Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
May 16, 2004
John 14: 23-29
A group of us recently went on a fishing trip to the Fall River in Northeastern California. It’s a very unique, beautiful stream and we were fishing for wild rainbow trout – fly-fishing, catch and release. We have gone to this same stream for a number of years and last year I had a certain amount of success. I caught some nice fish even though the weather was terrible. I figured I had this river figured out – I knew which flies to use, I knew which method to use and I’d just go up there and really knock them dead this year. Well, there was a lot of knocking dead when we first got up there, but I wasn’t doing it. Using my tried and true methods, those tried and true flies, I wasn’t doing much. It wasn’t until we had been up there a coupe of days that, finally, almost grudgingly I decided I’d better try some new flies some new methods of casting those flies. And when I did it, finally made the change, and dared to try something new – I began to catch a few fish.
I am reminded of a Biblical text – not the text for today – but a text from the Gospel of Luke. Peter and the sons of Zebedee have been fishing all night. They come back in the morning and meet Jesus on the shore and their nets are empty. Now I don’t know if you have ever noticed this, but throughout the Gospels, whenever Jesus isn’t around, Peter and the other fishermen never catch any fish. These guys are fisherman – this is their trade – but if you read through the Gospels, they are pretty crummy fisherman. They never catch anything! All night long they fish, all night long they cast their nets and in the morning – no fish.
One thing about fishing of course, is you have to find just the right spot. And if you find a favorite spot, you don’t often share that. In fact I discovered last week you don’t even share it with your minister. “So you guys caught some fish upstream, huh? Well, where were you?” Silence. Or, “Well, you know Gene, we could tell you, but then we’d have to kill you.”
I am reminded of a story told by one of my colleagues. He says: “A few summers ago I was with my son-in-law on a stream in the North Georgia Mountains. It was a beautiful and secluded spot. We had to hike several miles from the parking lot back into this stream. As we left the trail and got to the stream, we came upon an angler right there. I said, ‘Good spot, eh?’ He answered, ‘Yes, it’s closest to my car.’” I guess there a lot of reasons to pick a particular spot to fish. But one thing for sure, if you are there for a while and don’t catch anything, you generally move on. But not Peter and the others. In this particular instance, in this text from Luke, seemingly they stayed in the same place, fished all night with the same tried and true methods, didn’t change anything, even when they didn’t catch any fish. Maybe that was the place his father had shown him long ago; maybe it had worked before; maybe this was the way he always did it. Whether or not there were any fish in the area, Peter was not going to move. All night – no fish. Nothing until Jesus comes along the next day – and Jesus is a carpenter, by the way, not a fisherman – and suggests he try a different method in a different place. Go out, fish deeper. And then they catch fish.
You can see where I am going here. Isn’t Peter’s fishing pattern typical human behavior? How many times in our own lives have we insisted on following certain habits or paths or routines with almost no result – no fish in sight – and we keep doing it anyway? We argue with our children or our spouse with no result, so we argue louder, and still the nets come up empty. We find ourselves in the midst of affluence, sometimes feeling somewhat disaffected or unsure, so we get more stuff, stick to the tried and true patterns of consumption, and still our nets come up empty – our houses and garage are filled, but strangely, our nets are still empty. On the international scene, we continue to believe that applying just a little more violence in just the right place, will somehow bring an end to violence; just a little more killing will put an end to killing – particularly if we manage to kill the right people. But it seems to me that the net remains tragically empty. So many of the wrong people keep dying, as if there is a right person to kill, and the violence and the brutality only escalate. But it is so hard, isn’t it, for individuals and nations, to take the risk of fishing in new waters, trying new methods. We are so used to the old ways, even when they leave our nets empty.
Which brings me to our text for today. Jesus knows that his time on earth with his disciples is coming to an end. What can he say? What farewell words can he share? What can he leave them with? Finally, he says this: “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” He leaves them his peace. What do you suppose that means? I read this text at almost every memorial service, but what does it really mean?
I confess to you that at this point I would like to get political. Some of you probably hope I will; some of you are probably afraid I will. I don’t know what your experience has been lately, I can only speak for myself, but the more headlines I read and news I hear, the more I try to discern with some clarity what lies ahead of us, the angrier I get…the more fearful I get… the more pessimistic I get. Optimism and hope are hard to come by. I would like to get political with this talk of peace, Jesus’ peace, but I’m not sure that is where our text is taking me.
