Easter 3, Year C, 2001

Trinity Cathedral, Trenton, NJ

Reading: John 21:1-14

There's something
which seems
to creep into
the air
after Easter Day.
Perhaps
it's that the build up
is so dramatic
that it never quite reaches
our expectations,
or maybe it's just
that once we've experienced
the heady heights
of celebration
everything else
seems
kind of second rate.
There's a kind
of disappointment
which sets in,
a flatness,
into which
all our fears, all our hurts
come flooding in.
Trivial things
become
blown out of proportion,
old pains
begin to ache.

There is a sense of
"What next?"
and to cover over
the discomfort of waiting,
we go back
to what we know best.

For the disciples
that was fishing.

It had been a long three years,
long,
and wonderful.
Jesus
had called them
from their fishing boats,
called them to travel
beyond their villages,
to learn
and then teach and heal.
They had seen places
their families had only heard of,
they had rubbed shoulders
with the highest
of religious leaders
and the lowest
of desperate outcasts.
They had seen it all,
seen, even,
the aching death
of their Lord,
nailed on a cross in agony
and laid in a cold stone tomb.
And they had seen
the empty grave,
and some even angels,
and he had stood among them
hands and feet bloodied
from the nails,
and breathed his peace on them -
a surprising resurrection.

But now they were back,
back in Galilee
where he had told them to go,
but there was no sign of him here.
Just the same old lake,
same villages,
and people looking curiously
as they passed,
the laughter
which stopped so abruptly
when they came into a room,
taunting questions
about the so-called Messiah
disgraced
on the cross.
Home
was home no longer:
they'd taken a risk
and it had cost them everything.
Perhaps they wondered
if this whole resurrection thing
had been just wishful thinking,
the momentary fantasy
of hopeful hearts.

They were back
where they
had begun,
back, standing
by the shore
of a lake called Galilee.
And they were fishermen, you know,
back before
they had taken to following Jesus.

All they had to live on
were the memories,
and old habits die hard.

So Peter,
finding a boat pulled up on the shoreline,
called to the others.
"Nathanael, James, the rest of you!
D'you want to go fishing?"

And they pushed off the boat, climbed in,
and threw out the nets
ready
to haul in
yet another catch.
Back to the old business,
food for the table,
making ends meet.

It was as if
those three years with Jesus
had never
happened.

They fished all night.
And so
it was perhaps not so surprising
when they didn't recognize
the stranger standing
on the shore.
Tired from hours staring into the darkness.
absorbed in their work,
they heard him call to them,
"Got any fish?"
- just a casual question
from a hungry passer-by
looking for breakfast -
"got any fish?"

"No!" they shouted.
"No luck yet."

"Why don't you try
the other side?"
he called out.

Now you know
as well as I do
that a few feet of boat-shadowed water
is no barrier
to a fish,
and if there are no fish
on one side,
likely as not
there won't be any
on the other side either.
But they'd been fishing all night
and had caught nothing at all,
and so it seemed like this
was as good an idea
as any.

So they hauled up the nets,
heavy and wet,
and heaved them over
the other side
of the boat.

And suddenly
they were filled with fish,
not just a few,
but overflowing,
more than they would expect to catch
in a week of fishing.

And then they began to remember...
It was just like
the other time,
back, the very first time
they met Jesus.
That time too
they had fished all night
and their nets were still empty,
that time too
a stranger
had been standing
on the shore.
That time too,
he had called out to them, 'Throw your nets
over the other side";
that time too
their nets had come up
full of fish.
They began to remember...
It was Jesus, then,
that stranger,
whose advice
filled their nets
could it be
that this stranger, too,
was their Lord?
"It's the Lord"
they whispered excitedly to one another.
"It's him. He hasn't abandoned us. He's here,
just as he said!"

And Peter
impetuous as usual
tucked up his clothes
jumped over the side of the boat
and waded
back to the beach.

You heard the rest of the story.
The boat made it safely
to shore,
they hauled in and counted the catch,
and Jesus and his disciples
shared bread and grilled fish
for breakfast.

A meal
in the presence
of the risen Lord.

The disciples
went fishing.
Old habits
die hard.

We've just been through
the most intense time
in the Christian year.
We've prepared
with penitence,
we've mourned
our Savior's death.
We've celebrated
his resurrection.
Our days
have been filled with anticipation;
but now that's over.
The prayer book might tell us
it's still the Easter season,
but the world around us
tells us Easter is over,
and with it
the joy
and the celebration
and the hope.

We go back
to what we know;
we return

to our routines.

And to some extent
that's a good thing.
We can't spend our whole lives
in the intensity of Holy Week and the Triduum.
The washing
still needs to be done,
there are letters to be written
and meals to be cooked
and bills to be paid.

But there's also a danger. Because not all
the old routines
are healthy ones.
We recognize that
when we take on Lenten disciplines.
The idea of Lenten disciplines
at its root,
is not just
that deprivation leads to holiness,
its that there are things in our lives
which get in the way
of us serving God,
there are things in our lives
which get in the way
of us imitating Christ.
We try to put those things aside in Lent,
so that we might be
formed and reshaped and remade
more and more in the image of Christ.
And hopefully
that doesn't end
with Lent
- its part of a transformation
which last
the whole of our lives.

But Easter comes and goes, and it's so easy
just to fall back
into the old patterns.
Like the disciples
after the high point
of resurrection,
when life has returned to normal
and we can no longer see so clearly
the presence of God,
its all too easy
to go back to the way
things always were.
As if
it had never been
any
other
way.

Old routines, old habits - they always catch us out, don't they?
As individuals
and as communities as well.

We return to them
as places of safety,
but they can also be destructive places, destructive to ourselves
and to one another.
Old hurts and aches take over,
and we forget God's promises
of healing and forgiveness, we forget
Christ's call to us
to forgive and heal.

But as the disciples found out
Jesus is not content
to leave us
back where we were.
Things are not as they used to be,
the past does not set the future in stone.

Christ has died,
Christ has risen, Christ will come again!
Week by week
we proclaim the mystery of faith;
week by week
we know
the presence of Christ
as we gather around the table
to share the bread of life
and the cup of salvation.

And that is the same Christ
who called to the disciples across the sea of Galilee,
who didn't leave them
back at their fishing,
but called them on
to go build the church.
We
are their legacy;
we
are living proof
that the death and resurrection of Christ
was not in vain,
that the death and resurrection of Christ
was the beginning of something new.

Christ's death and resurrection
have changed the way the world works
and us with it.

We are called
to live in the light of Easter, not only
for our annual celebration,
but day by day, week by week.
We live
as people of the resurrection.
Turning away from the forces of evil and death,
claiming
and proclaiming
new life,
offering the healing and forgiveness
which we have received
to one another
and to the world.

And when we feel
the flatness
of the post-Easter letdown,
when we feel trapped
by old habits, old routines,
Christ calls us
to share in the meal
where he is always present,
to break the bread of life,
to draw strength from his strength,
to allow the healing and forgiveness
which flows from his death
and his resurrected life
flow into us,
into our community,
into our world.
People of the resurrection,
we proclaim
Christ has died,
Christ is risen,
Christ will come again!

Raewynne J. Whiteley
29 April 2001