Let's go Fishing
Sermon preached in St Salvator's Chapel, St Andrews on 18th April 2010 by Canon Clare Edward
Readings: Isaiah 61: 1-3, Acts 9: 1-6 and John 21: 1-19
When I was about 8 years old and living in Malta, (my dad was in the Navy) I went fishing with a friend. Before we set out it all seemed like a great adventure. And then, there we were, two 8 year old girls on the edge of the sea wall, not far from our homes, with the lines that we had bought in one of the local shops – a wide piece of cork wound round with lengths of fishing line and on the end a hook. I vaguely remember keeping the maggots that we’d acquired for the exercise in the fridge at home – with or without permission I don’t remember! Lots of the locals went fishing so we had a reasonable idea of what to do -bait on the end of the line, cast it into the water and then wait.
Everything was fine until the line started jerking and we found that we had a fish on the end! What to do next? Our planning hadn’t covered the eventuality of actually catching something! Neither of us wanted to touch the fish to get it off the hook. A plan was hatched - we had a paper bag with our lunchtime sandwiches in – so the sandwiches were taken out and the bag put over the fish, so that we could try again to remove it without actually touching it. Still no go - our fish had no intention of coming off the line. So, we ended up returning home, our catch still attached and covered with the paper bag, ready for someone else to deal with!
That one little fish on the end of a line was a far cry from the abundant catch of the disciples on that morning when Jesus met them on the beach.
Some of you may have been fishing and some not. Another sort of fishing that i think we all do at times is ‘fishing for information’ - leading people on in a conversation so that they nibble the bait and almost by accident give us the information we want.
In that sense St. John’s gospel is a great place to go fishing. John uses every word carefully, so as a friend of mine would say, we constantly have to ‘dig deeper’, to fish around to find out the full story, the implications behind the words we’re given. John invites us to be detectives, to gather the clues that he’s laid for us. To do what young children and all with enquiring minds do, keep asking the questions. Why is this bit here? What does this mean? Does that link up with anything else I’ve heard? How can I make connections?
Sometimes it’s just too easy to read the obvious in the gospels and forget that there is probably much much more. The words are just the surface story and the fun but is to dig deeper to go fishing!
Two weeks ago we celebrated Easter, the day of resurrection. Traditionally people gather in the evening of Holy Saturday or in the early morning of Easter Day, in the dark. Often a fire is lit and the flame carried into the church with the proclamation -
‘The light of Christ. Thanks be to God.’
It is proclaimed three times - ‘The light of Christ. Thanks be to God.’ A proclamation of the new light of the risen Christ being in our midst.
The fishermen in today’s gospel had been out all night and just after daybreak, when it was still dark, when they were just beginning to be able to make out shapes on the shore, Jesus appears on the beach. John uses the darkness of the night very deliberately -it stands also for the darkness of their hearts and minds – the darkness of their not knowing, their misunderstanding, their inability to make sense of and comprehend what was happening. The women also went to the tomb early in the morning when it was ‘still dark’.
The disciples who had joined peter when he’d decided to go fishing, made a choice to go back to the place where according to the other gospels Jesus had first called them. They would have been fishing not with a line but with a net that gathered the fish in. If you are lucky to go to the Holy Land, it is likely that you will go out on a boat across the Sea of Galilee. One of the little fleets is aptly named, Mathew, Mark, Luke and John. In the middle of the sea, the engines are turned off and the boat gently bobs on the water, with the waves lapping against the sides. One of the crew in first century costume goes out onto the front of the boat and spinning around, a bit like a discuss thrower, casts the net onto the top of the water. It lands as a large circle on the surface and then the weights which are threaded around it’s circumference, begin to go down forming a large sphere and gathering the fish inside.
Following the death of Jesus and reports of his resurrection the disciples like the fish in the nets have gathered together, going back to the familiar. They return to the safe and predictable, in some ways stepping off the edge of the world as they saw it, to re-focus, to look at things from a different perspective. Peter the one time leader is happy to have the idea and then to lose himself in the midst of this gathering, he carries with him the memory of Jesus’ arrest and his own fateful words ‘I don’t know him!’
