A
sermon based upon John 21: 1-14
Preached by Dr. Charles J. Tomlin,
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
13th Sunday After Pentecost, September
3rd, 2017, (Series: Questions Jesus Asked #11)
Charlie Lyne wanted to solve
one of few remaining ‘ungoogleable’ mysteries.
He made a 14 minute documentary for the British Guardian News to
discover whether or not people had something ‘fishy’ in their family history.
Charlie got this idea from his
friend, Casper Salmon, whose grandmother once invited all the people to come
together at her place, if they lived on her Welsh island and had names related
to some sort of Fish. They would also be
given the type of fish of their last names.
Some of the people who showed up had names like Mr. Salmon, Mr. Whiting,
Mrs Crab, Mr. Mullet, Miss Bass, and many more; the Herrings, the Trouts, and
the Anchovies, etc. His grandmother got
the phone book out and called up all the people on the Island with “fishy” last
names.
Taking his grandmother’s cue,
Charlie decided to do a brief documentary to try and sort out the truth behind
this ‘fish story’. What he discovered
is that all these folks with fishy last names where to come together as part of
a large publicity stunt to advertise the grand opening for the Anglesey Sea Zoo
Aquarium, which was the only Aquarium in England dedicated just British species
fish. In a day before Internet, 24 hour
news, or Facebook, the “Fish Story” made
a big enough “splash” to get the word out.
And the Aquarium is still operational today. http://www.firstshowing.net/2017/watch-fish-story-short-film-discovers-the-truth-behind-a-fishy-tale/
Today, the question of Jesus
we are considering is also a “Fish Story” of sorts. It’s part of a story containing two very
important questions asked by the resurrected Jesus. Both of these stories form the epilogue to
the gospel of John. They bring the
beautifully written, very personal, intimate gospel to its conclusion, but are
much more than after thoughts. These two
stories contain the two important ‘mission’ and ‘ministry’ questions the church
of Jesus Christ could be asked to answer.
The first one, which we consider
today is: “Friend, haven’t you any
fish?”.
I’M GOING OUT TO FISH…
This ‘fish story’ starts with
the number one, biblical fisherman, Simon Peter. What is most unusual, or perhaps very usual,
depending upon your perspective is what Peter does after encountering Jesus
having been raised from the dead. He
goes fishing.
Now, if you’re fishermen, you probably
wouldn’t find this ‘strange’ at all.
Most fishermen will tell you that fishing is how they best handle stress
and/or relax. Perhaps this is what Peter
is doing. Perhaps he’s going fishing to
clear his mind and process all of the very ‘heavy’ happenings that have been
going on in Jerusalem the last three years.
Peter is going to the beach, that is ‘The Sea of Galilee,’ to take a
break from it all. Or maybe, we Peter is
going back work. After all, he was by
trade, a fisherman.
But can go back to life ‘as
usual’ after you have personally encountered the risen Christ? You do have to make a living, but how
different might life seem after you have had a life-changing and
life-challenging experience that still makes your legs weak, your head spin, or
your heart skip a beat? I can imagine
entertaining a once ‘dead man’ could be an experience just like that. You would need a few ‘vacation days’ away
just to ask and try to answer for yourself: “Just what does this mean?”
One of the major problems of
our times is that people take ‘vacations’ that are not actually vacations. They go away and return home even more tired
than when they left. That same Guardian
Newspaper who sponsored the ‘Fish Story’ ran an article a few years back,
entitled “The Exhaustion Epidemic”. It
says that today we generally have more money, better health, and better jobs,
but our lives are becoming more complicated and more stressed than ever before. We live at a ‘breakneck pace that seems to
never sleep.’ How long will our advances in health hold
out?
In his book The Third Wave, Alvin
Toffler wrote that human civilization has gone through three major cataclysmic
shifts – and he thinks we're currently in the change from an industrial culture
to a globalized one - and each wave we go through has been associated with some
kind of ill health. The stress and
exhaustion doctors see in patients now are similar to those known to middle-class
England at the beginning of the Industrialization in the 18th century. (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2006/dec/03/healthandwellbeing.features).
Besides seeing the beginnings
of declines in physical health, a society that is always in a hurry to do
everything, know everything and have everything, brings increased emotional
pain due to the loss of a spiritual life.
When we lose the ability to slow down, be quiet and reflect, and yes,
even worship, we soon see increased personal, relational, societal, and spiritual
problems too. Mark Taylor, writing in the “Chronicle of
Higher Education” quotes the Verizon commercial which says: “Welcome to a world
where speed is everything” or the Hitachi Computer add which says, “Speed is
God, and time is the devil.” In “real”
time, life speeds up until time itself seems to disappear---fast is never fast
enough, everything has to been done now, instantly….Speed is the measure of
success.” But what is always lost, as everything speeds
up is time itself; time for family, time for friends, time for children or time
with elderly parents, and yes, of course, time for God.
