Recognition, redemption, and rally

Good morning St. Bartholomew’s, Wichita... sorry we missed each other on Palm Sunday this year... good to be with you this third Sunday of Easter.

Hard to that it’s been three weeks since the intense journey of Holy Week and two weeks since the glory of Easter Sunday.  Have you settled back into a normal routine? 

How is it for us just two or three weeks after one of the highest points in our liturgical year together.  Did the final stretch of March madness overtake focus on messianic mission?  Has chatting about the ups-n-downs of our Kansas weather replaced passionate prayers?  Has the reality of tax season and the looming deadline of April 15 (tomorrow!) risen as more of a concern than the implications of external life promised through the resurrection of Jesus Christ?

We can imagine, though the particular circumstances were different, that the pattern of behavior was the same with our ancestors in faith, Jesus’ closest circle of friends.

After the roller coaster of emotions during the final week together with Jesus – the joy, the pain, the tragedy, the drama... and shortly after they had emerged from their hiding place in the upper room and had been shocked and awed by the glory of Jesus’ resurrection, the reality of Christ living and the urgency of following him has begun to fade as they return to going about the business of making a living and putting food on the table.  Simon Peter, the ‘rock’ (study symbol of faithfulness) upon which the emerging church is to be founded, says to his friends, “Hey, I’m going fishing.”  They say they’ll go with him.  The tangible, predictably practicality of fishing with friends probably feels pretty good and reassuring after all that they’ve been through together.  Perhaps while they’re out there laboring, as guys are prone to do, they’ll occasionally and maybe indirectly bring up the topic of Jesus the Christ in between cheers and jeers around the semi-competitive team activity of gathering food from the sea.

What does this morning’s lesson from John (John 21:1-19) also tell us?

Their story began with Jesus calling some of them from their routine of fishing for their daily meal and telling them that he’d show them how to fish for people – how to gather people back into the family of God.   After years together and many provocative and powerful examples of what he meant for them to do with their lives and talents, they’re now back focusing on their nets in the sea.  Jesus returns to help them recognize how his ministry has changed their lives and remember how they are now meant to go change the lives of many others.

The risen Lord comes to them as light amid the dimness of their unfruitful routine, gently awakening their recognition that he lives and is still concerned for them... and he instructs them to change perspective and behavior in order to succeed in their work of gathering.  He invites them to feast from plenty.  He redeems the betrayer through inviting affirmations of love.  He tells them to not just gather people together through casting wisely wide nets in the right direction, but to care for and tend to the needs of the huddled masses – “tend my sheep... feed my sheep...” follow the example I’ve given you. 

What’s your equivalent of ‘gone fishing’ right now in your life? 

What’s the practical, perhaps even enjoyable routine that keeps you active with friends, even if the harvest or yield of your collective labor isn’t really all that plentiful? 

Where might Jesus need to return to find you?

Whether he meets you where you are, by the seaside fire on the beach, or here at our table each week, our risen Lord invites us to break bread together with him and in so doing to recognize that we’re now part of one collective body, that we are to nourish ourselves with his strength given sacrificially to us, and that we’re to go feed others by inviting them to share the abundance prepared for us.

And, our risen Savior doesn’t just return to friends amid their benign routines to invite recognition and call them back to his holy work, Jesus also meets people on their ‘roads to Damascus’.  Even when someone is going to great lengths to fight the Good News and the people who are trying to spread it, Jesus may come to that person as a flash of insight or blinding awakening, knocking them off their course, turning their life around, and recruiting that person for the holy work of evangelism even in the face of continued suspicion and persecution.

Jesus did this with Paul, as we’ve heard in this morning’s lesson from Acts (Acts 9:1-20).  Paul’s encounter with the resurrected Christ stopped him in his tracks and sent him instantly in a new direction in life, emboldened with a new faith and courage that sustained him even as he endured the judgments of others who were suspicious of his sudden conversion and his motives for joining ‘The Way’ of Jesus Christ.

Notice that Jesus called a disciple to minister to Paul to facilitate and accelerate Paul’s conversion experience and help Paul see (literally) his new commission from Christ.  Ananias was aware of Paul’s reputation as a trouble maker for believers and was reluctant to face him for fear of putting himself in harm’s way for the sake of Christ’s will.  And yet, Christ compels Ananias and Ananias’s faithful and loving action toward one who was previously a foe leads to Paul’s new vision, baptism, strength for an unparalleled mission of evangelism.

What are we to hear in this? 

I hear two important things: One, no matter how off track a person might seem, even when they have been actively opposing the Gospel, they may still encounter the resurrected Jesus who will change their vision of themselves and their neighbors through charitable love. Two, Jesus may call any of us to minister to someone unexpected in ways that feel risky or threatening to us initially – we are to trust that Christ is with us and that through participating with the Holy Spirit, amazing changes are possible in that person’s live that may have wonderful widespread implications that are beyond anything we’d imagine.

Recognition.  Redemption.  Rally.

Our Lord is risen, indeed.  And just as it did for Peter, Paul, and other early followers of The Way, the reality of Christ’s resurrection has implications for us each day.

Jesus continues to return to us amid our routines, inviting us to recognize his presence in places and people that we might not have expected to find him.

Jesus invites all, even the betrayer and the persecutor, to healing repentance and will redeem the sight and strength of any who accept his offer of grace.

Christ rallies us to action, compelling us to cast wide nets on the right side of our vessels and to then feed and tend to the needs of those gathered back together into God’s one holy, catholic, and apostolic flock.  

Even when loving our neighbors as Jesus has shown us how to love costs us personally in the short term, we are assured through Easter that persecution, pain, and even death doesn’t have the final word in God’s kingdom of glory.

“God of the new fire, and feasting at daybreak: come to us in the dullness of routine and the pain of betrayal; call to us in the way of the cross and the joy of resurrection; through Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. Amen.”

(Shakespeare, Steven. Prayers for an inclusive church. New York: Church Publishing, 2009)