“Out
of the Depths”
John
21:1-19; Psalm 130
First
Presbyterian
The
Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
April
18, 2010
Easter
3
Since today’s gospel story takes
place on the beach of a great lake, I thought the responsible approach this week
in my quest to prepare for our sermon would be to head for one myself.
So, Wednesday afternoon, even with other pressing things on my desk
shouting for my attention, I told the rest of the staff they’d have to hold
things together and I called my friend Angus to ask if he’d like to join me
surfside on a sunny, seventy degree afternoon at Barcelona for some biblical
research. We were too late for
breakfast like Jesus and seven of his disciples enjoyed on their beach, but we
did manage to snag a couple of perch sandwiches for lunch at Jack’s Barcelona
Drive-In!
As our afternoon progressed, I did
bring up the matter of today’s gospel story with Angus and he recalled reading
a novel some years ago that alluded to it. The
novel is called The River Why
by David James Duncan and this is the passage Angus remembered:
Like
gamblers, baseball fans, and television networks, fishermen are enamored of
statistics. The adoration of
statistics is a trait so deeply embedded in their nature that even those
rarefied anglers, the disciples of Jesus, couldn't resist backing their yarns
with arithmetic: when the resurrected Christ appears on the morning shore of the
Sea of Galilee and directs his forlorn and skunked disciples to the famous catch
of John 21, we learn that the net contained not 'a boatload' of fish, nor 'about
a hundred and a half,' nor even 'over a gross', but precisely 'an hundred and
fifty and three.' This is, it seems
to me, one of the most remarkable statistics ever computed. Consider
the circumstances: this is after the Crucifixion and the Resurrection; Jesus is
standing on the beach newly risen from the dead; and it is only the third time
the disciples have seen him since the nightmare of
Statistics
are a tool upon which anglers rely so heavily that a fish story lacking numbers
is just that: a Fish Story. A fish
without an exact weight and length is a nonentity, whereas the sixteen-incher or
the twelve-pounder leaps out of the imagination, splashing the brain with cold
spray. The strange implication is
that numbers are more tangible than flesh; fish without vital statistics are
fish without being. And this digital
fisherman-consciousness has seeped into most facts of life. One
of the most telling examples is this: a human child at birth undergoes a ritual
almost identical to that inflicted upon trophy trout at death, to wit: 1) the
fish is whacked on the head, thus putting it out of its misery; the infant is
whacked on the behind, thus initiating it into its misery; 2) the fish is placed
on a scale, weighed to the quarter ounce and measured to the quarter inch; the
infant endures identical treatment; 3) the fish is stripped of the coating of
slime that protected it in the water; the infant is purposely relieved of its
equivalent coating; 4) the fish is placed in a cold rectangular receptacle to
await the taxidermist who will stuff it, creating an illusion of healthy flesh
on its lifeless body; the infant is placed in a warm rectangular receptacle to
await the parents who will stuff it, hopefully creating genuine healthy flesh
upon its living body...
The main character in the novel, himself an avid and
prize-winning fly fisherman, then goes on to admit that
I
was afflicted with as pernicious a case of the numerical lease on life as any
I've encountered, but I had the good fortune to discover that the essential
pleasures of fishing are as independent of statistics as are the joys of
childbirth independent of little Bosco's length in quarter inches. Most
of us appear to be plagued by the notion that digits describe a thing (for
instance, an infant) more accurately than do the qualities the thing possesses
(for instance, the infant's drooling smiles, watery eyes, redundant dimples,
pathetic coiffure, tiered chins, and helpless unignorable outcries). Accuracy is
a useful thing, certainly. A
skyscraper designed by an architect with a head for nothing but drooly smiles
and tiered chins is likely never to scrape the sky. But
there are times and places to employ statistics and times and places not to---
and the times-and-places-not-to comprised one of the many lessons I was doomed
to learn the 'hard way.'
(Duncan, David James, The River Why, pp. 14-16).
Well,
that was maybe a little long and a little much, but I want to draw the
distinction between a statistical view of life – ours – and an
anti-statistical view – Jesus’. Practicing
resurrection – making Easter alive and relevant in our lives and our world now
– has little to do with statistics.
But
consider how prevalent and prominent statistics are in our lives.
Most of us in recent days filled out our census forms – a governmental
compilation of a multiplicity of statistics on the basis of which funding and
representation is divvied up. We
mailed in our tax returns – computed on the basis of statistics such as how
much money we made last year, how much we gave away, how many deductions we
racked up. Whether our favorite
television show gets renewed for another season depends not on its artistic or
social merit but almost entirely on the number of people who watch it.
