Saturday, April 09, 2016
III Easter, April 10, 2016
Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter
Year C ~ April 10, 2016
Holy
Trinity & St. Anskar
Follow me.
+In
the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity
It
is interesting that there is another story like this in Luke, that resembles it
in form:
boat
on lake
unsuccessful
fishing
command
to try again
then
a great haul
That
other story is about the Apostles’ first encounter with Jesus, in which Peter
and John and others have been out all night fishing, to no avail. Then the
Stranger appears, commandeers their boat so that He can sit down while speaking
to the crowd, and then tells Peter to try again. With some exasperation Peter agrees
and gets so many fish that the net starts to break. They have to call for more
boats and all of them are full of fish to the point of sinking. Peter is frightened
and says to the Lord, “Go away from me, because I am a sinful person.”
Today’s story is formally the same and it occurs as the LAST of the
Apostles’ encounters with Jesus – after the Resurrection. These two stories of
boats and fishing and human recognition of Jesus FRAME, as it were, the whole
Gospel proclamation. Maybe it would be worthwhile to notice what is different
in them. In the first, the fish are hauled into the boats as the nets are
breaking and the boats almost sink. In today’s the nets don’t break, but neither
is there any mention of fish being hauled into the boats. Instead, the young
John recognizes Jesus. Then Peter throws on some clothes, jumps into the water
and runs to shore. Meanwhile, the other disciples pull the fish NOT into the
boat, but straight to shore, and the Evangelist – John himself, according to
the text – makes a point of recording
that the net DID NOT BREAK, and even specifies the precise number of fish.
Jesus instructs them to bring some of the fish to the charcoal fire and have
some breakfast.
If we imagine that the author of the Fourth Gospel was familiar with Luke’s
account, then it would seem that the differences are deliberate and intended to
tell us something, something about the difference in the world before and after
the Resurrection.
Maybe it’s something like this: don’t
worry if you can’t get all the fish into the boat. That is a mistake. If you
try, the net will break and the boat will sink – even if you get more boats,
they will sink too. This is not merely a figure for the great success of
evangelical activity in terms of numbers – it means that Bagging souls for Jesus is not the point. And if you think it is, then let me remind you of what
happens to the fish in the end! Let’s accept the ancient typology that says the
Apostles’ boat represents the Church. But look! In the second story, Peter GETS
OUT OF THE BOAT and runs to Jesus. What are we to make of that? The aim of
their activity is not to get fish into the boat but to bring them to Jesus. We
can’t carry that too far, because Jesus then roasts them and serves them to the
Apostles! No, I think we had better
leave the fish in the net and concentrate on the Apostles. The stories are really
about them. Specifically, about Peter and John.
John and his brother James appear in both stories. Several more appear
in today’s, later account, including, Thomas the Twin, of whom we heard last
week. Thomas who saw and was faithful. Now we turn to Peter and John, who
represent, respectively, fidelity and vision. It is John whom Jesus loved, who
recognizes Him from the boat. He sees
Jesus clearly and conveys the news to Peter, the leader, who is naked. A
practical man, Peter is undressed for hard work and he has to put something on
before he can see the Lord. Notice the difference: in the first story, Peter
falls at Jesus’ feet and asks Him to go away. In this story, Peter prepares
himself and runs to Jesus. This time instead of trying to get out of it,
because he recognizes himself as inadequate to the call, he jumps out of the
boat and into the water and runs up to Jesus.
The rest of the story we just heard is about Peter. After receiving
bread from the Lord, Peter must then reaffirm his love for Him three times – undoing
his threefold denial on Good Friday. Peter must affirm his faithfulness and
love. Then Jesus commands Peter, as He did in the other story, follow me. The rest of the passage,
which we did NOT hear today goes on to conclude the whole Gospel in the voice
of the John:
Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; he was the one who had reclined next to Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?” When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!” So the rumor spread in the community that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?”
St.
Augustine comments that Peter symbolizes action, while John represents
contemplation – like Martha and Mary of Bethany. Peter’s faithfulness in
leading and feeding the sheep is the path of disciples in this life. John’s
vision of Jesus as He is represents eternal life in the Age to Come. Augustine
assures us that both disciples, in their actual lives, worked in faith and went
on to the heavenly vision forever, but in the Gospel accounts they symbolize for us the two aspects of Christian
life: active faith in this life, and vision
in the Age to Come:
All of the first [kind of] life is lived in this world, and it will come to an end with this world. The second [kind of] life will be imperfect till the end of this world, but it will have no end in the next world. And so, Christ says to Peter “Follow me”; but of John He says: “If I wish him to remain until I come, what is that to you? Your duty is to follow me.”
Augustine observes that Christ’s
words should not be taken to imply that John would never die but that the kind of life he symbolizes can be fulfilled only when Christ
comes again. Meanwhile, the kind of life Peter symbolizes in following Christ
and feeding His sheep CAN find fulfillment in faithful action here and now.
