"Fishing Again!"
John 21:15-21
May 25, 2008
St. Paul United Methodist Church
Rev. John Fleming
It was Forest Gump in the Robert Zemeckis directed film bearing Forest's name who said to those sitting on the bench with him waiting for the number nine bus, "Momma always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." Life is like a box of chocolates, but it has also been compared to a lot of others things, too. I know a preacher who once said this in his sermon, "Life is just like an ice-cream cone. Just when you think you've got it licked, it will drip all over you."
Our District Superintendent, Rev. Phil Hathcock, in the latest version of the district newsletter wrote about appointments for pastors. He wrote that come June every pastor in our conference will receive a church and every church will receive a pastor. For many, he writes, this will mean a change. For most, though, it will not. Come June, unless then inconceivable happens, I will be appointed as your pastor here for the seventh time. Phil tells that even when he was sure that he was returning to the church he had been serving, he didn't take the appointment for granted. He took the reading of the appointments during the concluding worship service at conference seriously. For him, they held the feeling of a New Year's Day or the first day of classes at the beginning of a semester. "It was a time for new starts, and a time to leave the old things behind. And when the conference sang A Charge to Keep I Have, it was always a time to commit again." I think Phil is right, though I've not thought about it that way before.
I say all of this, this morning because we have all made mistakes. I have made my share, how about you? We all have regrets. I have had a few, how about you? When it comes to our regrets, our mistakes, and our failures, what do we do? That is the question I would like for us to consider this morning.
One thing is for sure. Failure is certain. It will happen to all of us. The Bible tells us this. Flip forward in your Bible this morning and you will find Paul's letter to the church at Rome. In the third chapter he speaks to all of us when he writes, "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."
There is a bit of a buzz in the baseball world these days about a player from my beloved Atlanta Braves. His name is Chipper Jones. As of last night, his batting average was .410. He is leading the majors in that category. Only one player in the history of the game has finished the season hitting over four hundred. Ted Williams did in way back in 1941. Hitting over four hundred means that six out of every ten times at bat, Ted Williams and Chipper Jones made and are making outs. Ted is in the Hall of Fame for doing that. Chipper is well on his way. I wonder what would happen if I had a good sermon four out of every ten tries and decent ones the rest of the time. Would you still want me to be your preacher?
Failure is certain. It will happen to all of us and you can find failure among God's children in the pages of our Bibles. We certainly find that in our lesson for this morning taken from the last chapter of John's gospel in what we can only call the last resurrection appearance of Jesus in the fourth gospel. Simon Peter is back in Galilee. He has gone back to doing what he used to do best. He is fishing, and, by the way, catching nothing. Get ready! There are other stories in our Bibles like this. Soon there will be a miraculous catch of fish!
This is the same Simon Peter who saw Jesus' empty tomb. This is the same Peter who was among the number of disciples when Jesus came through locked doors and offered peace. But for an obvious reason, Peter doesn't have peace. Simon Peter was the leader among the disciples. He was the one who went out on a limb and said what the others were thinking. Simon Peter was the one who got out of the boat and walked on water. It was when he took his eyes off Jesus that he fell to the water's depths. Simon Peter was the one who said that he would never deny Jesus. But he did, three different times.
Now Simon is back where he started. It is easy to go back to the familiar when we have failed at the unfamiliar. You might say that Peter needed a little space after his denial. The crowing rooster and the empty tomb did not take away his denial. I do not think that Peter believed his relationship with Jesus could ever be restored. So he headed back to his former life. He returned to his pre-Jesus practices. He did what came naturally instead of what came spiritually. We are like Peter and so we wonder if Jesus has a place for us.
What is it about us that drives us back when we miss the mark? In my own life, there have been times when I have failed and the first thought that ran through my mind was to quit the ministry. Peter deals with his denial and his failure by going fishing. For the longest time I thought that those who dropped out of church did so because they were mad at me. Every once and a while people do get their feelings hurt. If I have hurt their feelings, I try to apologize. Sometimes people leave the church because they have failed at being disciples. Like Peter they started out their Christian journey with high hopes. Listen to this. God has a way of changing our entire lives, not just the one that we have on Sunday mornings. Sometimes the changes are too much!
