Third Easter
Acts 9:1-20, Jn. 21:1-19
"I don't trust stories that end with "And they lived happily ever after." Oh, I'd like to believe such endings, but they don't reflect reality, at least, not the reality I know and live." So says the preacher O. Wesley Allen and I am inclined to agree with him."And they lived happily ever after" just isn't true to the way the world works, it's not true to our experience.
Sometimes we view Easter with that same pat, syrupy sweet, so that's that kind of message. We might just as well transform the Creed to say "and we believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; on the third day he arose from the dead; and we live happily ever after"? That attitude makes the Third Sunday after Easter and indeed all the Sundays thereafter a little extraneous, doesn't it?
There is a time for unabashed celebrations of hope and victorybut there is a time when we have to move to the Monday morning reality and deal with the 'happily ever after. Fairy tale endings just aren't trustworthy. I think that's why I like Stephen Sondheim's Broadway play Into the Woods so much. The First Act begins, of course, with the words, "Once upon a time..." Suddenly the stage is filled with lots of different characters from different fairy tales. Throughout the First Act they all meet in the woods to resolve the conflicts of their individual tales. The last song of that First Act is called Ever After, and, boy, does everything seem happy: Cinderella has her prince, the Baker and his wife have their child, and Jack has killed the Giant. In fact, everything is so happy that the play feels like it's over, and all through intermission you're wondering, "What in the world can they do in the second act?" But then the curtain rises to find that the prince is cheating on Cinderella; and the once childless Baker and his wife find that their hut is too small for the two of them plus a new baby; and, worst of all, the wife of the giant that Jack killed comes down to earth to seek revenge for her husband's death. By the time the Second Act is over, marriages have ended, the town has been destroyed, and several of the characters have been killed. This Act doesn't end with "happily ever after" like the first, but neither does it end in total despair. It's an ending that's a starting over: the surviving characters lay aside their self centered concerns and band together to kill the second giant. Afterwards, they band together to rebuild their lives. Finally, the curtain closes as the widowed Baker begins to tell his son the story of all that has happened. He begins with the words, "Once upon a time..." Now that's an ending I can trust. That mixture of hope and struggle describes the reality I know and read about in the newspaper every day.
Our lessons today are about Monday mornings, about the days when Happily Ever After is over. About what happens next--after the celebrating and the singing and the joyful tears? Our lessons today are about the next step, the second act for both Peter and Paul.
We meet Peter going back to what he does best--fishing. What else after all is he supposed to do? A stranger appears on the beach and gives the fishing group some advice on where to cast their nets. They cast their nets and there is a great catch of fish. And Peter again sees and believes. And so they sit together at breakfast. As Jesus sits there with them on the beach sharing food a new day is breaking, a new world is taking shape. Their eyes are open and they see Jesus. And then Jesus turns to him--to the same disciple who had forsaken him when the going got rough, Simon Peter's deep need to be forgiven for the three times that he denied his relationship with Jesus on that awful night just a few weeks before, is brought to the surface again. Jesus says to him three times "Simon, son of John do you love me?" With each response the forgiveness and the responsibility deepens. "Yes Lord you know that I love you." God didn't mean that we should feel guilty all our lives... There comes a time to dry our tears and take up the next task.
Jesus says, "Feed my lambs." That is hardly a "happily ever after" command. For Peter it means leaving once again his home and his business and his family. We know the controversies and the challenges that Peter faced as he became part of a burgeoning church. We know too that his own martyrdom and suffering was not part of a "happily ever after scenario.
In Barbara Brown Taylor's book, Speaking of Sin she writes, "... most of us prefer remorse to repentance. We would rather say, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I feel really, really awful about what I've done" than to actually start doing things differently..."Jesus said feed my lambs...tend my sheep. Jesus is saying to us, "You are forgiven for what is past, but the gift of love carries with it a responsibility to put even more love and light into the world." Act two.
And then there's Paul or Saul as we meet him in our first lesson this morning. Saul, an enemy of the church, gets knocked down on the Damascus road and spoken to by the risen Christ. But what does the risen Christ say to him? Not "Paul, now don't you really believe that Easter is true?" Rather he says to him "Paul, (that's what I'm going to call you now) I've got big work for you to do. You are going to be my great missionary to the Gentiles." Act two is not pretty. There are ship wrecks and floggings and jail and controversies with other followers and old friends and government officials. It's hardly "happily ever after for Paul."
That's the way it is with Jesus. Every conversion to him is a call to do work for him. Revelation and call go together. Forgiveness and call go together. The risen Christ does not just say to them on the beach that morning, "I'm Jesus, raised from the dead." He says, "I am Jesus raised from the dead who has work for you to do.
He tells them to feed my lambs. He tells them to care for the ones for whom he cares. Which, when you think about it is rather amazing, but also rather typical of Jesus. To the very ones who had earlier forsaken him, to those who were nowhere around when he was arrested and crucified, he gave a call to discipleship. Their past failures did not stop him from entrusting to them his most important work.
What work is the risen Christ calling you to do? When he says, "Feed my sheep," what do you think that means for you?
Think about this tomorrow--Monday. The risen Christ will come to you, seek you, reveal himself to you and then give you work to do. :"Follow me," are his last words to them on the beach, his first and last words to us as well. Follow me.
Amen.