredness and fear; thirsty for an end to our world’s oppression and divisions. We thirst, O God, for renewed hope and for deepened faith, for healing waters upon this land, and in the hearts of each one of us.
Some of us come today, O God, knowing the pain of broken relationships, the hurt and disappointment that come when the reality of our lives falls short of our dreams. Some of us here this morning yearn for deeper relationship with you, O God, but are uncertain what that will mean. Some of us, God, are grieving the loss of a loved one. And some of us, God, sense a gnawing dissatisfaction within us, but cannot define its source. Gracious God, whatever our personal need this day, send your healing waters down upon our parched souls.
Hear us now, Lord God, as we remember those in special need of your healing touch, your light and your love …
God of light, grant us vision for the living of these days. Let the waste of warfare cease. Wash the blood from off the land. May the seeds of freedom awaken and flourish around the globe. And may your realm of living become reality, here and now among us, even as it is in heaven. Amen.