Fishing - Acceptance

Fishing & Acceptance

Easter 3; Annual Parochial Church Meeting.

“Jesus said to them, "Come and have breakfast"”. John 21.12

I grew up on the river and the sea. Fishing was part of what you did as a boy. I remember going ‘treading’ in the shallow waters of the river at low tide. Flat fish would lightly bury themselves in the sand and as you walked slowly along, you trod on them; they wriggled; you resisted the temptation to jump off; you had in your hand a spear made of a six inch nail that had been filed into a crude barb and stuck in an old broom handle; you pushed it between your toes, and spiked the fish, hoiking it up and adding the flapping flounder to an old wire coat hanger stuck round your waist. I never liked this, or any other kind of fishing, but it was what we did.

Why is fishing a predominantly male occupation do you think? Perhaps it is because it’s a form of bonding, hunter gathering, that doesn’t involve much communication. You’re doing something together, or alone, but you can be lost in your own world of thoughts. You don’t have to say much.

The disciples had been through a bewildering week – the last supper, betrayal, denial, desertion, torture, death, and resurrection. Here was a turning point in history; pivotal events for the entire human race; the known world turned upside down by the appearances of the risen Christ.

And how does this group of seven men react? They go fishing!

Something to do together, while they struggle with their own thoughts and what the risen Jesus has already said to them. Their hearts are not really in it. They potter about all night and catch nothing. Then as day is breaking, a stranger on the shore calls out to them. ‘Try on the right hand side of the boat.’ Why not give it a go? They catch 153 large fish, scripture tells us.

There are many chapters in many books devoted to interpreting the number 153. It’s a triangular number – ie it is the sum of the numbers from 1 to 17. It is one of the few numbers where the sum of the cubes of the digits comes to the number itself. (1 cubed + 5 cubed + 3 cubed = 153). It’s part of the fraction 265/153 which is nearest to the square root of three, and interestingly known by the Greeks 3 centuries before Christ as “the measure of the fish”. And the church fathers have variously interpreted it as the numbers of nations, the numbers of species of fish, combinations of 12 and 3 for the trinity and so on and so forth…

I think it means that they counted them and there were 153 - no more than that! They wanted to tell the story right when they got home.

But fishing and the fish and number of fish and the breakfast are not really the point of this last chapter of the Fourth Gospel. It’s about the extraordinariness of ordinary life. It’s about how love and acceptance can change our perception of the world and those round about us; can transform ordinary life. It’s about recognising Jesus in places we least expect to find him, not least in the ordinariness of life.

If you read on through the closing verses of this Gospel, you see there are still petty jealousies among the disciples; John tagging along behind Peter so as not to miss out on anything; Peter miffed that even although he’s to be leader of the pack, John is still Jesus’ best friend, the one he asked to look after his mother as he was dying on the cross a few days ago.

And Jesus is still trying to bash it into their thick heads before he leaves them, that he loves and accepts them, despite their obtuseness, their denial, their doubting. And because he, God, accepts them, then they must accept and love one another. As he had said only a few days earlier in the upper room at the supper: “a new commandment I give to you: love one another, as I have loved you. By this, people will know that you are my disciples.”

It is still the hardest commandment for those of us who follow Christ to obey, and often that is because we still find it so difficult to grasp that we are truly loved and accepted by God. In punishing ourselves, we usually end up by punishing those we live and work with as well.

Paul is converted and chosen (in today’s epistle) as the first missionary to us gentiles, not because he is lovable, or clever or good, but because he is accepted and loved by God. This is what motivates his Christian zeal in the years to come. He regards himself as the chief of sinners, yet saved by grace.

Peter and Paul will both follow their Lord through the coming turbulent years to their own martyr’s death, and all because they loved him who first loved them.

As we come to this table, this altar, this breakfast with the Lord; and as we come to our parochial church meeting with one another; we come accepting one another, loving one another, despite our obtuseness, our denial, our doubts – because he accepts and loves us.

But not only does he love and accept us, he wants us to know, like Peter in today’s Gospel, that he trusts us to get on with the work of the Kingdom.

I’m reminded of the particularly saintly churchwarden who on a gloriously sunny Easter Sunday headed straight for the grumpiest PCC member during the peace. She knew he was a keen gardener, and so beamed at him and said: “May the sunshine of the Lord shine always up your path.” To which he replied: “And also up yours!”

PCC meetings are times when we can not only demonstrate our love and acceptance of one another – warts and all, but a time when we can move forward with the mission Christ has entrusted to us: to feed his sheep, to continue his work of building loving and accepting communities, nurturing and welcoming all.

As we enjoy fellowship with our Lord round this altar, so we must look for his presence in the ordinary business of our lives and of our church, whenever we sit together. For his invitation to be at the centre of our community is always there. However unworthy we feel, love bids us welcome. (George Herbert's communion motet - Love bade me welcome.)

“Jesus said to them, "Come and have breakfast"”. John 21.12

Doubt - Thomas

Thomas - Doubt

“See my hands... my side; stop doubting and believe.” John 20. 27

A man is walking down the road with a penguin. He meets a policeman and says: “I’ve found this penguin and I’m not sure what to do with it.” The policeman says: “Well take it to the zoo. It’s just across the road.”

The next day, the policeman bumps into the same man, still with the penguin. He says: “So what happened at the zoo yesterday?” The man says: “We had a lovely time thanks. We’re going to the cinema this afternoon.”