In his classic commentary on the Gospel of John, Raymond Brown writes, “The peace of which Jesus speaks has nothing to do with the absence of warfare, nor with an end to psychological tension, nor with a sentimental feeling of well-being. The peace of Jesus is a gift that pertains to our salvation…reflecting the great gift that Jesus has brought from God to humanity.”
Again, what is this gift – this peace of Christ? I like these words of Frederick Buechner (I like a lot of the words of Frederick Buechner): “Now and then we’ve had our visions of it, thank God – of the people we might be, that at our best we sometimes dream of being. Here and there we’ve heard echoes of what our lives together could be – as humans, as nations, if only we lived them right. Suppose we could step out, from everything in the past that weighs us down and holds us back – the things we’ve done or failed to do that deaden, wreck, cripple. Suppose we could cast off once and for all every nightmare we can imagine about the future and for once in our lives live just in the mystery and gift of today. Suppose that for once we could lose ourselves – the way when you are in love you can lose yourself – lose ourselves in the sheer delight of each other’s presence, in the outlandish and wonderful differences between us no less than in all we have in common – black and white, old and young, homosexual and heterosexual, male and female. To dream such a dream as that is all but to weep because in one way it seems so almost possible, only just barely out of reach, and in other ways farther away than the farthest star.”
This – this dream which is so near, yet so very far - this I believe, is the peace of which Jesus speaks. This is the promise he leaves with us.
It is a promise of the future, but it is also a promise for today. It is a promise of healing and wholeness, a promise that the spirit of Christ himself is with us, is within us, working with us each day to strengthen us for all that we are called to do, a promise that the Kingdom of God – that great not yet – is in fact taking shape here and now. It is the promise of reconnection, of communion with God and each other, of sharing in nothing less than the life of Jesus himself. This is the peace he leaves us. And because I believe this, I stubbornly continue to hope. We are not left desolate, for finally our faith is not primarily a list of rules to be obeyed, a set of moral laws, a list of noble and inspiring ideas. Our faith is in Christ, present with his people, bringing us his peace.
A pastor writes, “In my last congregation, there was a woman who had had, by anybody’s account, a tough life. She had been in pain much of her adult life due to a terrible degenerative disease. Her young son had died of leukemia. Her husband left her shortly after that. A tough life. And yet she was always smiling. Anyone in that congregation would tell you that she always seemed to put the most positive face on everything. Through all congregational crises, she always seemed to have just the right word of encouragement at the right time amid our periodic discouragement.
“’Jane is a reminder to me,’ said one person in the congregation, ‘of what this faith is all about. She reminds me that, if you trust the love of Jesus, the world can be different.”
If you trust the love of Jesus – the peace of Jesus – things can be different, the world can be different…we can be different. Buechner again: “We are to come to him even though the world calls us in a hundred different directions. We are to be fools for his sake. We are to take risks for him and be merry for him. We are to work for peace and pray for miracles. We are to go places and do things and speak words that, without him, we wouldn’t even dare dream of. We know so much more than we ever let on about what he would have each of us do in our own lives – what door to open, what hand to take. We have within us, each one, so much more of his power than we ever spend – such misers of miracle we are, such pinchpenny guardians of grace.”
And believe it or not, we have come back to where we began. Because of his promise – his peace – we can dare to fish in other waters, can cast our nets in other, untried directions. We are not bound by what has gone before. We don’t have to live as strangers, afraid of each other, indifferent to each other, angry with each other, broken and lonely for each other and for God in countless ways. As Marcus Borg tells us we can go beyond the mind that we have been given and have acquired. We can go beyond the mind shaped by culture – shaped by so much fear today – we can go beyond that to the mind we have in Christ, in Christ’s peace.
No, his promise of peace may not be overtly political, but, as I said, I do believe it is an invitation to explore other ways of fishing, other ways to cast our nets. Again, we are not bound by the empty nets that have been cast in the past. And it seems to me many of the nets we are using today have been empty for far too long. In the words of a colleague, Steven Sterner: “It is always a risk to give up something that you’ve done for a long time, even if it’s not satisfying or fulfilling. It is always a risk to change an attitude or a lifestyle. It is always a risk to change the way you deal with other people and try to solve problems. But unless the risk is taken, you never come to the experience of not only seeing the light but also living with others in the light… And with God’s blessing and patience, taking their hand and walking God’s way.”
This is what our singing and worshipping and preaching and praying are all about if they are about anything at all that matters. The hope that by the grace of God the impossible will happen. This hope that you and I, each in our own puny but crucial way, will work and witness and pray for the things that make for peace, true peace – the peace of Christ – in our own lives and in the life of this land.