Ironically is was just a few
years ago, with the emergence of personal computers and other digital devices,
during the last 1960’s and 70’s, that many were predicting a new age, in which
people would be drawn together in a ‘global village” where they were be freed
from the burdens of work and would have ample leisure time to build community,
solve social problems, and pursue greater interests. In 1956, Richard Nixon predicted a 4-day work
week, and a decade later, a Senate subcommittee heard testimonies predicting
that by the years 2000, Americans would only be working about 14 hours a
week. (http://www.chronicle.com/article/Speed-Kills/149401).
What happened? Well, what happened is that we used all that
speed to go after more; more experiences, more knowledge, more entertainment,
and more stuff. And what did we
get? We got more boredom, less wisdom,
less fulfilment, and too much stuff with no room left for much of anything else
except what we want in the moment.
“Today’s young people are not merely distracted, the internet and video
games are actually re-wiring their brains,” Taylor writes. It won’t be long until we will have new
diseases, new disorders and new medicines, including much more Ritalen to try and slow down our
children’s brains so they can focus and think.
Did you see the news flash recently saying that an alarming number of
young men seemed to have stopped looking for work so they can give their full
attention to video games? I guess they
are all planning living off a nation that goes to war where they have skills to
win the game
(http://nypost.com/2017/07/08/were-losing-a-whole-generation-of-young-men-to-video-games/).
The
world is not the only one who is filled with a lot of busyness that’s is not
always healthy. We in the church can
also get so busy doing the good we want to do, that we forget to do the good we
need to be doing. Might it be a good
thing, in our time, just like Peter does in the gospel story, to stop to focus
and figure things out. Peter makes by
taking time. He goes on a retreat---not
just to fish for the sake of fishing, but to fish for figuring out what life
means now and what he and the disciples of Jesus are supposed to do next. Peter has to figure things out, because after
meeting the risen Jesus, everything has changed.
THROW YOUR NET ON THE
RIGHT SIDE…
Perhaps the most important
learning Peter does on his ‘fishing trip’ is that he learns that by himself,
even with all his skills, he can fish all night and still catch ‘nothing.’ Peter is a very experienced fisherman, but what
he is learning here is not about fish, but about his own life’s mission and
purpose. And the mission that Jesus has
called him into is a mission that he will not be able to accomplish in his own
strength, or based on his skills alone.
The mission Jesus has called Peter and all the disciples to is a mission
to ‘fish for people’. This is a mission
that will be impossible, in their own strength. This is a mission they will have to pause and
learn to be the most important thing they will ever be called to do with their
lives.
“Friend, have you caught any fish?” This question would have never come
out now, without Peter’s own failure; both on the boat and in the city, where
Peter denied Jesus three times. Even his
failure was grooming Peter to answer the right question that pointed him back on
mission to follow the one who called him.
Perhaps today, in this busy,
hurried, distracted and world, with our fast paced lives, we too need to hear
Christ’s question to everything we are doing at church, and in our own personal
lives at Christ-followers: Have
we caught any fish? The call of
the gospel to ‘fish for people’ has not changed, will never change. In fact, the need for being an evangelistic
church on an evangelistic mission may be more important now, than it has ever
been before. And it is our own failure
to reach people, to catch people, to win people or even to influence people--even
though we may be trying just as hard as Peter was---might help us renew and
revitalize the most basic of all tasks the church has been called to do: Fish for People.
If we do take time to consider
what it might mean to be ‘fishers for people’, we also need to learn, like
Peter did, that there is a wrong side of
the boat to fish from and there is a right side. And the right side of the boat to fish from
is the side that Jesus determines, not the side or way we determine on our
own. This might be the most important
lesson Peter learned on his whole trip; not how to fish, but HOW NOT TO FISH---that
is, based only on his own efforts, his own habits, his own understanding, or
only with his own skills. What finally brought
Peter success was when became willing to listen to a voice that was not his
own.
Perhaps this is the greatest
lesson in evangelism for all time, then and now. I don’t think there is ever really an exact
‘right’ or ‘wrong’ method of fishing for people, as long as the method includes
actually listening to people and hearing their problems, their hurts, their
hungers, and their needs. The gospel can
never be reduced to something we say, until it is first something we see, hear
and feel. When we are fishing for
people, in ways that really catches people’s attention, the church must remain
open, willing, and flexible enough to hear, listen and obey the voice that
leads you to move out of your own ways, habits, comfort zones and established forms.
It is often said that insanity
is doing the same thing over and over, that isn’t working and expecting
different results. That may be one way
to describe, but insanity in evangelism, or fishing for people, is doing things
which seeing who is right in front of you and needs you to really listen. Recently I read of a newspaper reporter who
was doing a report about a Mental institution that had just opened in his
community. The director was telling the
reporter about the mental ‘test’ they gave to interview possible new
clients. This test would show how
mentally alert the candidate was or wasn’t.
The director explained how they would take candidate into a room, show
them a bath tub full of water and then give them the choice of a teaspoon, a
teacup, or a bucket to empty the tub full of water. “You
would use the bucket,” right? The
reporter answered. “Um, the director
said, “No, you should pull the plug on the drain. Exactly, which bed do you want, the one at
the window, or near the wall?”
