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April 18, 2010
John 21:1-19

I was over at a friend’s house this week and overheard a funny conversation between our boys.  Her wild, little three year-old was hopping around on two feet yelling, “It’s Eastertime!  It’s Eastertime!”  And my slightly bossy five year-old was following him around saying, “Stop saying that!  Easter is over!  No more bunnies!”     

My friend, who is also a pastor, and I had a good laugh about this, especially after we both tried and failed to explain to the boys about the Easter season that technically extends to Pentecost and that it could always be Easter because Jesus is alive and with us.  The boys answered us by staring back blankly and running off, and we ended up laughing and rolling our eyes at ourselves.  I guess that is one of the dangers of having a pastor for a parent.  Theological and liturgical rants are always erupting, even on innocent three and five year-old bystanders.

In the passage for today, the disciples seem to be in my son’s boat.  Easter is over.  The events of Holy Week had run them through the wringer.  First there was the triumphal high of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.  Then there was the meal with Jesus when things started out fine but then began to get confusing and take on an ominous feeling.  Then the arrest in the garden while they were still groggy from sleep, Jesus’ trial, his crucifixion, his desperate cries from the cross.  And then it was all over. 

Or so they thought.  His body disappeared, and his followers kept thinking they saw Jesus, even talked to him.  This was all too much.  The disciples were devastated.  They were worn out emotionally.  

So, they return to what is familiar, something that their bodies can do without much interaction with their worn out minds (until this strange night of fishless fishing, that is.)  These are Jesus’ closest friends and followers.  They have followed and ministered with him, absorbing his words and his love.  But then Jesus dies, and they get back in their boats.  Easter is over, and they have stopped hopping.
   
We do this, don’t we?  With New Year’s resolutions to work out and diet.  With commitments to carpooling and biking and walking to reduce our carbon footprint.  With a promise to our lover or friend or child that we will work to be more present or available or helpful.  With our heartfelt decisions to get more involved with church or the local food pantry or serving those without homes or hope. 

We do this with our own discipleship.  Easter is two weeks gone, the decorations aren’t even down, and we are back in the boats of our routines and everyday lives.  

A couple jobs ago, on my first day of work, the secretary told me I’d be just fine there if I would get in their rut with them.  It’s what we do, isn’t it?  We stay in our ruts even though we’ve been liberated from them, educated out of them, spiritually drawn beyond them.  We return to our ruts even though we know better, because it’s familiar and easier and less overwhelming.     

Elsa Tamez and Jon Sobrino and many other liberation theologians would tell us that’s because our conversion is not yet complete.  We linger in our boats, because we haven’t done the really hard work of choosing to do otherwise, choosing to really enter into Life, the kind that has a capital “L,” and share in others’ search for that Life. 

Tamez says that conversion entails choice and conflict with oneself and others, especially if you’re of a certain socio-economic position, where life is good and comfortable and relatively easy.  She writes, “…conversion must be radical to the point of confronting death in order to achieve a resurrection.” 

Jon Sobrino could have been speaking to the disciples in Galilee or to the good people of Memorial when he writes, “Now is the time to make a decision, and it will entail a conversion… a radical change in one’s form of existence.”  Both Tamez and Sobrino are calling for a clean break with the realities of our present life, those realities in which death is at work for ourselves or others, so that we might all be liberated to real, abundant life together.  

Tamez says of this, “Conversion is a gift of God because it shows us the way and invites us to enter the world of freedom, the world of life.  But at the same time conversion is a human task, because it demands of us an individual and collective commitment to the building of the world.”
   
I’m pretty sure this is what Jesus was getting at with Peter.  “Do you love me?  Feed my sheep.”  Build my kingdom by feeding the hungry in body and soul.  Give my beloved food and homes and hope. 

"Remember that breakfast we just had on the beach?  You do that, too.  Break the bread and the fish and all the abundant food and blessings I have given you, and share them.  Invite the outsider, the oppressed, the forgotten, the unclean, the unpopular, and the downtrodden to your table and into your life.  In the intimate acts of sharing food, conversation, and your lives, you will know what it means to choose Life, to live into the abundance God has for you.  If you’re going to do this, be fully converted to this life I have for you. 

"This isn’t about following some set of religious rules.  And by the way, showing up in your best robe on Sabbath isn’t enough.  Get out of your rut and get ready to share your money, your stuff, your heart, and your life.  There is enough, you are enough, I am enough to make this happen.  I am with you.  Now do it."
   
Jesus has given the disciples example after example of this kind of converted life.  And he gives them a big fat one in the form of a very full fishing net that very morning.  If you were to take a look at the text, you would see that that’s exactly when the disciples recognize Jesus—when they’re hauling in that net bursting with fish.  The disciples know it is Jesus at work because of the sheer abundance of the haul. 

Peter is so befuddled and overwhelmed by this load that he puts his clothes on and then jumps in the water to swim for shore.  I’m glad I’m not the only one to get things a little backwards sometimes.  In our own sometimes befuddled lives, we can see Jesus at work in abundance as well.  In abundant love, light, courage, connection, peace, goodness, blessings.  The very gift of God’s love in Jesus coming to live in our midst is drastic and extravagant. 

