Sermon. The Meaning of Life is: Come and Have Breakfast!

Sermon. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford. 10.4.16

Third Sunday of Easter (Year C)

Gospel: John 21.1-19

This sermon is indeed too long. I did not have the mix of time and concentration to edit. People offering feedback were immensely kind. Believe it or not, I held their attention (it was claimed). 
Perhaps the nutritious bribery (see end of sermon) helped. 

Another friend suggested I might replace the text with a haiku. If you're of that school, I offer:


Fishers without fish?
Abundance is here to stay;
join Me for breakfast.

Or

Fishless fishers, we!
He will help us. He will call:
Companionship lives!

In terms not of the normal secular calendar, but of the Church's calendar, history is repeating itself. Two years ago, I was not with you over Easter; I was fulfilling prior commitments to my then church. I appeared (as it were) on the Second Sunday of Easter. And – what do you know? - Fr Brian took his well-earned break over the Third Sunday of Easter, and I was in charge, and so preached for the first time. A preaching anniversary, then.

I am not sure you (those of you who were around) will remember that sermon!... Once again, I am teasing. I mean I am sure you will not remember that sermon. And why should you?

Whoever we are – someone quite new to church or archbishop emeritus – whoever we are, we are unlikely to remember the structure or detailed content of sermons. We are a literate culture, and we tend not to write notes during sermons (though don't let me stop you). So we treat them as 'of the moment'. We can hope that something might stick - some phrase, or image, or word of challenge or comfort, or maybe just a tone of voice which strikes us as loving or authentic. And that is enough.

You won't remember my sermon two years ago. But just maybe, once I mention it, you may recall one aspect of that sermon. This: I asked you a question. And I made it clear it was not a rhetorical question but a real question, looking for an answer. Remember? The question I asked was: What is your favourite Easter story, meaning your favourite gospel story of the encounters people had with the risen Lord Jesus?

I remember this very clearly, because (frankly) you gave me the answer I was expecting. You, inasmuch as you said anything (you're better now), tended to point to the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. [Some did remember this!] This is often a favourite. It was also the reading that day (which of course may well have influenced you).

I remember that I then said that the story, the narrative flow, the structure of the Emmaus story is an excellent model for what we do in church:

• we too gather, maybe despondent, confused, distracted or exhausted, but we gather in faith that the risen Christ joins us (or we him);
• we too attend to the Scriptures, trusting that they make fullest sense in the light of the risen Christ, and in expectant hope that in one way or another our hearts burn within us when he mystically unfolds them for us;
• we too look in faith to the risen Christ as the one who mystically breaks the bread, so that we recognise him there, and receive him into our very selves;
• we too look to be sent back into the world with some new strength or encouragement or insight, to be able to say words which ultimately mean 'we have seen the Lord; we recognised him in the hearing of the Scriptures and in the breaking of the bread, and so all of life is new'.

That's why our service has the Gathering, the Liturgy of the Word (the Bible), the Liturgy of the Sacrament (the bread and wine), and the Dismissal (the Sending Out).

So every time we gather, Sunday by Sunday, but also whenever we gather around the table, we ourselves are on the road to Emmaus. Alleluia! Indeed (also from that first sermon, by the way):

[signed] Alleluia!

Or [differently signed] Alleluia!

Am I being lazy, or nostalgic, revisiting an old sermon? I don't think so. I think it bears repeating. (Remember that we don't remember sermons.) But it's also a way in to my personal confession. My own favourite resurrection story is... today's. I mean the first half (the half that is often forgotten, as there is such a focus on Peter and his threefold declaration of love). The third appearance in John. The risen Lord Jesus and the miraculous catch of fish. Why?

It's a story with some resonances with the way to Emmaus. The disciples are still despondent, somewhat lost. It occurs to Peter to return to his old life as a fisherman, and the others go along with it. Is this a 'displacement activity'? Is it a mark of a sense of utter failure – fishing for human beings has failed... back to square one? Is it that thing which people know very well in grief: the need to just do something, perhaps especially to do something in the midst of nature? We are not told. It may have been all of this and more.

Then Jesus appears.

And immediately we have the classic problem with all the resurrection accounts. Jesus is both recognised and not recognised. His first word to the fishermen is 'Children', or even 'Little children', or, alternatively, 'Lads'. It's an intimate term. So it doesn't work to imagine the disciples thinking they were being addressed by a complete stranger. The Beloved Disciple does indeed say: 'It is the Lord'. But this turns Peter into a spin. Chaotically, he dresses, then jumps into the sea, and wades through the shallow water. But notice this especially: when all are gathered, we have the line: 'none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord.' Let me tell you: that makes as little sense in Greek as in does in English. None.

So there is something abidingly mysterious about the story. When we add to the recognisability-and-unrecognisability of Jesus the miraculous nature of the catch of fish (or at least Christ's surprising underwater knowledge) and the intriguing - nay, baffling - detail that we are told there were precisely 153 fish, here is something a long way away from a normal story. Since we are talking about the resurrection, this should not surprise us.

But! That is only half the story. The other half is that in other ways this is indeed a simple, a natural, a homely story.

• A friend visits a lakeside at dawn;
• he finds his friends fishing, and shouts some advice to them;
• they are very successful;
• they join him at the lakeside for a celebratory breakfast;
• it is simple but nourishing – bread and fish.
  You see? Simple, homely.

And this is how the resurrection accounts are. They have something mysterious about them (remember how Mary Magdalene didn't recognise Jesus until he said her name; remember the disciples were in a shut and locked room, then Jesus is suddenly with them). And, at the same time, they have something simple and very much human-scale about them. A friend comes to be with a friend.

I've said this before, but, again, it bears repeating. Notice what Jesus does not do. He does not show himself to Pilate, or Herod, or Caiaphas, or any crowd, to prove them wrong. He shows himself only to his friends. Then, he does not chastise them for deserting him. He doesn't even lead them - nudge them, encourage them - towards a prayer of repentance, before they can be reconciled. He simply – perhaps too simply for our tastes – says: 'Little children... you have no fish have you?... I'll help... then come and have breakfast.'

Do we believe this? Can we trust it? You see: this really is revelation. It is a truth about Gd only Gd can tell us.

We might, through our own natural reasoning, just about work out for ourselves that Gd is broadly on our side; the Creator is going to be favourably disposed to Gd's own creation (for Gd is consistent). But we'd never from reason and deduction alone come to think that this means

• that Gd longs, more than anything, to be our friend;
• that Gd longs for companionship with us, which means (literally) sharing together in the eating of bread;
• that Gd longs for that companiable friendship so much that Gd will offer that before we are ready, before we have come to repentance and facing up to things.
  Repentance is important, but note that it follows on. First we, like the first disciples, have to hear those words of invitation:

'Little children, come and have breakfast. Let's eat and spend time together', 
says the Lord.

If you believe and trust in this for yourself: [Signed] Alleluia!

If you half believe and trust, or wonder whether there just might be something in it, Alleluia too! 
You are in the best place to explore. To ask yourself how you might make that invitation your own.

And, if you want, as you might, some concrete, embodied symbol of that companionship-call from Christ, I have here [shows] some token, biscuit fish-and-chips, and some breadsticks. 

We can enjoy these over drinks after the service and nourish ourselves on the invitation.

[Signed] Amen.