That’s a funny story, but it
points to the church’s failure to see what’s right in front of us. It’s insane to speak the gospel, until we
listen to the need of the person we are talking to. What will work, in reaching people today, may
not yet be fully known to us, but it will certainly never be known if we don’t listen
and learn the voice of the stranger. We
learn in the end that the voice of the stranger is the risen Jesus. The gospel says that the voice of the needy
stranger, the least of these, is always Jesus.
Whose voice we listen to,
whether ours or theirs, determines which side of the boat we fish and how much
we catch. This is proved true over and
over again. Years ago, a young preacher
in California got my attention when he spoke of the typical person he wanted
his new church to reach in the community.
He got together with church leaders, wrote down all the needs,
characteristics, realities of the people outside the church (not needs of those
on the inside), and proceeded to plan their ministry based on the people they
wanted reach and be their church; not based on the people who were already in
the church. Several of the people on
the committee said that he shouldn’t do that.
They wanted the church to meet their own needs, first; not the needs of
the community needs. Those people ended
up leaving the church. When the majority
of the church made the decision to listen to the voice and needs of their
‘stranger’, “Saddleback Sam” and they proceeded to build the church around him
and her, the church grew into what today one of the largest churches in
American, called Saddleback Church.
Rick Warren is the pastor and attributes the growth of this church to
learning to listen to other voices besides their own.
Now, I’m not saying we need to
be like Saddleback, nor grow as large.
What I am saying is that this is the same kind of lesson Jesus was teaching
Simon Peter (and the church) on his fishing trip. If you really want to catch fish, the kind of
fish God has called us to catch, then you have to be willing to admit your
failure, change your tactics, and most of all, you have to listen to another
voice besides your own. When you listen
to their voice---the voice of lost sheep, the lost son—and the ‘least of these’,
then you are listening and hearing voice of the risen Christ. And when you listen to Christ as the stranger,
you are doing what the church was originally put here for. “The church is the only institution in this
world established for people who are not yet members.” If the church in still
not running rescue missions, it has ceased to be the church that Christ called
into being.
COME AND HAVE BREAKFAST
But catching fish is not the
end goal. Eating the fish is. That’s
why in the final scene we have the ‘stranger’ on the beach, cooking fish for
breakfast on a open, charcoal fire. The
smell must have been wonderful for a fisherman to smell; who was himself hungry
after hauling in such a big catch of 153 fish.
A lot of people have wondered what the number of ‘153’ represents. The best answer I’ve ever heard or read, is
that the 153 fish represents 153 fish.
It was such a large, big catch at one time, that should have, but didn’t
break the net that the disciples had to count each and every one.
We too, must remember, when we
answer the voice of Jesus to ‘go fishing’, that each and every person, or ‘fish’
we catch matters. Even though we want to
catch more fish; it’s always because of the fish who need to be caught; rather
than the bigness or smallness of the catch itself. Every person matters. Every need matters. Every way we share our faith matters. Every moment matters. Each way we try to fish counts and each fish
we meet counts. That’s why numbers
matters; not because of the numbers, but because of the people whom God loves;
and we must love and reach out to, because God love them and us to.
It is not accident that at the center of every church are two
pieces of furniture; the pulpit and the table.
The pulpit is where the truth is told; and the truth that matters most
is that Jesus wants everyone, people from every race, nation, tribe and even
religion, to be at the table. Make no
mistake the picture of Jesus cooking breakfast for the disciples is the example
for the disciples to be preparing the meal of love, grace, and mercy for the
world.
I verbally shared this at one church, but now I’m writing it down
and sharing it with both church. Back in
July, the Baptist State Paper, known at the Biblical Recorder, had a great
article written by its editor, Alan Blume.
After telling how the Southern Baptist Convention continues to grow in
the number of churches, he also shares statistics about how our churches
continue to decline in baptisms. We are
doing well at starting churches, he says, but we are not doing well at reaching
people. As he comes to the close of his
article, he suggests that part of our problem may be that, up to now, we’ve
done too much ‘judging’ sinners, instead of following Jesus’ example to be ‘a
friend of sinners’, as he was called, by those who did not approve. (https://brnow.org/Opinions/K-Allan-Blume/July-2017/Jesus-a-friend-of-sinners).
How do you and I become friends with sinners? Well, you certainly don’t expect the preacher
to catch them. “Church, you need to
start fishing from another side of the boat.” In a much more biblical way, you
could invite those unchurched, strangers ‘strangers’ to come to your house and share
a meal, Blum says. You could actually
try to become their friend around the dinner table.
Wow! Who would have ever
thought of something as simple as that?
Listen, really listen; not just to be, but to the voice, you will learn: “Jesus said to them,
"Come and have breakfast." Now none of the disciples dared to ask
him, "Who are you?" because they knew it was the Lord. (Jn.
21:12 NRS). When you make your table,
the table of the Lord and you share, it’s amazing how, when, and where Jesus shows
up. Amen.
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