A pastor tells that a member of his church dropped by to see him one day after he had called because he had missed her in worship services. She sat down in his office and said, "Pastor, I want you to know why I'm not here anymore. I just couldn't' keep listening to your sermons and living the kind of life I was living. So it just seemed easier to stop coming to church." Wow!
If you can relate to her and if you can relate to Paul's words about us all having sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and if you can relate to his words, "There is none righteous. No, not even one" then you are my kind of people.
Why do we fall short? Why do we fail? There are a lot of reasons. Let me offer three. First, we fail because we have power and sometimes power makes us drunk. We turn to other things instead of to the God who loves us and who gives us a different kind of power. Second, we fail because we are a proud people. Peter was proud of his ranking. He told Jesus that he would never deny him, that he would not fall away even if everyone else did. Peter did fall away. And finally, sometimes we fail because the pressure is just too great. Sometimes the pressure gets the best of us and others see the worst in us. Perhaps Peter didn't know what to do out there in the courtyard when the slave girl said, "This man was with Jesus of Nazareth." The pressure was on. Jesus was inside on trial. Peter could easily have been inside, too. The temptation to deny was just too great! We, too, must deal with that temptation.
So first, our failures are certain. Here is the second thing I would like for you to hear today. Grace is available. In fact, grace is one of the things I like best about the United Methodist Church. We focus on grace instead of on sin. Don't get me wrong. We don't deny the power of sin. We don't refute the fact that sin has dominion and power over us, but we preach grace because the world is good at telling us how bad we are. Even our friends will tell us how we failed them. It must be the church that says, "Yes, all that is true, but grace is possible!"
I like the story Max Lucado tells about the time that one of his daughters used a crayon on her bedroom wall. Max was trying to be a wise father so he reached for her, put her in his lap and asked, "Should you have done that?" She answered, "No." Max asked, "What does daddy do when you write on the wall?" She said, "Spank me." Max asked, "What do you think I ought to do this time?" His four year old answered, "Love me."
Now that is grace. That is the picture that is painted by John in our lesson. Jesus could have responded to Peter in a number of ways. He could have said, "I told you this was going to happen." He could have said, "I knew you would deny me." He might have said, "I bet you will do it again!" Instead Jesus helps with the catch, starts a fire, fixes breakfast, loves Peter, and offers him restoration. Jesus restores Peter. He fixes their relationship.
One of our problems is that we think that when we fail, Jesus won't love us. Jesus, friends, is in the restoration business! One of the things my mother is really good at is restoring our family's furniture. She's not looking for a career in this, but I have seen her take furniture that has been painted or pieces that has the shine and the varnish coming off of it and restoring them. I have seen her put a drop cloth down on a carport floor. I have watched her tediously and with great patience remove what was there, and to strip the finish back to its start. When that is done, I have seen her put a new and fresh finish on it. These pieces of furniture, when she is done with them, look brand new!
If my mom can do that with furniture, what can Jesus do with us? A preacher who helped me with the ideas in this sermon wrote this, "Restore is one of our finest words. It means to reconstruct, to rejuvenate, repair, refresh, renew, revitalize, reinstate. Then he says this, "The church must be a place for people who have messed up, fallen short, done wrong. The church is a place for people like us."
Let me also tell you this. The Bible goes to great lengths to tell us all that we are redeemable. I like that. Thanks be to God. Let us pray.
Special thanks to my friend who helped me with some of the ideas in this sermon. Thanks to Rev. Phil Hathcock for his words in the Central Line, our District Newsletter. Thanks to Max Lucado for the story about Jenna's sin of writing on the wall. Thanks to my mom for showing me the example of how to make things new).