John 21:
1-19
+ So, when I was in graduate school,
studying poetry, I came across a great quote from the British literary critic,
A. Alvarez. He said, essentially, it’s good to be an apprentice. You learn the
task—in this case, of poetry—so that “when the Devil takes you by the throat
and shakes you,” it is then, that you’ll know what to do. It is then, that you
become a poet. It has been great advice. And I think it’s advice that can be
used in multiple situations.
So, the question for all of you this
morning is: When the Devil takes YOU by the throat and shakes you, what do you
do? What do you do when the bad things of this life are thrown at you? Do you
shut down, and curl up and just wait for it to pass? Do you freeze up and just
brace yourself for it? Do you react and rage at the injustice of it? Or do you
confront it all?
When the Devil takes me by the
throat, do you know what I do? I make myself busy. When I was diagnosed with
cancer, when my father died very suddenly, when any of the bad things happen, I
just get busy. I do something. Anything. Because not doing something is worse
than the Devil’s cold hand on my throat.
In this morning’s Gospel, we find
the Apostles doing something very much like that. They aren’t sitting around doing nothing. They are doing some thing. They are keeping
busy. In the wake of the murder of Jesus, in the wake of his resurrection, in
the wake of his appearing to them—in the wake of this unusual, extraordinary
activity in their lives—they do the most ordinary thing in their lives.
They go fishing. They pick up their nets and they go out onto
the water. No doubt, considering all
that had happened to them in the previous days and weeks, their minds were
reeling. But, now, they are
doing something they knew how to do. Something that gave them some comfort, no
doubt.
This what they did, after all. This
what their fathers did and no doubt what their grandfathers and
great-grandfathers did as well. Fishing
was in their blood. It was all they knew
until Jesus came into their lives.
And, no doubt, when the extraordinary events of Jesus’ murder and resurrection
happened, the only way they could find some normalcy in their life was by going
fishing.
The fact is, this is probably the
last time they would ever go fishing together. Their old life had once and for all passed away
with the voice that calls to them from the shore.
Their jobs as fishermen would change
with the words “Feed my sheep.” It that instant, they would go from fishermen
to shepherds. No longer would they be fishing for actual fish. Now they would be
the feeding the sheep of Jesus’ flock.
That symbolic number of 153 seems to
convey to us that the world now has become their lake. And what is particularly
poignant about all of this is Jesus doesn’t come into their lives to change
them into something else. He comes into
their lives and speaks to them in language they understand. He could have said to them: “Go out and preach
and convert.”
But to fishermen and shepherds, that
means little or nothing. They
are fishermen, not priests or pastors. They are not theologians.
Instead, Jesus says, “Feed my
sheep.” This they would understand. In those simple words, they would have got it. And when he says “feed my
sheep,” “Shepherd my sheep,” it was not just a matter of catching and eating. It was a matter of catching and nurturing.
And this calling isn’t just for those
men back then. That voice from the shore is calling us too. In a sense, we are called by Jesus as well to
be shepherds like Peter and the fellow apostles. And those around us—those that
share this world with us—are the ones Jesus is telling us to feed.
It isn’t enough that we come here to
church on a Sunday morning to be fed. A
lot of us think that’s what church is about. It’s about me being fed. It’s
about me being nurtured. To some extent, yes. But, if all we do is come to
church to be fed and then not to turn around and feed others, we are really missing
the point. We, in turn, must go out and
feed.
And this command of Jesus is
important. Jesus asks it of Peter three
times—one time for each time Peter denied him only a few weeks before. Those words of Jesus to Peter
are also words to us as well. In the wake of the devastating things that happen
in our lives, the voice of Jesus is a calm center. Amid the chaos of the world, the calm, cool
voice of Jesus is still saying to us, as we cope in our ordinary ways, “feed my
sheep.”
Because, it is in these strange and
difficult times that people need to be fed and nourished. Not by me, the priest, only. But
by all of us—all of who call ourselves followers of Jesus. It is in times like these that we need to be
fed, and it is in times like these that we need to feed others as well. That, in a sense, is what it means to be a
Christian.
Following Jesus, as we all know, is
not easy. The fact is:
it’s probably the hardest thing one can do.
Jesus is not present to us as he was present to those fishermen in this
morning’s Gospel. He is not cooking us a breakfast when we come back from
ordinary work. This God of
Jesus, this God he keeps telling us to love and to serve, is sometimes a hard
God to love and serve. Loving a God who is not visible—who is not standing
before us, in flesh and blood, is not easy. And
I’m sure I don’t have to tell anyone here this morning: loving our
neighbors—those people who share our world with us—as ourselves, is not easy by
any means.
It takes constant work to love. It takes constant discipline to love as Jesus
loved. It takes constant
work to love ourselves—and most of us don’t love ourselves—and it takes
constant work to love others.
But look at the benefits. Look at what our world would be
like if we loved God, if we loved ourselves and loved others as ourselves. It was be ideal. It would truly be the Kingdom
of God, here on earth. It
would be exactly what Jesus told us it would be like.
But to do this—to bring this
about—to love God, to love ourselves, to love each other, it’s all very hard
work. Some would say it’s impossible work.
There are people, I’ll confess, I don’t want to love. I don’t want to love
those people who hurt me, or who hurt people I actually do love. Sometimes I can’t love them. I’m not saying I
hate them. I’m just saying that sometimes I feel nothing for a person who has
wronged me or one of my loved ones.
In that instant, it really is hard
to be a follower of Jesus. Certainly, it
seems overwhelming at times. Let’s
face it, to live as Jesus expects us to live, to serve as Jesus calls us to serve,
to love as Jesus loves—it would just be so much easier to not do any of it.
Being a Christian means living one’s
life fully and completely as a follower of Jesus. It means being a reflection
of God’s love and goodness in the world.
A quote you’ve heard me share
many, many time is this one of St.
Augustine: “Being a Christian means being an Alleluia from head to toe.”
It means being an Alleluia even when
the bad things in life happen. It means
being an Alleluia—in our service to others—when we would rather go fishing. It
means, occasionally, going and feeding the sheep rather than going off fishing and
being a busybody when the bad things in life happen.
In the midst of all the things in
the world that confuse us—as we struggle to make sense of the world—the voice
of Jesus is calling to us and is telling us to “feed my sheep.” Because in feeding
those sheep, you know what happens: we too are fed. In nurturing Christ’s sheep, we too are
nurtured. See, it all does work out. But
we have to work at it for it to work out.
So, let us do just that. Let us feed
those Jesus calls us to feed. And let us look for the Alleluia of our lives in
that service to others. In finding the Alleluia amidst the darkness, we—in our
bodies and in our souls—become—from our head to our toes—an Alleluia.
No comments:
Post a Comment