Now you probably don’t believe that story. And there’s nothing wrong in doubting its authenticity.

The human ability to doubt, to distinguish fact from fiction, is part of our self-consciousness. It’s part of what makes us human.

We are always critical observers of the world.

When I left theological college 30 years ago, I was young and very certain of what I believed and of what I knew, but rather uncertain of who I was. Thirty years on, I’m much more confident about who I am (and who I am not), but far less certain about what I know.

So today in this Easter season, when we think about the post-resurrection appearances of our Lord, I want us to think for a few minutes about this appearance of Jesus to Thomas. He is always remembered as ‘doubting’ Thomas. Although this is a little unfair. We don't forever remember ‘denying’ Peter; nor the beloved disciple as ‘streaker’ John.

And it’s unfair because we ALL doubt.

And I don’t mean thoroughgoing scepticism - doubting everything as a view of life.

Like the man who is on his first parachute jump. The instructor says: "you just jump out of the plane, the chute automatically opens, you land in that field - there'll be a nice cup of tea waiting for you." The man is sceptical. "What if the chute doesn't open?" "No problem. You pull the emergency chute cord. Another parachute opens, you land in that field - there'll be a nice cup of tea waiting for you."
The man jumps. Nothing happens. He pulls the emergency cord. Nothing happens. As he plummets to earth he's muttering to himself: "Bet there's no cup of tea either..."

This scepticism is almost part and parcel of our postmodern society, but it shouldn't stop us from believing; it should only alter our attitude to believing.

And I don’t mean by saying 'we all doubt', unbelief - believing or not believing is an informed decision of the will. It is a rational choice.

I mean, just letting hard questions float around in our mind. We all doubt in that way.

Questions like: “Is God really there or have I just fooled myself?”
Questions like: “Why do such bad things often happen to good people?”
Questions like: “Am I really called to be a priest?”

And a host of others.

Why do we doubt? What’s behind it?

Well, sin - distrusting God - is at the root of many of the problems of our human condition.

Questioning is not a sin. Distrust of God is. It’s the ancient sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden. 'Has God really got the best intentions for us in this Garden? Is he really good? Or is he selfishly holding something back from us?'

As long as we struggle with sin - and we will always struggle with sin - we will struggle with the doubt of whether God is really good. How can we look at our hurting world and not doubt his goodness sometimes?

To compensate for this we may often fall into another sin - the sin of certainty. For the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.

It is our doubts that unite us. Our convictions divide us.

Which of course doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have convictions - but it does mean you should hold them with a degree of humility. We all know the sort of person for whom there are only two positions on all subjects - theirs, and the wrong one.

Listen to Luther’s ‘doubter’s’ prayer:

Dear Lord,
Although I am sure of my position,
I am unable to sustain it without thee.
Help me, or I am lost.

And here we acknowledge another factor leading to doubt: human frailty - our limitations in grasping the infinite. And our temptation to think we know it all. We know better than God. Job and Ecclesiastes and good St Thomas remind us of this.

Until, like Thomas, we meet the risen Christ face to face, we will always be those who walk by faith, and not by sight. We will always need to ‘keep on believing’, despite the doubts. “Happy are those who have not seen me” says Jesus “ and yet believe”.

Tennyson put it rather well in The Ancient Sage:

For nothing worthy proving can be proven,
Nor yet disproven: wherefore be thou wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt.

And that brings us on to another factor in doubt: personality. Some Christians find it very hard to ‘cleave to the sunnier side of doubt’.

They are by nature prone to look on the gloomier side of most things. They lie awake at night worrying about everything. (Like the man who wrote to the Inland Revenue: “I can’t sleep at night so I’m enclosing the £1000 I forgot to declare. PS. If I still can’t sleep I’ll send the rest.”)

I’ve never spent a lot of my time absorbed in metaphysical angst. But I have friends who are constantly plagued by stuff that goes on in their head. St Thomas may have been such a man.

That sometimes tormented priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins, was certainly such a man. He pleads with himself in one of his poems:

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.…

Soul, self; come poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile.…

And how do we call off thoughts awhile? That's another subject, but we have to recognise that some personalities are prone to be plagued, tormented, by doubt.

We read the account from John's gospel today, but Luke gives us another reason for Thomas’s doubt in his gospel. And indeed this reason, may be behind the doubt of all the disciples, and all of us who have followed them in choosing to believe.

“... they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement…” (Lk 24.41)

At the heart of our faith is something almost too incredible to believe. Thomas dared not believe it. And every time we consider the risen Christ, it’s as if Jesus says to us again: “See my hands... my side; stop doubting and believe.” As we shall say in the mass in a few minutes:

This is the mystery of faith:
Christ has died
Christ is risen
Christ will come again.

The late John Betjeman, a former poet laureate, reflecting on the mystery of Christmas, clung on to that faith, although he hardly dared to believe it:

And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things...
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

We always hold on to our faith, through doubt. It is the safe way to believe, and allows us to explore our faith with humility and proper confidence.

It allows us to draw encouragement from the words of Jesus, to know his promised 'joy in believing'. He stretches out his hands in love to us, at this table, and whenever we are prone to be paralysed into unbelief through the seeming impossibility of our faith:

“See my hands... my side; stop doubting and believe.” John 20.27