“So, Now What?”
Christ is risen. What do we do next?
Sermon Preached by
The Reverend Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, April 18, 2004
Text: John 21:4-14
Twenty years ago next month I was ordained into the ministry of the United Church of Canada. It is also 20 years ago next month that Dr. Hunnisett was similarly ordained. Thinking about that this week, I have reminisced about the past 20 years. I have cast my mind back to some of the notable occasions. Most especially, I remember the very first service that I conducted as a ordained minister, in northern Nova Scotia.
It just so happened that to celebrate the arrival of the new minister the church decided to celebrate the Sacrament of Communion. So, not only in word but also in sacrament I could symbolize the beginning of our ministry together. You can imagine how nervous I was and how ready I was for the moment. There has never, ever been an order of service so meticulously prepared as that one. Every “i” was dotted, every “t” was crossed, every comma was in the right place. Everything had to be perfect, so much so that I asked all the elders to come in on the Saturday to rehearse Communion, in order that we get it absolutely right.
My first Sunday arose. I put on my gown and robes for the second time. (The first was the ordination service.) I went through the service and came to the Communion. It was a most touching moment. I went through the liturgy flawlessly. The choir sang beautifully, as I'd never heard a choir sing before. It was a surreal moment. I served myself, I let the elders serve the congregation in the pews and everything was returned to me at the Lord's table.
I then immediately began to say the words of institution: “Take this bread and eat it. Take this cup and drink from it,” when I realized that all the elders were beginning to shuffle uncomfortably in their seats. Looks were passed, gestures were made. I couldn't figure out why. I just thought they were a particularly irritable group. So, I continued with the service, we sang the final hymn and I pronounced the benediction.
When I went to the door a couple of very nice elders pointed out to me that the elders had not been served Communion at all. The Clerk of Session, one dour but delightful Mr. Bob McGregor, whom I will always remember, came and put his arm around me as only a Clerk of Session could and said, “Young man, don't you worry about this one wee bit at all. After all, Jesus wasn't big on formalities. When He gathered with His disciples He broke bread and handed it around a campfire, so don't you worry about such things. You're okay with Jesus.” My heart went a-pitter-patter with the joy of the moment. Mr. McGregor walked about five steps, turned, looked me in the eye and said, “But laddie, never do that again.” I got the message.
When I was reading the passage this week, that memory flooded back - Mr. McGregor talking about Jesus taking fish, taking bread around the campfire and sharing it with His disciples. I thought of that glorious moment in the Book of John where Jesus appears to His disciples, we are told, for the third time. This is part of a very small number of stories that deal with the aftermath of Easter and the Resurrection. It seems like a very strange story and when you read your Bible, you will notice that it seems tacked on at the end of John. At the end of Chapter 20 in John we're told that there are many other things that Jesus said and did. Then, all of a sudden, we have this story.
Most scholars agree that the story was written by the disciples of John, who in recalling the story John had told them, decided that it needed to be added to the book lest it be forgotten. But it was also, I believe, written for another purpose: to show the church and the world that after the Resurrection, Jesus appeared in a bodily form. You see, there were some who believed the Resurrection was no more than a series of visions, of apparitions in the minds of a few people who themselves were demented by grief.
The early church had to struggle to let the world know that when Jesus appeared to the disciples He came in a bodily form. He talked to the men on the boat, He sat around the campfire and prepared a meal. These are earthly, bodily things and while it is evident that the disciples did not recognize Him, and there are many reasons why you might give an argument for that, the fact is, they saw something, they felt something, they experienced something that was not only a vision, but concrete. Now, not a body exactly like the body that had been crucified on the cross. Something had transformed, something had altered. You and I don't know what that is and the Bible doesn't explain how it took place, but clearly it was important enough, and central enough in the minds of the disciples that this encounter with Jesus by the sea was sufficient to warrant them telling the story and letting people know that Jesus was raised from the dead, not just disappeared from a tomb. There is a difference.
I want to look at this story this morning as we bask in the glow of the post-Easter experience. What is it in this passage that speaks to us? What's powerful about what happened? For indeed, in most commentators' minds this is a passage to help the church, to inspire Christians throughout the ages, to rise up in their hearts and their lives with the good news of the risen Christ.
Now, as I look at this story it seems there are some spatial images that give us an inkling of what this was all about. Clearly there is a sense that the disciples experienced something at that time, but in their experience I'm sure they must have been looking behind as well, to the past.
This week I spoke to a member of our church who's in the business community. The purpose of my call, actually, was to talk about earthly matters rather than heavenly ones. So, I asked him (big mistake), “How are you doing?”
He told me. He recounted everything that was happening to him that week. He said: “It's funny you know, my investments and the dollar are down, but the value of my house, I've been told, has gone up. My children were home, which means my bank account is down, but now they've gone back to university so it'll go back up again [a common experience, I hear]. I understand that the people I work with don't particularly like me because of a decision made, but my wife was especially affectionate when I came home on Wednesday.” (I didn't need to know that.)
