Praise the Lord for Sunday, the Lord's day. He blessed us abundantly in His House yesterday. We had some out of town friends who joined us for Sunday dinner. It was all blessing. Alice and I drove to the Triple Cities in the evening. It was a beautiful evening. Praise the Lord for this new day. We have been having a cold spell over the past 9 days for a very brief interlude. Spring is moving in like a lion. Ready or not, the Lord of all seasons is ushering in the glorious season of Spring. Spring, in New York, is out of this world.
One of the readings for yesterday was taken from John 21. I preached on, "The Sacrament of Failure". This is the record of one of the Post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus. He came with grace and mercy to the disciples like Peter who had failed Jesus. Behind this story lies a wonderful, liberating, hope-filled truth: In the Kingdom of Jesus, Failure is not a person, it is an event. This is good news because we all fail sooner or later, and if we are honest, we all fail over and over again. As Peter’s story abundantly proves, it’s not our initial failure that ruins us. It’s what happens next that matters.
Some body has aptly said, "Failure doesn’t mean you have blown everything. It means you have some hard lessons to learn. It doesn’t mean you are a permanent loser, but it does mean you aren’t as smart as you thought you were. It doesn’t mean you should give up, but it means you need the Lord to show you the next step. It doesn’t mean that God has abandoned you. It means that God a better plan."
When life gets difficult, when we become lost, confused, and afraid, when the changes of life are not want we wanted or think we deserve we tend to run away. We try to go back to the way it was before – to something safe, something familiar. Often we revert to old patterns of behavior and thinking. Even when we know better and do not want to go backwards it seems easier than moving forward.
Peter and six others went back to the Sea of Galilee. They have fished all night and have caught nothing. My hunch, however, is that Peter was not really trying to catch fish as much as he was fishing for answers. We can leave the places and even the people of our life but we can never escape ourselves or our own life. Wherever we go, there we are. Peter may have left Jerusalem but he could not get away from three years of discipleship, the Last Supper, the arrest, a charcoal fire, denials, a crowing rooster. He could not leave behind the Cross, the empty tomb, the house with his doors locked tight, the echoes of “Peace be with you”, so he fished.
Peter fished for answers. We have all spent time dark night fishing; asking the same questions as Peter, looking for our place in life, seeking peace, and some sense of understanding and meaning. More often than not dark night fishing happens in the context of the failures, losses, and sorrows of our lives. It happens when we come face to face with the things we have done and left undone. We have all been there, fishing for answers in the darkness.
“Children, you have no fish, have you,” Jesus said in more a statement of fact than a question. Jesus was not asking for a fishing report. He was commenting on the reality and emptiness of Peter’s and the other disciples’ lives. Peter was living in the pain and the past of Good Friday. He was fishing on the Good Friday side of the boat and the net was empty. There were no fish, no answers, and no way forward. The nets of dark night fishing contain nothing to feed or nourish life.
Often in our sinful and wandering lives, we tend to fish on the wrong side of the boat. Then Jesus comes with His prevenient grace, with His restoring grace. “Cast your net to the right side of the boat,” Jesus says - the resurrection side of the boat. This movement of the net from one side of the boat to the other symbolizes the disciples’ living and serving in the power of the Resurrection of Jesus. It is the great Passover. Jesus calls us to move out of error into truth, out of sin into righteousness, out of death into life. In so doing we see and proclaim, “It is the Lord,” and Emptiness gives way to the abundance of a net full of fish, large ones, a hundred fifty-three of them. Darkness dawns into a new day with new light. A new charcoal fire kindles hospitality in place of the cold ashes of rejection. The Last Supper has become the first breakfast. Confessions of love have overcome denials of fear.
“It is the Lord.” Dark night fishing is over. This is Easter. Good Friday is real. Pain, death, sin are a reality of life, but the greater and final reality is Easter resurrection. “Follow me,” Jesus says, “and live as resurrected people. Follow me and fish in a different place. Follow me.” “Follow me” is the invitation to examine where we have been fishing. On which side of the boat do we fish? On which side of the Cross do we live? Do we in habit a Good Friday world or the Easter Resurrection. Thanks be to Jesus who gives us the victory.
In Christ,
Brown
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