Poor peter didn’t know himself, how capable he was of denial, he really thought that he would indeed ‘never forsake Jesus’. And then the cock crowed, he saw the face, the eyes of Jesus, and the harsh reality hit him in the depths of his being. He’s let Jesus down, he’s let himself down, he’s let these his companions down. But that was not the end.
So it’s important that the fire on the beach is burning in semi darkness, just as dawn, the light of a new day is dawning. It tells us that this is a moment of new beginnings for Peter and the disciples. The light, the fire of Jesus’ resurrection life is beginning something new in them. It’s important that the disciples in gathering fish are gathered together themselves. Each will have apart to play, yet the responsibility for this new and resurrection life is a shared one. A new life, shared by this fragile little community. They are in it together.
From the darkness of the night, the darkness of their own troubled selves, the disciples glimpse a new beginning. The fire, the light, just like the pillar of flame that led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to freedom in the promised land, leads them to the new freedom of Jesus’ resurrection life.
Fire provides light and without electricity fire and light are both alike. In the scriptures the two words are often interchangeable. Jesus the light of the world reveals his presence with a fire.
Scripture speaks of fire as being in a crucible, a melting pot for metals which burns away the dross, leaving only what is pure and true.
Peter who warmed himself at another fire in the courtyard of Caiphas’ house is now drawn to this fire on the beach. We might expect him to shy away, to avoid catching the eye of Jesus in the firelight as he has done before, but he doesn’t. He needs this cleansing purifying light which is Jesus.
I remember a preacher in my teens talking about the experience of heaven being like when someone turns on the light in a room where you are sleeping. The light, the brightness, the goodness being so bright that you have to shield your eyes until they adjust. Was that what it was like for Peter that morning?
Recognising his own darkness and vulnerability, his nakedness in the presence of total love, he reaches for his clothes, something to cover him before he jumps into the water. And where else do we read of people being conscious of their nakedness before God? Right back at the beginning of creation, when Adam and Eve, who represent all of us, hid when they heard the voice of God, because - they were naked. This is a constant in the history of God’s relationship with his people. We fear God seeing the truth of who we really are - yet God in Jesus draws us close and embraces us just as we are.
Easter Day is now two weeks away. Most of us are back to our everyday lives - studying, teaching, admin. whatever. So it’s important to remember that Easter is not just a day but a season - 50 whole days taking us to the feast of Pentecost, the celebration of God’s Holy Spirit.
And Easter makes us an Easter people, not just for these 50 days but for always. The miracle of new life, of resurrection life comes in the midst of the ordinariness of our lives.
John is keen that we should know that Jesus showed himself. He uses the word twice, showed himself and showed himself in this way. Jesus wants us to know that he is alive again, that this resurrection life is not just his but ours, to be lived out in a world where it is so easily hidden by darkness and distress. Yet if we look it is often easier to see the fire burning, the light glowing in the darkness.
Peter is drawn to the purifying fire and is then commissioned. ‘Do you love me, are you my friend?’ asks Jesus. ‘Then feed my sheep, my lambs’. Jesus has a job for each one of us here this morning though we might not yet know just what it is.
The miracle of Easter needs to be made known in us and through us to others. We are called to be witnesses to this resurrection light. Indeed we are called to be that fire burning on the beach bringing others to Christ the light. I see this day by day in our cathedral in Canterbury when visitors from around the world come to offer their prayers. Often they light a candle, a way when they don’t understand it of claiming and standing by the side of God’s resurrection light in the midst of darkness. How might you in your life be not just a witness to the light but a bringer a carrier of the light?
Where there is dying there is rising. Where in your life have you seen that in the past and where might you be witness to that now? Live with the expectation that beyond every dying there is a rising, with the truth that nothing in this world - nothing that ends - is in fact the end. Amen.