John 21:1-19

If you are a student of American history, then you may have taken note that this past Friday was the anniversary of the death of Franklin Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States.  If you were alive when that news came across the radio, you may have been young enough for him to have been the only president you ever knew. And you may recall how shocking and numbing the news was. Here was the person who had led the country through the depths of the Depression and through the conflict of World War II, a war whose end was in sight. And now he was gone.

Shortly after his funeral, a reporter approached Eleanor Roosevelt as she was going to her new apartment in New York City.  As the reporter tried to ask her a question about her future, the former First Lady brushed him aside, saying curtly,  “The story is over.” She, a very public figure, had nothing more to say. One might have inferred from her statement that now that her husband had died, her story was over as well, or at least her public life.

I am wondering if Peter was saying something of the same thing by the Sea of Tiberias that day in Galilee.  “I am going fishing,” he told the others. I am going to try and get back to my normal life, the occupation that I once had.  If you are upset and confused, overwhelmed with grief – or perhaps even alarmed by stirrings of hope in your heart at strange news of appearances of Jesus, and not knowing what you can believe – trying to get to a place where things seem ordinary and normal is to be expected.

It is what we often do when we see others experiencing profound loss.  As it turns out, this past Thursday was the anniversary of my mother’s death many years ago. I will never forget a moment at the end of her funeral service. We had hardly finished the procession out the door when a family friend, looking at the sadness on my father’s face, leaned over to me and said, “Oh, perhaps he will find someone very soon to be with.”  I did not say a word in response. I will not tell you what I wanted to say.

And I will never forget my friend Hazel, a woman who lost her husband suddenly in a car accident. About six months after the accident I was visiting her, and her grief was still profound.  As she reflected on it all, she said,  “You know, people have stopped asking me how I am doing.  Because what they want to hear is that I am getting back on my feet, that things are going to be ok, and that I am doing all right.  But I am not. And they cannot hear that.”  Hazel would not deny the truth of her grief, even when others were ready for her to move beyond it.

Peter says, “I am going fishing,” and the others say, “We will go with you.”
They spend the night, and catch nothing.  And then, a stranger on the shore calls to them: “Children, you have no fish do you?”  And this stranger invites them to cast their net on the right side of the boat. So they cast it, and scripture tells us that, “now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish.”

The risen Christ has come to them. He has come to them in their attempt to resume a life. He has come to them in their attempt to acknowledge that their story of life with him had come to and end. And on that shore, and in the story of that day, they discovered the abundance of life that Jesus was still offering – that there was more to come.

When we experience loss, whether it is of loved ones, or of hopes and dreams, or of anything that matters to us, what we may be looking for is a restoration, a return of something we had – a chance to go fishing again. A chance to have our life back as it once was.  But that is not something we will have. Our grief will be real, and it cannot be denied. But even in that grief, there is more.

During the first year after my mother’s death, our family went through what every family does as important holidays come to pass – wondering how we were going to get through Thanksgiving, birthdays, and Christmas now that we were entering this new chapter in our lives.  And one of the ways my family did that was to try to observe every tradition and every ritual just as we had when my mother was with us.  To some extent, that worked. And then came Christmas dinner.  My mother had always liked to have us sing Old 100th, the Doxology – those brief words we sing every Sunday as the offering is presented at the altar. Now my mother was not a singer. I have a tape recording of one Christmas dinner which she had recorded so that years later, we could go back and listen to our younger selves. And on that recording, as she always did, she started us off too low. And then we got slower and slower, with the “Amen” being dragged out for so long that I am sure the turkey on the table was quite cold.  But it was my mother’s tradition, and Christmas dinner was not Christmas dinner without that tradition.

I am a singer, and so my family now looked to me to begin the grace. And I looked around and suddenly realized – we are not going to sing the Doxology. In one sense we could not sing it without her. And in another sense we did not need to sing it. Something new could happen – a different prayer, perhaps a different song.  And for myself at least, that was a liberating moment. A moment of recognizing that our lives were going on, so enriched by our mother’s presence, but not confined by her absence. I began to realize on that day that there was yet abundance to behold and to partake of around that dinner table, and in the lives we had ahead of us.

Eleanor Roosevelt told the reporter, “The story is over.”  And she may have believed those words herself. But if you are a student of American history, then you know that her story was anything but over. And that for nearly two more decades, she would be engaged prominently in the affairs of our country and the world, helping to draft the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and earning the nickname “First Lady of the World.” It was both a continuation of the work that she had done as First Lady, but also an expansion.

Peter told the others that he was going fishing. And what he discovered was that Christ was still filling his life with abundance and with a distinct call to follow as a disciple.  He and the others, as they sought to return to their labors discovered Christ’s presence in their labors, in the intimate sharing of a meal of bread and fish, and in their hearts as they each heard the continuing call to be disciples. In other words, they discovered that Christ would be present in every part of their story, and that the story they thought had ended would go on.

I sometimes smile when I think of Peter and the others in that time after the resurrection. For yes, they were dealing with loss and absence. But, it would seem, no matter where they turned and no matter what they did, they encountered the life-giving presence of Jesus Christ. In our Collect this morning, we prayed that we will behold Christ in all his redeeming work.  But we might also consider this: that Christ is continually beholding us, seeing every part of every life and of every story, and meeting us in all those places, so that our stories will go on, through his redeeming, healing, and loving presence.

Amen.

A Sermon for St. John’s Episcopal Church
Charlestown, Massachusetts
Preached on the Third Sunday of Easter
By the Rev. Thomas N. Mousin

April 14, 2013

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