He gushed on about his life until I said to him, “Well, it seems to me that you're having a pretty normal week by the sound of things.”
He said: “Yes, but you know, on Easter Sunday, Andrew, I was in church and I was so elevated. All I could think of all week when I encountered a problem was, 'Where is the Control, Alt, Delete when you need it?'”
He added, “It seems I've come back to earth with a bang. I've come crashing back down again and I need to be reminded of the things that really matter.”
After the Resurrection of Jesus I think the disciples felt exactly the same way. Now, I don't know what was in their minds, I can only speculate, I can only imagine. But I'm sure when they were out on that boat fishing, many of them would have been thinking of Jesus and the calming of the storm. Remember the great sermon John Harries preached on that a couple of years ago? Jesus appeared to them in their time of need and calmed the waters.
They might have been thinking of the time Jesus, near the sea again, fed the 5,000 with a few loaves and fishes. Or maybe they were thinking about the time they were mending their nets on the shore and Jesus came along and said, “I want to make you fishers of men. I want to make you fishers of people. Drop your nets and follow me.” I'm sure all of these images must have been in their minds at some point as they fished and did their everyday chores. I'm sure their memories must have been strong.
You can imagine the power of the moment, then, when all of sudden they heard a voice on the shore saying, “Cast your nets on the right side of the boat.” Some of them realized that the one they saw was the One they remembered, the One they called Lord, the One they had seen crucified, the One that they had heard about from Mary Magdalene and Mary, the wife of Cleopas, whose tomb was empty. They must have been overwhelmed, and their memories must have flooded back to them like never before.
But when Jesus appeared to them they had to put the past behind them. All their previous assumptions about Jesus were challenged when He appeared to them in person. All the images they had, all the memories they had were put in the past.
It is also fitting that Jesus came to them when they were underachieving. John tells us that they weren't catching anything. They had gone about their fishing at night, for nighttime was a good time to catch fish, and the Galilean fishermen often fished at night and slept during the day. Dawn was beginning to break, so it seemed that all was lost. They had completely lost their perspective and wasted another night on the boat.
In England, growing up, there were two famous comedians, sort of like the Wayne and Shuster of England: Morcambe and Wise, were Eric and Ernie. They were very funny men and I grew up listening to them. I've never forgotten one of the anecdotes they talked about, being unsuccessful at golf. It's a life lesson for me many times and one that's been altogether too close to my experience. Eric says to Ernie, “You know what your problem is?”
Ernie says: “No, what?”
And Eric says: “You stand too close to the ball after you've hit it!”
(Doesn't that sound familiar, golfers?)
Well, I think that's a problem of perspective as much as it is an inability to play golf. The disciples had lost their perspective. I believe that the fact of their not catching fish was a symbol of their spiritual situation, not just their work. Jesus came to them in the midst of their work when they were not successful, when they seemed like failures, and revealed Himself to them to lift them up.
John Calvin said, “This isn't an entirely bad thing.” In his commentary he wrote:
If we were always prosperous whenever we put our hand to labour, scarcely anyone would attribute to the blessing of God the success of their exertions. All would boast of their industry and would kiss their hands. But when they sometimes labour and torment themselves without any advantage, if they happen, afterwards, to succeed better, they are constrained to acknowledge something out of the ordinary course, and the consequence is that they ascribe to the goodness of God the praise of their prosperity and success.
In other words, it is when we are at our least successful that we understand there are resources greater than ourselves, and we turn to God. Jesus encountered the disciples when they were not catching fish and said, “Cast your net onto the right side of the boat and you will find some.” In other words, when you listen to my word, when I am with you, you will be able to accomplish what you are not able to accomplish without me.
On October 15, 1987, a man named David Huxley, at Mascot airport in Sydney, Australia broke a world record. Single-handedly, he pulled a jumbo jet weighing 187 tons, a distance of one hundred metres. Can you imagine? After about one minute and 30 seconds, he moved that plane 100 metres. David Huxley also happened to be a Christian and when asked afterwards the meaning of all of this, he tried to make an analogy between him pulling a jumbo jet and ourselves as Christians. He said, “On my own I could only pull this jet a few metres before I ran out of steam. But if the engines had power, if they had been used, then we can soar to great heights.”
My friends, when the disciples were trying to pull that jumbo jet on their own they were getting nowhere. When they were relying on their own power and abilities they weren't catching anything. But when Jesus appeared to them, everything changed. They had a resource, a wisdom, a power. In our daily lives, not just at the high moments of Easter when we have the brass playing and the glorious flowers, but also on the Sunday after, euphemistically called “Low Sunday” (no Sunday, by the way, should be low if we're Christians). Surely this is the time for us to remind ourselves that in our ordinary, everyday lives Christ Jesus encounters us and changes us, giving us a power that we normally don't have, by His presence.
