"Seeing Differently" April 14, 2013

Acts 9:1-6 John 21: 1-19 One of the shifts from the 20th Century into living in the 21st Century is that in that earlier time even a dozen years ago, there was belief that Everything had meaning, while in the 21st Century so much is coming at us so quickly that we each have made of life our own Facebook collection of experiences. According to our Timeline our birthdate was on this date, we graduated from College here, we got married, we went to this concert, we went to the Grand Canyon, we had children, all as separate individual events in time and space. But rather than there being so many individual balls bouncing through each of our lives, there are connections and developments of thought, one event does link to another, like balls of yarn and each experience changes us such that we can never again see things as they used to be. Recently in a small group we were reading the narrative of the crucifixion and the reactions to Easter. The Roman Centurion who having watched Jesus suffer professed “Surely this was the Son of God.” Mary who told the Disciples “I have seen the Lord!” Thomas who confessed “My Lord and My God!” And we asked, “After Simon Peter denied Jesus 3 times, and on Easter witnessed the empty tomb, why do you think Peter went home?” And someone responded “To hide from Jesus finding him.” Surely Peter was a mess of emotions. Jesus had prophesied that he would be “The Rock,” Peter himself had affirmed “Everyone else may fall away but not me” and 3 times when confronted he not only said “He was not a Disciple,” “He was not like the disciples,” “He did not even know the man or want to!” If Jesus had stayed dead, Peter would have had to deal with his guilt, but he would only have himself to deal with. With the Savior being out there, at some point they were going to meet again, at some point Peter knew Jesus would look Peter in the eye to ask the questions of this morning. There is a wonderful completeness about John's Gospel. In the 20th Chapter there were resolutions about what happened to Jesus after the resurrection in Chapter 19. Having appeared to Mary, then to the the disciples, then to Thomas who has doubts, Jesus confronts doubts with faith. There was this lovely conclusion to the Gospel, but then there is this Epilogue, about what happened to the body of the disciples, what happened after the Easter for Peter. After weeks of feeling melancholy, Peter says “I am going fishing.” Maybe you have felt like that. There is something about returning to what is familiar, going back to what you knew, especially being out on the water listening to the rhythm of the waves. However, having been commercial fishermen, Andrew, Nathaniel, James, John and Peter, were not the kind to bait a hook or tie a fly and wait quietly for a single nibble. Going Fishing represented a return to work. Yet, all night long they had sweat and toiled, throwing out the nets, and hauling them back through the heavy water time after time, dredging up everything. Yet working all night long, dredging everything up, they had caught nothing. Even having once been successful commercial fishermen, they could not just go back to the way things had been. The disciples had had an experience which changed them they could not simply go back to what they had been. Curious, that after Mary having mistaken Jesus for the Gardener, after two of them walking all the way to Emmaus listening to him teach, after the Disciples not recognizing him when Jesus came and breathed upon them, after Thomas being invited to touch his wounds and believe, still when Jesus called out from the shore they did not recognize the Stranger. But when The Stranger tells them to cast their nets on the other side, the beloved Disciple suddenly knows who it is! Even more odd, that knowing he was going to jump into the water, Peter put on his clothes? If you were going swimming you would not add clothes, you would strip them off because they would weigh you down. The only other time persons in the Bible ever put on clothes because they were naked, was when Adam and Eve knew they had sinned and did not want God to see what they had done. Now that sounds like Peter. And yet, I think perhaps the narrator tells this part of the story too quickly. If you have been missing your friend, the companion you spent the last three years with who has been taken away,... I wonder if the order of this story might be that Having caught nothing for the whole night's work, the stranger on shore tells them to cast their nets on the other side. Hearing him say this, the beloved disciple said it was Jesus. Overcome with emotion, Peter put on his clothes and leaped off the boat to show Jesus how thrilled he was to see him. I am not convinced whether Peter did a Canon-ball, or a belly smacker, but he surely scared all the fish into their nets, 153 of them. Reaching the shore, Peter came to stand beside Jesus who was cooking at the fire. Peter would have been reminded by the warmth, by the smell of smoke, by the charcoal, that the last time he had warmed himself by the fire was when others had challenged “Are you not one of them” and he had said “I do not even know the man.” Whenever there is discord among us, when we have said things or done things, and we do not know how to forgive, we struggle with what to say. If it not possible to go back to see things as they used to be before, then is it possible for us to go forward? What has to be said, what has to be done to forgive, to accept one another differently? This exchange between Jesus and Peter is like the conversation in Fiddler on the Roof between Tevia and his wife Glode. When there is trouble in town, when their world has changed, when their children are getting married, the husband asks his wife “Do you love me?” and she replies for 25 years I have kept your house, bore you children, milked your cow, shared your bed, “Do I love you?” And the husband confesses when we married we were so young and naïve, shy and scared. My parents said we would come to love each other, so now I want to know: “Do you love me?” His wife, says “After 25 years of sharing your bed, milking your cow, bearing your children and keeping your house, I guess I do.” To which the the husband says “I guess I love you too.” Over the Centuries, scholars have postulated that Jesus asking Peter 3 times, is redemption of 3 denials. Others that there is a nuance of difference in the 3 of love, that because of this experience there is more than a simple AGAPE of sharing being creatures of God, there is true BROTHERLY AFFECTION, even VULNERABILITY. All of which is true, but I think even more, what Jesus was saying to Peter was “If you love me, then DO IT!” Love is not a warm tingly feeling. Love is not an intellectual, philosophical commitment. LOVE requires living your life differently because you are committed no matter what. Saul had been a man obsessed. He saw his own point of view and nothing else. Saul was like the person so committed to their work, they miss what is going on with their family. Saul was the person so committed to their side, they understand COMPROMISE as bargaining “What are you going to give in exchange for my giving in” rather than finding ways to partner together for a new and different way. The change is Saul, to become the Apostle Paul was not a conscious, philosophical decision, I think I want to do this instead. But a struggle with God. That struggle does not come to all of us, and never in the same way for each. Some grow up in the Church, never really questioning, never needing to have a Damascus Road experience just thankful to be alive, but missing the drama. We take for granted all we have, what we believe. When I first came to be your pastor, I had a way of affirming what you had done. Whenever we acted as the Church, I would publicly say “Well Done!” until eventually the Session told me to retire that phrase. More recently, it has been a personal and sincere “Thank you.” But at times we become so busy with cooking meals and cleaning dishes, with serving on committees, with providing music, with responding to all the different balls that drop one experience after another, we fail to notice. In sharing years of marriage. In trying to have a child when it does not come. In caring for children, especially when their lives are at risk. In working at a job when it feels as though you are all alone. In all of life, we change one another by sharing experiences, such that we can never see life as it used to be. Let the scales drop from your eyes and see, that because of you, because of what your life has been, the lives of others are different, even blessed by God.