Four times a year I am required
to attend a meeting called a case conference.
Ten other student pastors drive to
On those Fridays I can count on two things…lots of carbohydrates and lots of annoying cell phone rings. It never fails to happen…all day long we seem to be held hostage to our cell phones.
None of us are emergency personnel. Not a doctor or a fireman or national security adviser in the bunch. Nobody ever goes running from the room to hop on a helicopter. Yet every call is jumped to like a teenager hoping for a prom date. And we all pause as the person answers, turns away from the group, and walks around the room in a whispered conversation. Here we are in a meeting we’ve all agreed to attend, but instead we attend to whomever is interrupting at the moment. Behaving in a way that shows the call is more important than showing respect to our facilitator or giving our undivided attention to each other.
And I just can’t place the blame on “student” pastors. I was at a clergy meeting of ordained ministers the next week, again about ten of us. Same thing. This time, my phone was one of the offending interruptors. It vibrates noisily and blares out a perky rendition of Billy Joel’s "Uptown Girl" Everybody laughed. But I prided myself on doing the right thing. I got up and left the room to take the call, which totally interrupted the meeting anyway, of course.
I wonder: in this age of instant accessibility are we more or less present to those around us? So much more talking … yet so much more distraction and disruption through our communication. I had to laugh. In the first meeting, two of the pastors-to-be actually said "Can you hear me now?" during their conversations. I guess they were having reception problems. But I could hear them now. All of us in the room could hear them now. Which leads me to observe, if you’re not a doctor with patients in the ICU, wouldn’t it be the polite thing to turn your cell phone or beeper off when you are meeting with someone. Especially, I might add, when you are meeting God at church. Unless, of course, you think God might call you on your cell phone…then I guess you better keep it on. But if God does call you on your cell phone, would you get that number for me?
God does call, you know. Today we
are hearing the stories of God’s call to the two greatest leaders of the
early church. We know them so well. They are the consensus all-kingdom heavy
hitters. They are remembered in two marvelous statues immediately in front of St.
Peter’s basilica in
Simon Peter is the first
among the apostles in all the gospels. But in the gospels he is the chief in a
confederacy of dunces. Title this chapter of his biography "Clueless in
We meet him today in a story every scholar agrees was a later postscript, an addition to the Gospel of John, which already has a perfectly good ending in chapter 20. But this was an extra story they just had to include when they heard it, so it got added in, thank God.
Just a few weeks after Jesus has
risen from the dead, Peter says, "Let’s go fishing." Think
about this for a minute! Peter has seen all the miracles, he has seen the empty
tomb, he has seen Jesus alive in the upper room, first
when Thomas isn’t there, then again when Jesus intentionally includes the
Dude of Doubt. But now, after all of that, Peter’s going back to
fishing? It’s not even
“Walleye Days!” Why would he
do that when he’s been commissioned to establish the church on earth?
Does he think he can go through Easter and then just go back to normal?
Doesn’t he realize Easter means it can never be normal again? I agree
with Richard Donovan: "People often fail because that which is comfortable
seduces them away from that which would save them." They abandon the
adventure of their dreams out of fear or cowardice or just plain laziness.
It’s easy enough to wander off the path if you aren’t mindful and alert.
But are we to think Peter has forgotten so soon, just a few weeks after the resurrection? It seems so faithless. I think maybe though that Peter goes back to fishing because it’s what he knows best. It’s where he’s known some success. It’s not because he no longer believes in Jesus, you see, but because he no longer believes in himself. He’s swallowed a big piece of humble pie, with a large glass of sour milk, and the taste of failure lingers in his throat. He denied Jesus, not once but three times. Now here stands the one he denied and abandoned to the cross. Peter knows…he isn’t worthy. He isn’t able. And he can’t bear to face his failure.
As John’s gospel postscript tells it, the story is loaded with beautiful symbolism. At one level it’s a simple story about reconciliation between friends and the reclamation of a broken man…such beautiful grace. At another level it’s about the church, and how Jesus loves us all even when we fail.
The scene is seaside back in Galilee. In the boat near the shore are Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James and John, and two other "unnamed disciples" (which is the Bible’s way of saying "insert your name here!") They fish all night and catch nothing. And of course, in the gospels, fishing is a symbol of the evangelistic mission of the church, from the beginning when Jesus says, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people" (Matt 4:19). And don’t miss this key part…which is emphasized in several of these resurrection stories: Jesus is with them though they do not know it. As Augustine prays in his Confessions:
Too late have I loved you
O Beauty ever ancient, ever new.,
You were with me,
But I was not with you.
Jesus is always with us, though often we are not with him … not aware that we are being cared for…watched over…loved.
He calls them to fish on the other side of the boat … like that small distance will make a difference. Yet there is a lesson for us here, when we work so hard and see so little result, it’s time to pause and reflect: perhaps we are trying too hard to do it all on our own. Perhaps we are focusing in the wrong direction. Maybe we are proclaiming the gospel to people who don’t care to hear it and ignoring those who need it most. When the disciples do follow Jesus’ instructions, they catch so many fish, they can’t haul the net into the boat. Meaning again, we won’t have any success in our fishing if we aren’t guided by Jesus as we cast our nets.
