I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's on Sunday, May 22. The text is John 21:1-14; read it here.
This week, I flew to Houston. I had never been to Houston before. I was out there to do a short conference, at the invitation of a Episcopal Priest fried of mine. I met a lot of lovely people, and we did good wok together. I also consumed a rather impressive amount of food and alcohol. I ate fried pickles, a pulled beef sandwich, two breakfast tacos and drank several beers in something like a 14 hour period. This was not seen as out of the ordinary. That evening, feeling full in a way I can’t really find words to describe, we ended up back at my friend’s house, sitting out in the yard drinking home brewed beer and rocking in a rocking chair. The guys were playing guitar and singing songs that I had never heard before. One of these songs them literally featured an armadillo.
I am from Seattle, and after four years in New York, the songs I'd sing would most likely not be about armadillos. They would be markedly more urban. Perhaps about espresso, or traffic lights. Maybe a blues tune about the subways running behind. But somehow, sitting out on that porch in a place I'd never been and singing along with songs I'd never sung, I felt perfectly and completely at home.
Sometimes home springs up in unexpected places.
Sometimes it springs up on a beach
after a long night fishing.
There's something funny about this resurrection story. It's different from all the rest. In all the other gospels, we hear stories of Jesus appearing to the disciples in and around Jerusalem -- the place where the story has been pointing all along. The place where the story reaches its feverish end.
But this story -- this one doesn't take place where it all ended. This one takes place where it all began. It takes place in Galilee, beside the sea. Where Jesus walked along the seashore and saw some fishermen, and called them to follow him.
It makes sense that the disciples would want to go home.
It makes sense that, after all that's happened,
after the chaos and pain,
the rumors and the sightings,
the new up-side-down reality that death has unfolded back into life...
It stands to reason that the disciples would think to themselves,
Let's go home.
Back to Galilee.
Back the sea, where we lived as fishermen.
Perhaps they hope that there,
they can reassemble some fragment of who they are.
or at least of who they used to be, before all of this happened.
I'm going fishing, Peter says,
And together they pick up the nets that once felt so familiar,
and push out into the sea,
But find they can't catch anything.
How can you go back to fishing for fish,
once you've given yourself over to fishing for people?
They end up in the very thick darkness
of a very thick night.
With no fish tugging at the net,
they begin to wonder
just how long they've been sitting there.
The darkness only grows thicker,
and they begin to contemplate fears and questions
that they hoped not to face.
All that was once familiar --
the feel of the net in their hand
and the sound of the waves on the water,
brings not comfort,
but fear.
Have you ever felt like a stranger in your own life?
Come home,
back to a place of familiar things,
to find that it offered no comfort?
That the net felt raw and uncomfortable in your hands,
and the rock of the boat was unnerving?
Have you ever felt lost in the midst of everything that is most familiar to you?
Felt that the compass has spun out,
and there is no longer that reassuring magnetic pull
to ground you?
To be a Christian is to be consistently disoriented.
Blinking in the light of a new and unfolding knowledge
that life has sprung up from death
and that,
because of that,
everything is different.
We have returned to the place where it all began,
to the sea,
to try and piece back together some part of ourselves,
and found that task to be impossible.
Everything is different.
We can't go back to being who we are before all of this.
In this story, we stand with the disciples
on the brink of a long journey,
at the start of a uncertain road.
We know that the way forward is frightening,
but trying to go back --
that holds nothing but dark nights and empty nets.
But dawn will break.
And with the dawn, there is light.
And with the light, Jesus, standing on the beach.
What is is about this story that makes me feel like everything will somehow be right, in the end? That, even in the midst of the struggle of the night, as the saying goes, All shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well?
Perhaps it is the notion that,
emerging into this new life,
and finding ourselves to be without a home to return to,
we find, instead, a camp.
A charcoal fire burning hot and bright
at the edge of the sea.
The smell of fish as it cooks,
and bread,
warm in our hands.
A fire and a meal:
a home that travels with us
throughout our nomadic wanderings.
A home that is more eternal
than the hearths we've left behind.
We are travelers now,
pilgrims who follow God,
bound to journey forward,
homeless, but somehow, always at home.
Along the way there will be good food
and a place to warm our hands,
wherever God might call us to pitch our tents.
There are so many stories to be told about what happens next --
about what happens when love conquers death
and life breaks in to the darkest corners of our hearts.
Too many stories to be written in a book.
Too many, even to be told around these tables.
So many stories of how Christ is alive in our midst,
calling us forward to places where life springs up
from the rich soil death has provided.
So many stories that are yet to be written,
about what this nomadic people will do in the light of that truth.
But for now, we need to know only this,
that even after the longest of nights,
the coals are burning hot and bright
at the edge of the sea.
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