The value of an athlete to his or her team is figured primarily by the
statistics he or she compiles. A
“Grade Point Average” (GPA) is the linchpin for all kinds of decisions made
about students. And the church is
little better: the end-of-year report to the presbytery and the General Assembly
is called “a statistical report.” The
ecclesiastical bureaucracies want to know how many new members we received, how
many baptisms, the dollar amount of the offering, the value of the
endowment…but not about hot dog suppers for the neighborhood or the community
formed at the saging group or the support that rallies to people in their times
of need.
But
Jesus makes it clear to his disciples that the Christian life is an
anti-statistical proposition. Statistics
are surface tools. Life worth living
runs deeper than that. In the early
church at the time that John was writing his gospel, a fish not only was a
symbol for the Christ – that great, overarching divine energy, wisdom, and
consciousness into which Jesus was so completely attuned and attentive that he
became known as Jesus the Christ – but it also was suggestive of our
unconscious. Like fish swimming in
deep water, much of our psychic and spiritual life is deep in us.
Life that is purposeful, satisfying, and integrated is not superficial
but arises out of our depths. So we
fish around, if you will, in the vast unconscious and subterranean depths within
us to discover there something of the meaning and direction of our lives.
When we are able to bring what has been abiding in our unconscious into
our consciousness, we move closer to the wholeness that can be ours in God or,
to use the blessing words of Jesus, “Peace
be with you.” That is what we
mean when we talk about our search for God.
It is not that God is not always with us or that we have to go outside of
ourselves to find God. We just have
to fish around in our unconscious depths for, as Jesus reminded us, “The
Remember
our text? “Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the
“Just
after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach…and said to them, ‘Children, you
have no fish, have you?’ They
answered him, ‘No.” So Jesus
said to them, ‘Cast your net to the right side of the boat, and you will find
some.’ So they cast it, and now
they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish…a hundred and
fifty three of them.”
Cast
your net on the right side of the boat. Could
this be suggestive of left brain, right brain distinctions?
Our left brain is the calculating, orderly side, the side that analyzes
and figures. It is the statistical
side. Our right side is our
anti-statistical side, the dreaming and visionary side, the artistic side, the
loving side, the side that responds to people and needs with compassion and
mercy and mostly without regard for the cost, either bottom line or personal.
It
is comical, isn’t it, that Peter exclaims to Jesus, “A hundred and fifty and
three fish!” Peter, Peter, the
statistical approach to life dies hard, doesn’t it?
Many biblical scholars make much of Jesus asking Peter three times if he,
Peter, loves Jesus. They say it is
Jesus wiping away and undoing and reversing Peter’s three betrayals of him
leading up to the crucifixion. It
is, they say, Jesus taking away Peter’s sense of guilt and offering his
forgiveness. But I think Jesus
already has forgiven Peter, Peter being included in Jesus’ great cry from the
cross for the Father to forgive those who do not know what they are doing and
who have done what they have done.
I
think the thrice-asked question by Jesus of Peter – do you love me, do you
love me, do you love me – is Jesus’ attempt to wean Peter from his
statistical approach to life and to get him to fish around in the depths of his
life for what is of God, and then to practice
resurrection.
“A
hundred and fifty-three fish!” “Great,
Peter, but do you love me? Then feed
my lambs.”
“A
hundred and fifty-three fish!” “Great
Peter, but do you love me? Then tend
my sheep.”
“A
hundred and fifty-three fish!” “Great,
Peter, but do you love? Then feed my
sheep. And…and...when you were
younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished.
But know that as you grow older and as you mature in the service of love
and God, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt
around you and take you where you never thought you would go.”
Statistics
sometimes serve us well and they have their appropriate place in our lives.
But when you dare to swim around in the depths of yours, it is not
statistics you will find there. Rather,
you will discover there in your depths a hunger and thirst for righteousness.
You will find there in our depths that you mourn all the ways that life
is broken and a growing desire to be a repairer of the world.
You will find there in your depths an affinity for the things that make
for peace. You will find there in
your depths an ability to toss the slings and arrows and persecutions you suffer
over your shoulder and a capacity to salt your relationships with forgiveness.
You will find there in your depths a deeper love than you knew you had
that will enable you to risk your love and your life in ways you never thought
you would or could. You will find
there in your depths the strength to face the hard news and the hard places in
your life with equanimity, courage, and faith.
There in your depths you will find the risen Christ who will say to you, “Because
I live, you, too, shall live,” and you will experience the truth of it and
you will be able to practice resurrection in ways that amaze yourself most of
all.
The
biblical appearances of Jesus to his disciples after the resurrection are meant
to convey to us the truth that Easter is not over yet.
It never is. It only awaits
its deeper discovery and practice in our lives.
So, dear friends, let down your fishing net on the right
side of your boat.
Amen.
Copyright © 2010 First Presbyterian Church