But the disciples were not only underachieving, they were also overwhelmed. In their obedience they listened to Jesus and did what He said and cast their nets onto the right side of the boat. I agree with most commentators that this was not a miracle. Jesus was able to see from the shore what the men in the boat were unable to see. Dawn was beginning to break and when the sun shines on the water often you can't see anything from a boat because of the reflection, but from the shore you can still see the shoals. I noticed that when we used to go to a place in Bermuda called Flats Inlet. If I stood on a bridge and looked straight down I couldn't see the fish in the early morning light, but if I stood further along and looked at an angle, I could see the fish.
Jesus could see fish on the right side of the boat. He had a perspective that they didn't have. But once they realized who it was, not only were they overjoyed by the fact that they were able to make a great catch, but they were also overjoyed that Jesus was in their midst. It's very interesting that John tells us that Peter changes his clothing and puts on something new. When the disciples gathered around the campfire to eat the fish and the bread that Jesus had prepared, they didn't know what to say. They were overwhelmed by the power of what was happening.
Sometimes, my friends, being overwhelmed with joy is one of the great signs of the Christian life. It is recognizing that we cannot always capture the power of Easter. We cannot capture the mystery of Christ in mere words, no matter how we try to articulate them. Sometimes we just have to be in Christ's presence in awe and in worship and in wonder. You're doing that by being here today, the Sunday after Easter. It's in awe and in majesty and sometimes in silence that we express our faith.
One final thing: This story is all about, not the past, but the future. It's what lies before the disciples now that really counts. The language is brilliantly crafted by John (or his disciples) because it is loaded with imagery and meaning. We are given a couple of facts that appear to mean nothing on first reading, but they mean everything. We're told that there were 153 fish in that net - big ones. There has been much speculation as to what that 153 represented. Why such a specific number? I think Jerome gives us the best reason, that the zoologists at the time of Jesus believed there were 153 species of fish. In other words, all the fish in the world are represented in this catch.
We are also told that the net does not break. Why? Because the church is being given a message that the whole world is in its hands. That Christ gives us the net to carry on the original calling when He said, “You are to be fishers of people.” You are to collect, bring in, nourish, nurture the world in its fullness. It's a powerful image.
And the last thing they do is sit around a campfire and eat some bread and fish. A bodily thing to do with a bodily risen Lord. Not an apparition but an act of charity, an act of justice, an act of fellowship.
Very recently I attended a workshop on world affairs. During one presentation someone talked about the nature of hunger in the world. The presenter told us that nine million people a year die from hunger. That 840 million people in the world are malnourished. That every 3.6 seconds someone dies of starvation, and that three-quarters of those are under five years old. He went on to say that 1.5 billion people do not have enough iodine in their diets, essential for growth. Two billion do not have enough iron, again a building mechanism in our bodies. And he said, “I want you, as Christians, to think very long and hard about this problem, for it must be in our minds. It must be in our hearts.” And then he said, “If you don't believe me, watch this,” and from underneath the table he took a fish and a loaf of bread and slammed them on the table and asked this question, one that we ask the children this morning at the contemporary service: “What do you think Jesus would do?”
The symbol of Jesus feeding the disciples by the Sea of Galilee was a symbol of His profound concern for the world. He started by feeding His disciples. That's where He began, but be under no illusion, just like Communion, this is the feeding of the bodily needs of the world as well.
But it is not just that and that alone, there is one last thing. He fed them spiritually. I don't know what comes to your mind when I say the word “fat.” Something ugly, something horrible, something that needs to be trimmed, removed, something that is terrible? Well, I read something by a doctor named Paul Brand who worked as a medical missionary amongst lepers in India. He said, “You know, one of the things that lepers need when their faces have been distorted and their body cavities are growing, is fat.” Fat insulates. Fat supports and nourishes organs. Fat is what he calls a “banker cell.” A cell from which the body draws its resources and from which it gets its energy. He pointed out that an excess of fat is a terrible thing and many of us suffer from it, but fat in and of itself is not a bad thing. It's necessary.
But this is what he went on to say: “In a world that is starving for love, in a world that is starving for hope, in a world that is starving for peace, the church needs to be fat. It needs to be an energy that burns itself in order to help and to heal and to restore a broken world.”
When those disciples gathered around that campfire and ate their fish and took that bread they were once again enacting the meal that Jesus had shared with them on the last night, a meal of spiritual food. A reminder of the hunger of the world at the depth of its disbelief, and how, more than anything else, it needs the power of the risen Christ.
When I began my ministry 20 years ago and my parents attended my ordination service, I'll never forget something my father said to me. He said, “Never, ever, Andrew, forget the hunger of the world, and remember it is only Christ who can fulfill it.” So, people say after Easter, “So, now what?” The answer is: “The mission has just begun.” Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.