Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, come.  Take my lips and speak with them.  Take our minds and think with them.  Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you.  In Christ’s name, we ask it.  Amen

In 1992, twenty large containers of children’s bath toys were riding on a cargo ship from China to Seattle.  When, out of nowhere, a violent storm struck the ship causing the 20 containers of toys to be tossed into the ocean.  Feared to be lost were almost 29,000 rubber duckies.  Now before you begin to panic over the loss, I have some good news. They survived, and, not only did they survive, but they embarked on an epic journey floating across three oceans and half the globe.  So tough are these toys that they have stayed afloat for far more than a decade, enduring the assault of wind and wave, and probably spending several winters frozen in an arctic ice floe.  Their seemingly endless odyssey has finally brought them to the East Coast, causing beachcombers to be on the lookout for squeaky-toys on the shoreline.  You see anyone who finds one of the refugees in North America earns a $100 savings bond from the toy company that originally ordered them from a Chinese factory.

Now I bet you are wondering how in the world am I going to use this strange story to make a point in my sermon?  The connection is of course Peter who ends up like the rubber duckies all wet in today’s Gospel lesson.  Peter pulls a move in today’s lesson that I call the “Forest Gump.”  I am sure many of you remember the scene in the movie when Forest is returning to the fishing wharf in his great big shrimp boat after a long day of unsuccessful shrimping.  As he pulls into the wharf, he notices his beloved commanding officer from Viet Nam, Lieutenant Dan.  Forest, not being the sharpest arrow in the quiver, is so excited—so overwhelmed with joy—at seeing Lieutenant Dan that he leaps off the side of the boat and swims directly to the pier on which his friend is standing.  The only problem is that Forest is the only person on the shrimp boat.  So, after Forrest’s leap, the Pilate-less boat careens out of control and collides head on with the wharf.    

In today’s gospel lesson, we encounter Peter and his fishing buddies out on the Sea of Galilee trying to put their lives back together after witnessing the simultaneously awful and awesome events of Holy Week.  Imagine with me the scene.  The disciples fish all night and catch nothing, an experience that probably left them frustrated.  Then a stranger appears on the beach at dawn about a hundred yards off—to far away to be easily identifiable.  It was that time in the morning when shapes cannot take on color or features for lack of light.  The stranger calls out from the shore that they should “Cast the net to the right side of the boat.”  Peter and his companions must have been thinking, “Yeah right!  As if that will make any difference.”  They had, after all, been fishing unsuccessfully all night long.  But no one has any better ideas and as the sun rises, time for fishing will be over anyway.  So they cast the net to the right, and the rest, as we say, is history.  The net is so full of fish that they can’t haul it in.  After the miracle catch, the beloved disciple, John, one of Peter’s cohorts on the boat, recognizes the stranger standing on the beach and shouts out, “It is the Lord!”

At this point, the Forest Gump move comes into play.  Peter is overwhelmed with joy at the sight of his risen Lord.  Although I wouldn’t want to say that Peter isn’t the sharpest arrow in the quiver, the Gospels clearly make the point that he can at times let’s say be a bit rash.  His only thought is—there’s my Lord…I’ve got to be with Him.  And, as we all know, the shortest distance between two places is a straight line.  So Peter, like the rubber duckies in 1992, takes a swan dive off the side of the boat and swims straight to Jesus—leaving John and the others to get the fish in the boat and the boat to shore.

After everyone arrives on the beach including those Peter left behind, Jesus invites them all to share a common meal.   The Gospel story concludes by telling us that this encounter was the third time that Jesus had appeared to his disciples after being raised from the dead. 

Something about this last little piece of information strikes me as a little strange.  And this is what it is.  The disciples have already seen Jesus resurrected from the dead twice, and, apparently, nothing has changed in their lives.  It would seem to me that after Jesus is raised from the dead everything would be different.  Nonetheless, the disciples are back at their old stomping grounds, doing what they have always done—fishing!  They have seen Jesus raised from the dead.  Death has been defeated.  Eternal and abundant life is available to all.  It would seem to me that the disciples would want to share this Good News, and, yet, there they are back on their boat trying to eek out a living catching fish.   

Now, to give the disciples a little credit, I think the whole concept of resurrection and its implication for the world and on our lives takes a while to really digest.  This story becomes a place where you and I can begin to understand something about how we are to live as followers of the resurrected Jesus.  I want to focus specifically on Peter and his Forest Gump like dive off the side of the boat.  You see if you love Jesus, and I know you do, you’ve got to get dressed, swim ashore, roll up your sleeves, and dig into the work of discipleship.  You have to impulsively, passionately dive head first into the very real pain and suffering present all around us, and, in the midst of that darkness, preach the Good News using words and deeds.  People around us are starving from an absence of love in their lives.  It’s our job to tell them about God’s love given to the world in Jesus, and to be that love incarnate by caring for them.

Unfortunately, there are too many of us who are floating aimlessly on the sea of life like those 29,000 Chinese bath toys aimlessly making their way down the East Coast of the United States.  They move only in the direction that the current takes them—too many Christians today move only as the cultural winds and currents dictate.  Peter’s rash reaction to the presence of the risen Lord might be comical, but it has much to teach us about the Christian life—about how we might respond to the experience of resurrection in our own lives.  Don’t float through life blind to the great physical, emotional, and spiritual pain in this world.  Immerse yourself in that pain because you have been entrusted with a message of love that has the power to bring life out of death. 

Madeleine L’Engle, the author of “A Wrinkle in Time”, remarked once in an interview about visiting a particular church.  She said, “One Sunday about six years ago, I was visiting an Episcopal church in New York.  In the middle of the service, a man stood up and said, “I hope this is appropriate to ask.  I was an abused child.  I’m terrified of being an abusive father.  I need help and prayer.”  L’Engle continued, “I knew then this was a church I could stay in.  This church is different because people are willing to be vulnerable here.  Sometimes it gets messy, but that’s okay.  People are not afraid to ask questions.  In this church, we’re able to admit we’re all broken, we’ve all made terrible mistakes, we’re all in need, and we all want things we don’t have.”

As the interview progressed, she said, “We meet in an upper room because the church building was sold, and we gave all the beautiful things to the Metropolitan Museum.  There’s not a mink coat in the place, and there’s not anyone else my age there either.  They’re all very young, very alive.  The 5 o’clock Eucharist is largely street people — on drugs, HIV-positive, or with AIDS.  One member told me it was the only place where he was called by name.  It’s a church in which a mother whose 27-year-old son has died is free to say, “People think I’m terrible because I can’t pray.” And I can reassure her, “You don’t have to pray.  We’re praying for you.  That’s what the body of Christ is about.”

Madeleine L’Engle’s comments paint a beautiful picture of a church that has immersed itself in the very real pain in our world.  That church has recklessly dived head first into the physical, emotional, and spiritual pain that infect communities around us like a disease.  That community has become the promise of life in the midst of the reality of death.  They are a community impulsively, passionately following the resurrected Lord.

We celebrated the risen Lord on Easter.  We encounter the risen Lord each Sunday in our common meal of bread and wine.  We meet the risen Lord in those people we serve and love.  So, how will we respond to the experience of resurrection in our lives?    Will we float like rubber duckies wherever the current takes us, or will we intentionally immerse ourselves in the needs of those entrusted to us?  Perhaps it’s time to follow Peter’s example and jump.  Amen.        

Back To Sermons