That life of action – the life of faith – leads to the life John symbolizes,
the perfect vision that never ends. The vision that led him to end his Gospel
by saying
This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
ALLELUIA!
CHRIST IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD,
TRAMPLING DOWN DEATH BY DEATH,
AND BETOWING LIFE ON ALL IN THE TOMBS.
ALLELUIA!
II Easter, April 3, 2016
Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter
Year C ~ April 3, 2016
Holy Trinity & St. Anskar
"I am the Alpha and the Omega," says
the Lord God,
Who is and Who was and Who is to come, the
Almighty.
+In
the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity
Everyone has to believe in Something.
Right now, I believe I’ll have another beer! OK. Ha Ha. This old, low tavern
joke is useful, though because it illustrates how believe can have several meanings. It can refer to an opinion, a hope, or a decision. Or confidence in
another person or institution. In Greek, it can also mean being faithful. So when Thomas says “Unless I
see I will not believe,” what exactly did he mean?
Maybe not that he doubted. The “finger
of doubt” which he insisted on thrusting into our Lord’s wounds before he
believed, may be a bad rap. The account is careful to remind us that Thomas was
called the Twin. As previously
observed on this occasion, this may refer to his double character: fidelity
and doubt. For Thomas was certainly
the most loyal of the disciples. He it was who said “Let us go with Him and die
with Him,” when the others were trying to dissuade Him from going to Jerusalem.
Doubt, double, twin – there is here
something more than the mere fact that Thomas had an identical brother
somewhere. So maybe it is his double character as a loyal skeptic.
Then again, maybe not. Maybe it refers
to the various meanings of the word believe.
Maybe Thomas’s twinness meant that he
exemplified two kinds of belief: fidelity and discernment. In that case, the Lord’s remark applied to him in both
parts: You have believed because you see;
blessed are those who believe though they have not seen. And Thomas is part
of the latter group, too. Thomas surely didn’t mean that he would not be faithful unless he touched the risen
Lord. The most loyal Apostle would not forsake Him. I think Thomas was faithful
even before he saw. He may not have held the opinion that Jesus was Risen, but
he was still loyal. And THAT led to his vision – his discernment. And THAT led,
in turn, to the blessing of confidence and hope.
Blessed are those who have not seen and
yet have believed.
Thomas is one of those, as we are. Not
just some materialistic skeptic, but one whose faith leads to a new,
unspeakable reality.
What if the Lord’s remark about seeing
and believing is not meant to contrast Thomas with those who believe though
they do not see, what if it refers to different meanings of believing? After all, the rest of the Apostles also
believed only after they saw. What if the Lord’s words refer to Thomas in both
instances: in one sense, you have seen and then believed, but in another sense,
you also have been faithful and thereby come to see what has never before been
seen. Perhaps Thomas is our model in that. Is that not the task of every
disciple in every age?
Could it be that the Lord’s remark
invites us to notice that Thomas believed because he has SEEN and not because
he has TOUCHED. He DISCERNS the Body of Christ in the locked Upper Room, even
though he does not come into contact with it in the way he had previously
demanded: as though the Risen Body were an ordinary body. What he saw was so
much more than that that the physical touching of what he beheld was
irrelevant. What he saw was the One Who says
I am the Alpha and the Omega, Who is
and Who was and Who is to come, the Almighty.
His experience in the locked room was
so overwhelming – so beyond ordinary experience – that he forgot all about his
insistence on material verification: whatever he saw made him forget about
inserting his “finger of doubt” into the wounds or his hand into the Lord’s
side. Even though Jesus invited him to do so. What he saw made all that
irrelevant, and he jumped immediately to adoration: “My Lord and My God!”
The locked Upper Room is the
intersection of time and eternity, the vestibule, in which creatures of time encounter
the Alpha and Omega, Who was, and is, and
is to come. It is the Eucharistic community of the Church. This is not the
commemoration of a past event only, but the ongoing presentation of eternity coming into history, in which the past event
is made PRESENT in anticipation of FUTURE consummation.
In the East, right after Communion the
Deacon says:
Having beheld the Resurrection of Christ, let us worship the holy Lord
Jesus…
Here is the pattern of Thomas the Twin
–behold and then worship. And later,
..we have seen the true light, we have
received the heavenly spirit, we have found the true faith.
Those who come into the vestibule of
eternity SEE as Thomas saw, the True
Light, and further material verification is irrelevant. We FIND True faith – confidence and hope. We
also RECEIVE the Heavenly Spirit, as they did in the Upper Room – the divine
power to forgive sins, conveyed by the Blood of Christ, which we drink. In
exercising that power, we make the Resurrection present right now – we re-present
it. The unseen realities of infinite
love and eternal life are seen, so
that those who trust are blessed not because they are somehow better than
Thomas, but because they have come to see just as he came to see, and to
proclaim the Paschal and Eucharistic Mystery:
Christ has Died,
Christ is Risen,
Christ will come again!
