“Now What?”
April 26, 2009
I Corinthians 15:42-44, 53-58
John 21:1-14
If you were here on Easter Sunday, you might remember the bulletin cover for that day. The most joyful day of the year and there on the cover was the question: “Now What?”
Now What? That’s usually a question asked out of exhaustion or exasperation.
Some members who saw me before worship wondered aloud: What kind of words are those for Easter? On Easter Sunday we sing loud “Alleluias.” On Easter Sunday we shout: “Christ is risen!” We need bold affirmations, not weary questions.
I agree that those words were not the best choice for Easter Day.
For the weeks after Easter, however, it’s a pretty good question.
Christ is risen!
Now What?
What do we do after we’ve taken off the new clothes and the lilies start to droop?
What do we do with the good news of Easter?
What do we do with our lives?
Now What?
That’s our question for this Easter season.
And it was the question of the early followers of Jesus after the resurrection. How would they respond to the surprising good news that the same Jesus whom they knew had been crucified also had been raised from death?
What comes after the astonished joy of Easter?
There is a saying in Zen Buddhism that you might have heard: “After ecstasy, the laundry.”
In this Zen manner, we are reminded that life is not all flashes of light or brilliant revelations.
After a wonderful meal the dishes need to be washed.
On a beautiful spring day the homework waits to be finished.
While each Sunday is a little Easter, a celebration of the resurrection, we also have our Monday through Saturday lives. The everyday and the mundane constantly make a comeback.
And, as this morning’s Gospel lesson suggests, after resurrection—fishing.
Christ is alive. Now, we’ve got to get back to work.
Now what?
Immerse yourself in daily living.
Look at those early followers of Jesus. After the resurrection they don’t suddenly find religion. They don't start taking their Bibles along to the office and putting them on their desks. They don't probe co-workers to see if they are “born again.”
Instead they live their lives. Yes, they continue to find their way to the temple, they continue to pray. But they also fish and eat and go about their familiar routines.
Our lives are vastly different from the lives of people in Israel some two thousand years ago and we always need to keep that in mind. Still, we, too, gather for worship. We, too, might find time to pray. Our lives of faith, our lives of doubt are lived beyond these walls, beyond Sunday, on the six other days of the week. And a lot of those days, while busy, are—admit it—pretty ordinary.
We fish—or do whatever else we have chosen for work. We eat. We go about our usual routines.
The gospel lesson suggests that we will discover the living God and we will know the new life announced by the resurrection as we live out our ordinary lives at home, at work, at school, and all those other places in which we find ourselves.
Listen. After experiencing the good news of Easter, Peter tells his friends: “I'm going fishing.” This could have been any time—weeks, months later. With this statement Peter calls his companions to reengage with the world. Enough of gathering behind locked doors. It’s time to get a life—or get back to the life that they already had.
Those who hear Peter respond by going along.
Fishing is what they know. Fishing is what they did before this Jesus wandered into their lives a few years earlier.
After Easter, they go fishing.
They go back to work. They live their lives.
This, I think, is our first calling as people who have heard the good news of Easter—
to live our lives;
to invest ourselves fully in our families, in our work, in our community, in our relationships with friends;
and to look once more for the connections we have with people who are not like.
The hope of the resurrection is not the hope that we will not die. The hope of the resurrection is that in our living and in our dying, we belong to God. All our days are lived in God’s care and that care does not end with death. Because of this, as people of faith we are brought back to our lives in this present time. We can dare to show grace and love, we can seek justice and mercy, knowing that in the Lord our labor is not in vain.
To follow the risen Christ is to be immersed in daily living.
Now what?
Be open to the transformation of every situation.
Peter and the other followers of Jesus go fishing.
They throw their nets all night long. They are good at this. This is what they know.
They catch nothing.
There on the shore is the risen Jesus, shouting out to them what is glaringly obvious: “Children, you have no fish, have you?”
This is the disturbing part of the story—and maybe it is especially troubling to hear in this place. We are, after all, surrounded by an institution that does not value failure. With final exams on the horizon, is there anyone who wants to think about pulling an all-nighter and having no answers to the questions on the test? Are there professors who want to think about having spent the whole semester teaching only to discover that no one in the class has learned anything?
And beyond the campus, who wants to think of themselves as a failed parent, or a failure in their career, or a failure as a friend?
Peter Gomes imagines the Jesus asking something like: “Children, you don’t have anything to show for what it is that you spend most of your time doing, and what it is you think you are good and best at, do you? Children, you don’t have anything to show for how you spend your time, do you? Children, you have no fish, do you?”
Now, maybe your attitude toward failure is the same as that of Thomas Edison, who said that he never failed in his hundreds of unsuccessful attempts at developing the electric light bulb. He just learned of the many ways not to do it.
A lot of people, however, have a hard time with failure. I know I do. That's when I need a little help from friends—maybe you do to.
I used to watch a lot of Mister Rogers. Not so much anymore. Times change—and I understand PBS will soon stop broadcasting the old shows, if it hasn’t already. I still remember hearing the late Fred Rogers, who was a Presbyterian minister, asking a group of children if they ever don’t do well at some activity and what they do when that happens. One child responded: “Sure, but then I just think to myself just keep trying again.” Simple. But something easily forgotten in discouragement.
Even in our failures God is present—maybe giving us the ability to fail gloriously.
The Jesus who asks the taunting question now says: “Try the other side.”
As is often the case, the word Jesus speaks is not what we might want or expect. We might listen for words of inspiration in the face of failure. We might hope for a bit of “spiritual” advice. What we get is fishing instructions.
To those who have failed, a voice calls: try the other side.
To those who have failed—to all of us, really, for we all know times when we don’t make the grade, when we miss the mark, when all of our efforts yield nothing—to all of us Jesus shouts so that we may hear: “Try the other side.”
Paul tells the early Christians—and tells us: “Be steadfast.” And because we might not really be sure what he means by that, he adds: “Immovable.”
“Immovable”—that is, standing firm in the face of the winds and experience that can blow against you. The harsh judgments of others or the adversity that comes with taking a principled but unpopular stand, or the simple bad breaks of life might threaten to crush your spirit. God, however, has begun something good in you and will bring it to completion.
Because of what God is doing, to be immovable is not to be stiff and resistant. It is to be flexible and resilient, active and involved.
When we find the courage to “try the other side,” to take a different approach, all our failure, all our effort, is taken up into the energy of life and transformed.
Suddenly the net is so full that those in the boat can't pull it in.
Another disciple says to Peter: “It is the Lord.” One could see what the other could not.
We fail—sometimes. We succeed—sometimes. In all our living we can open ourselves to the transforming power of God.
Now what?
As Paul put it, abound in the work of God.
You can give with abundance; you can love with abandon. You can give yourself to those you love, to the causes that claim your heart. You can walk in the way of peace in a world that celebrates violence; you can work for justice in a world that favors privilege; you can speak the truth in a world that prefers easy lies. You can laugh and sing and dance—maybe a little more than you would otherwise.
You can live in the light of the resurrection—that is what Easter means.
Each of us can do this because we know that in the resurrected Christ our labor is not in vain. The good that we do does not end with our defeat or even with our death. By God’s power our works continue, still bearing fruit.
The resurrection means that this time, these days are filled with great significance. The work that we do—the work that God does through us—is a part of the future that God is making.
We have heard once more the startling good news that death has been swallowed up in victory.
Now what?
Live fully because Christ is alive.