Peter is the first to realize: "It is the Lord!" He throws on his cloak and dives into the water … he knows better than try to walk on it! But he can’t wait for the boat to glide to shore. Is that because he loves Jesus so much or because he hopes Jesus will curse him for his failure before the others are close enough to hear? But Jesus is cooking breakfast, always one step ahead of us, already providing what we need. After breakfast, Jesus puts his full attention on Peter. He has been calling Peter day after day for three years, from the first day he walked up to him near this very spot and said "follow me." But Peter hasn’t really been paying attention. He has been listening through the filter of his own self-focus. He has been watching through the glasses of his expectations. He has been following in the path of his own goals. And he always gets things distorted. But now all his self-protective defenses and self-serving strategies have been stripped away. I imagine Jesus saying, "Can you hear me now? Are you ready to listen?"
Three times Jesus asks Peter, "Do
you love me more than these?" More than these what?
These friends? These trappings of a
career? These lovely surroundings on the
There it is! If you love Jesus, you show it, you live it, you answer his call. And what does he want you to do? If you love Jesus … feed his sheep. I think we can take that literally to apply to hunger ministries, but it’s about feeding souls, too, of course. What would it look like for you to take that call seriously, to love Jesus by feeding his sheep?
Anyway, it’s the third resurrection story we’ve heard in a row. On Easter we heard about Jesus rising from the tomb of his crucifixion. Last week we heard about Thomas rising from the tomb of his doubts. Today we hear about Peter rising from the tomb of his failure. Jesus’ resurrection means we rise, too, from whatever soul-killing tombs hold us down. And this is the power of Jesus’ love for us, not only that we rise, but that we rise to serve, we rise to love, we rise to follow his call.
The other great Apostle of the
church was the biggest bigot of his day. He was a scholar, but he was no
gentleman. Educated in Greek classics, trained in the religion of his
ancestors, Saul of Tarsus was a cosmopolitan man. But his education
didn’t broaden him…it narrowed him. He hated Gentiles. He even
hated Jews who were different from his beliefs. He especially opposed the
strange new teaching about the Messiah, and as if it wasn’t enough to do
violence to the “Jesus movement” in
What does it take for God to get our attention, where we’ll listen for a change instead of telling God how God should be doing things? Now Saul is ready to listen. "Who are you?" he stammers. "You know who," Jesus answers. "I’m the one you’ve been persecuting." Actually, Saul has been persecuting Jesus’ sheep, but as we’ve already seen and ought to get it by now, that whatever you do to the people around you, to your brothers and sisters, to the least of these in our world, you do also to Jesus. Jesus is not here in a way we can embrace, but we can embrace “them” and by so doing we can embrace “him” in them. That’s what he wants us to do.
Ironically in our readings today,
the model of “loving Jesus by loving others” is shown not by the
big “kahunas” Peter and Paul, but by this
fellow named Ananias. I never saw any statues of Ananias in
Oh, I think this might be a better world if more of us responded that way to God more often. Instead of filling God’s ears with all our prayers and pleas and demands, if we would simply put ourselves in God’s presence, give God our full attention, and say, "Here I am, Lord," and be ready to do what he calls us to do. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do when we come here? Stand in God’s presence, present for duty, and wait for God’s orders?
What the Lord wants Ananias to do is not easy. "Go into town and talk to this man named Saul and open his eyes to my truth." This is the other thing Ananias has in common with Abraham and Moses and Samuel and Isaiah and Mary. He says, "Who, me?" And he says, "Are you kidding?" And he says, “Do you realize what you are asking of me?" As if the Lord didn’t know. Well, a lot of the things most worth doing are also the hardest things for us to do. Face down our fears. Stretch beyond our comfort zone. Put ourselves out there on the edge. Overcome our own prejudices. Ananias has to go to the very man every Christian has come to fear, and help him, and love him in Jesus’ name. Who would that be in your life? Who would you have a hard time loving and helping in the name of Christ as your way of loving the Lord?
Ananias goes. He lays his hands on Saul and Saul’s eyes are opened. Saul stops using his old Jewish name and takes up a new Greek name, Paul, because he will go to the people he hated most as the good news bearer for the faith he hated most. But none of it would have happened if it hadn’t been for this man named Ananias.
All of these stories about God’s call today remind us of three beautiful, though somewhat unsettling truths. First, in Christ’s resurrection we also rise to serve. Second, there’s not a person here Christ can’t use to spread his love around. Third, Jesus has to get our attention first.
My friend, Christ is risen. He was here before you even arrived today preparing food for your soul. What would it take for you to hear him now?
He is here calling you by name. Can you hear him now?
May we pray?
Here we are, Lord. And with a little attention to your word and to our life stories, a little focused listening, we will hear your call for each of us, for all of us together. Give us the grace and good sense to hear and to do, to love and to follow in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Mary Anne Biggs, Pastor
Nekoosa United
Nekoosa