On the beach, Jesus shows them what to do with that abundance.  He welcomes his friends, feeds them, and then calls them to do the same.  He intends for this over the top catch to illustrate for them how to love God’s people.  He hopes that their little breakfast meeting puts the seal on their conversion to this new, generous, and radical way of life.  For as TV chef Rick Stein says, they have been given “a piece of Cod which passeth all understanding.”
   
Journalist and writer Sara Miles gets the kind of conversion Jesus is after with these acts of abundance.  You’ve probably heard Phil talk about Miles.  We used excerpts from her book in our Maundy Thursday service this year.  Miles spent her whole life outside of the church until she wandered into St. Gregory’s in San Francisco one day and had her whole life changed by a hunk of bread and a sip of wine, by an experience with Jesus in the food and welcome strangers offered her. 

Miles stayed and opened a food pantry in the sanctuary of church that is centered around the communion table.  It has since become that largest food pantry in the city and has spun off 18 other pantry sites.  Now that’s conversion.  That’s getting out of the rut.  That’s an experience of resurrection.  Miles writes “Jesus has given us the power to be Jesus” in the world.  And she aims to do just that.  Remember what Jesus said to Peter?  “Do you love me?  Feed my sheep.
   
In her latest book, Jesus Freak, Miles writes about this kind of conversion and “being Jesus” that is made possible by what she calls God’s economy of abundance. 

"God has given us enough.  Enough love.  Enough peace.  Enough courage.  Enough presence.  Enough money.  Enough food.  153-fish-in-a-net-about-to-burst-enough as our gospel story for today reminds us.  Enough, enough, enough. 

"Our job is then to be about this call Jesus gives to Peter.  To live out of this abundance and spread it around, smear it all over the place.  To let die whatever is keeping us from real, abundant life together.  Here’s a passage from Jesus Freak that gets at this economy of abundance by looking at the story of the Jesus feeding the five thousand with five loaves and two fish.  I can also hear in it echoes of our gospel story for today…

"Jesus consistently chose unconventional table fellowship as the sign of God’s kingdom.  And so faced with a crowd of five thousand, he drives home the message he’s been preaching- about the spiritual unimportance of religious and social barriers—by inviting everyone to share a meal on the spot.  The point is not food.  It is hands-on learning.  Do this, Jesus says, and you’ll taste what life in the kingdom of God is like.

"The kingdom of heaven is not privatized.  It is not about commerce, about buying what you need for yourself.  It is not passive: Jesus doesn’t ask his disciples to wait for a miracle, but commands them, with brusque authority… “You give the people something to eat.”  Because life in the kingdom means there’s more than enough for everyone.
Jesus enjoins his disciples to participate in God’s work. 

"Then he takes the bread and gives thanks to God, to show them that the bread doesn’t belong to them.  Like everything we have, he says, bread comes from God, and your job is just to break it up and give it away.  Give it to the wrong people, to the ones who haven’t washed their hands correctly, to the latecomers and the women, to anyone who’s hungry.

"Jesus shows the disciples and the crowd that there is always enough to go around: God’s economy is one of abundance, not scarcity.  By giving away the things God has given us, by giving as [extravagantly] and unconditionally as God does, we receive everything we need.
 
"We’ll stay hungry if we eat alone.  We’ll be lonely if we think we can only share fellowship with the right people.  We’ll starve if we believe that a community is a supernatural kind of miracle, or a product we can buy—not something we create by offering ourselves recklessly to others.  We’ll never feel truly fed if we’re constantly competing to get our share.  If we believe that love is scarce, and are afraid to give it away.
       
"But the good news, the promise of Jesus is different."
    
This economy of abundance is very different than the economic news that surrounds us today.  It points us away from the anxiety, greed, and consumerist messages that bombard us each day and reminds us that we already have and we already are enough in Jesus. 

Now, that sounds like something I might have heard one of the twenty televangelists say who frequented the channels of my TV when I lived in Atlanta, but I really believe it.  And Miles and her food pantry volunteers really live it.  And I think it’s just what Jesus was getting at that day on the beach with his friends and when he was questioning Peter. 

See, Peter already knew what he was being called to do.  He had lived it on the road with Jesus.  But maybe Peter just needed some serious reminding, like we need reminding, that this conversion, if it is going to be complete, is going to require some conflict, some serious choosing, some hard work, and some whole life commitment. 

It’s going to require this of us if we’re going to see and live and be that real life and love for the world, God’s life and love, the capital “L” kind that the liberation theologians were getting at earlier.   Remember what Elsa Tamez says?  “Conversion is a gift of God because it shows us the way and invites us to enter the world of freedom, the world of life.  But at the same time conversion is a human task, because it demands of us an individual and collective commitment to the building of the world.”
   
This conversion is going to require our commitment, our whole selves, our abundant effort and love, and our getting out of the rut, maybe more than once.  It is the work and the vision we are called to as followers of Jesus.  It will build the world and bring Life abundant.

So let’s get out of the boat and resume hopping.  

Amen.