Let’s Go Fishing

Easter 3, Year C

Grace Church

April 18, 2010

Easter season is such a joyous time. Everything around us proclaims the reality of new life, new life in Christ and new life in the world. It’s not just Easter. Yesterday Madison was a whirl of activity—everything from the opening of the Summer Farmer’s Market on the Square, to the Wisconsin Film Festival, to yes, the Spring Football game at UW. Flowers and trees are in bloom, and we’ve had some temperatures that are more summer-like than typical April.

The celebration of Easter is linked closely to the seasonal cycle of spring, and together, they put is in upbeat moods. As humans, there is something deep within our psyches that causes us to respond in joy and celebration to the promise of new life, whether it be the new life in Christ experienced in the resurrection, or the beauty of tulips. That hardly needs saying, but I think it helps to remember that while there was a full church here at Grace on Easter Sunday, the other services of Holy Week were more sparsely attended. Grace is not at all unique in that regard; so far as we know, Christians have always preferred the joyous resurrection to the somber services of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

Today’s lessons, however remind us of something else basic to humanity. The highs don’t last. Today’s gospel comes immediately after last week’s story of Jesus appearing to the disciples and to Thomas. They’ve seen Jesus, even Thomas has seen Jesus, and declared, “My Lord and my God!” Friends, it doesn’t get any better than that. They’ve got all the confirmation they need that Jesus has been raised from the dead; for goodness’ sake, they’ve seen him, not once, but twice! But what is their response to this momentous event? Well, they go fishing.

Huh?

Yup, you heard me right. They go fishing. Now, this isn’t one of those little vacations, a few days off after a rough time at work. No, the disciples went fishing because that’s who they were, fishermen. To put it bluntly, they went home, to Galilee, and went back to pick up their lives where they had left off when they had gone off to follow Jesus.

These disciples had come from Galilee; at least four of them, James, John, Peter, and Andrew, had been snatched by Jesus from their boats, when he called them to be follow him and be fishers of people. And they had followed him, from Galilee to Jerusalem. They had been with him as he taught, and healed, worked miracles. They were with him at the Last Supper; they saw his crucifixion, and witnessed his resurrection. And after that, after all of that, they returned home, and picked up their lives at the very point they had left them, those months, or years earlier. They went back to work.

This little detail sheds considerable light on all of our biblical texts this morning. We have three remarkable texts, three very different, dramatic, perhaps even life-changing events. Paul is struck down on the road to Damascus, and is suddenly transformed from a persecutor of this new movement of Jesus’ disciples. He becomes one of its most important leaders.

In the reading from Revelation, we are presented with a powerful, vivid, even seductive vision of heavenly worship. We are in the throne room of heaven. Just before today’s reading, the writer described his vision of God sitting on the throne, surrounded by four beasts. Today, we hear his description of the lamb that was slain. Surrounding that scene are 24 elders, each holding a harp and a bowl of incense; and beyond them, a host of angels, thousands of thousands. They are singing, Worthy is the lamb that was slain…–Those of you who complain about a little incense on Christmas Eve or the Easter Vigil, imagine how much smoke 24 bowls would put out!

These are two images of enormous power. And I can’t think of either of them without thinking of artistic representations. There’s a painting by the Roman painter Caravaggio of the scene. Paul has been knocked down to the ground off his horse. He’s lying there with his limbs flailing about, his arms seem to be reaching for the sky. The only light in the picture is coming from above, and it is directed on his face, like a spotlight. It’s as if he’s in the middle of a seizure, completely senseless, or sensing only the presence of Christ.

The story of Paul’s encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus may be one of the most important images we have of the Christian life. It’s a dramatic example of conversion. Over the years, Christians have come to expect most conversions to be as dramatic as that of Paul. We may not expect a bolt of lightning from the blue, knocking us off of our horses. But many of us do expect in our own lives a dramatic turn around; a complete break with the past, as in the words of the familiar hymn, “I once was lost, but now, I’m found, was blind, but now, I see.”

And of course, it doesn’t get any more dramatic than the vision St. John the Divine describes here in Revelation. Here, I don’t think of a visual image. I think of a musical one. I can’t hear these verses without Handel’s Messiah coming to mind. This scene provided Handel with the text for the concluding choruses of Messiah.

No doubt, just like we may expect our conversions to be as dramatic as that of St. Paul, we, many of us expect our worship to be as spectacular as that described here. We expect our lives to be filled with such overwhelming, exciting experiences.

But life isn’t like that. It’s not all highs, moments of clear vision, dramatic experience, emotional or religious ecstacy. Many of us have experienced those highs; and we may all even come to expect highs. We expect them, not only to give us faith, but also to prove our faith, and to continue to sustain us when times get tough.

And of course they do. But only sometimes, and for some people. Visions can be clear, faith may be certain, but for some people, for many people perhaps, visions don’t come, and in the midst of faith, there is also uncertainty. And we see this in today’s readings. Paul saw the risen Christ, heard the Lord speak to him, but no one else around him did. That experience gave him certainty that would stay with him throughout his life, but it offered nothing to those around him.

And in today’s gospel. It is a group of disciples, including Thomas, who had confessed, “My Lord and my God,” as well as Peter, who saw the empty tomb, and the one whom the gospel always calls, the “one whom Jesus loved” and tells us that this one was closest to Jesus at the Last Supper, stood at the foot of the cross during the crucifixion, was with Peter at the empty tomb; these three, in some respect, the gospel’s heroes, who are on the boat, fishing.

So they’ve abandoned Jerusalem, they’ve left the scene where they saw Christ crucified, and saw him raised, and are back, going about their daily business. We don’t know if they were still wracked with doubt, we don’t know if they were trying to figure out what to do. All we know is they went back to work. And as they were working, one of them, only one of them, recognized the figure on shore as that of Christ.

I suspect we all look back to the disciples and think to ourselves, as hard as they had it, boy, when they saw the resurrection, they had it made. There was no room for doubt any more, no reason for doubt. We want that kind of certainty the resurrection stories offer us. If it was so hard for the disciples, for Thomas, for the rest to believe that Jesus was risen from the dead, if even seeing Jesus was not all that life-changing, why should we expect something our own experience of conversion, to make all the difference in the world?

The fact of the matter is that we can’t rely on those highs to get us through our lives, to give us consistent faith. The reality is much more mundane, much simpler. And here’s where the disciples’ experience gives us a clue. They were going about their ordinary lives, and in the midst of them, when least expected, they encountered Christ. It was profound, yet it was quite run-of-the-mill. A simple meal shared among friends provided the context for that encounter. There were no lightning bolts, there was no incense or angelic host.

So there was Easter in the ordinary, Easter in the simple passing of a piece of grilled fish around a morning fire. But it didn’t end there. It doesn’t end there. At the end of the meal came a promise of something else, not resurrection, celebration, and joy, but suffering and martyrdom. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not something only to be enjoyed and celebrated. It is empowering, and challenging. Rejoicing in the power of the resurrection, let us go forth to show the love of Christ in the world!