“Fishing Again”
John 21:1-19

April 22, 2007

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John A. Fleming, Pastor

Have you heard the story about the fisherman and his wife who were blessed when their twin sons were born? It was back in the day when you could leave the hospital without having named your children. There were some struggled when the boys were born. Sleeping through the night at first was tough, as it is with most parents, but they loved their boys.

One day the two decided that it was time for the boys to be named. Naming a child isn’t as easy as you might think. The husband had names he wanted to use and his wife had secretly picked out some names of her own. Family names were important to her. The two were at a standstill and so it took several more weeks before they decided on names.

The names came as a result of something strange the boys did. When they were left alone, one of the boys would turn towards the sea. His brother, however, always faced towards the land. He never faced the ocean. It did not matter how the parents positioned the boys. They always turned, one towards the sea and the other towards the land. So their parents decided they would name their boys based on that. I know it sounds strange, but one of the boys was named Towards and the other son was named Away.

People made fun of their names, but they survived that and when they were older, both sons decided that they would join their father in the fishing business. The father could not have been more proud. On their very first outing the father gathered supplies for their fishing boat and the three of them set sail for a three month trip. Those three months turned into almost a year. The wife and mother was beside herself with grief. She didn’t know what to do. Then one day she noticed her husband walking in the direction of their house. Her boys weren’t behind him. She was thrilled to see him, but she was quick to ask, “Where are the boys?” The father told a marvelous tale about their son, Toward. He told how Toward had fought brilliantly with a monster of a fish. The battle took all of one day and at the end of it, the fish, with all its might, heaved their son over the side of the boat. The father said, “I looked and looked, but I never saw our son again.” The mother said, “That must have been awful! What a huge fish he must have been!” The father answered, “It was awful. It was terrible. The fish was enormous.” Now church are you ready for this? Consider yourselves warned. Listen to what the father said next. He said, “Honey, you should have seen the one that got Away!”

I know. I know, the story is a groaner. Most fish stories are. Most people look suspiciously on fishermen’s tales. A man in the church my brother once served liked to say, “I once caught a fish this…..far from the shore.” Fishing stories lend themselves to the spectacular, maybe because fishing is often done alone.

Well, this morning we have as our lesson, a great fishermen’s tale. Read it and it will immediately send you back to another great fishing story, this one in Luke’s gospel. It is the story where the disciples come in after a long night of unsuccessful fishing. In that story Jesus commandeers Peter’s boat and tells him to push out a bit so they can go fishing. Peter protests, you will remember, but in the end, he and his fishing partners caught more fish that two boats could haul in. A gold mine was flipping and flopping at their feet and yet these disciples dropped their nets, dropped their fishing company, dropped their families for a time, dropped their lives, and followed this Jesus. They began to fish for people. For the next three years, these fishermen listened as Jesus preached and taught; they watched him as he performed miracles and as he turned the world upside down. But then he was arrested and crucified. Now the big questions for them are two: “Where do we go now? What do we do now?”

Well, evidently the answer to the first question was Galilee and the reply to the second is to go fishing. I guess I want to know why they would do that. I think I already know. When your world is turned upside down, you tend to do the familiar thing and the comfortable thing. These disciples knew fishing and so they turned back to it once Jesus was gone. Maybe the disciples needed time to clear their heads. Maybe the soothing rocking back and forth of the boat and the smell of the sea and the feel of the nets in their calloused hands were comforting to them.

I hope you don’t get tired of illustrations from my life. When my sister died, I took a few days off to be with my family. It was near Christmas time and the Staff-Parish Relations Committee wanted me to have all the time I needed. I quickly wanted to come back to work. Work, you see, was familiar and comfortable to me. I knew what to do here and taking care of others is something that’s always been something I like to do.

The disciples did not have a church building to turn to or a congregation to minister to. Fishing was where they were comfortable so that is where they went. But they didn’t stay there long. Jesus wouldn’t let that happen. Jesus always calls us out of our comfort zones. He calls to them from the shore, asking if they’ve caught any fish. When the answer is “no” he tells them where to fish and the haul, once again, is miraculous.

That’s the first third of the story. The first sermon in these words is that it’s easy to retreat to a comfortable place, a place where you know how to handle things. There are two other sermons here. I’ll preach them quickly. When the disciples came to the shore, Jesus was cooking using a charcoal fire.

Peter would have remembered the smell of charcoal. The smell would have immediately sent him back to the courtyard and his denial of Jesus not once but three times. And now there is Jesus. The smell haunted him. His heart must have missed several beats as Jesus walked over to him and asked, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” Jesus question comes three times and each time it is answered, Jesus responds, “Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my lambs. Three times Peter denied Jesus near a charcoal fire. Three times Jesus forgives Peter around a charcoal fire.

That is what is happening here. Forgiveness is happening here. Feed my sheep means that you have your old job back. You are restored. Forgiveness means forgetting the past and starting over. I heard someone once say this. “Guilt is a chain. Guilt holds you in the past even when you don’t talk about it, even if you don’t try to forget it, or even when you successfully suppress it, it still weighs you down.” Maybe it is like this. Maybe we don’t know that it is there. Perhaps we are not able to identify it, but there is something around ruining your life. And forgiveness means that it no longer has power over you. How does the hymn put it? “He breaks the power of cancelled sin, he sets the prisoner free.” Feed my sheep means that you have a future now. That is why the charcoal fire is there. It is a scene, not of denial, but of forgiveness. That’s the second sermon. There is restoration.

There is one more. Let me preach it this morning. Just after that there is a cryptic riddle. It reads, “When you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and another will carry you where you do not wish to go.”

What does that mean? I think I know. When we are young, we are a lot like Peter. We are confident and brash and bold. He make statements like, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” When you are young, you think you can do anything. But then you fail and then you fall and that is when you really need someone else. You need someone else’s forgiveness. You need someone else’s patience. You need someone else’s grace. And so you go fishing and catch nothing, and Jesus shows up again to show you how it is done, where the fish are.

At some point we have to say to Jesus, “I can’t do this on my own, please help me!” It’s then that we grow up. When you are young, you fix things yourself. When you’re older you realize you need some help. And you also realize that you haven’t gotten where you are all by yourself. When you mature, you notice the limits of your life and discovered that you haven’t gotten where you are all by yourself.

Let me close with this. In the 1992 Olympic games, Derrick Redman, a runner from the United Kingdom, ran the four hundred meter race. He rounded a curve and fell down. He immediately reached for the back of his leg. He had pulled a hamstring muscle. If you haven’t done that, I want you to know, it is very painful. He wanted to finish the race. He inched towards the finish line, slowly. He could barely move. The officials came on the track and surrounded him, they tried to move him off the track, but he was going to finish the race.

Then someone came out of the stands. It was Derrick’s dad. He put his hand on his son. His son reached and took his father’s hand. The father girded him strengthened him; they finished the race, together. After it was all over, a reporter asked the father, “Why did you do that? Why did you come from the stands?” Listen to what Derrick’s father said, “Because we started this thing together and we are going to finish this thing together.”

And there are the disciples, in their boat, fishing, again. A stranger tells them where to fish and they are successful once again. They could not do it on their own. Then the stranger renews their lives and gave them back three of their years. It was a life they thought was over. This Jesus said to them what he is saying to us. It is a word after his resurrection. He beckoned, “Follow me.” And they did. I’m glad they did. Let us pray.

(Special thanks to Rev. Mark Trotter for the story about Derrick Redman and the few thoughts surrounding it).