[Jn. 21:1-19]
Peace to all of you who are in Christ. Amen.
Back to life, back to reality
Back to the here and now, yeah
Show me how
Decide what you want from me
Tell me maybe I could be there for you
…
Back to life
Back to the present time
Back from a fantasy
Tell me now, take the initiative
I'll leave it in your hand
Until you're ready
(British RnB band Soul || Soul, 1989)
Who among you is suffering from the high holy day blues?
We know the holiday blues at Christmas are a real thing, when the stress and expectations around that time all become a bit too much.
What we mean here, is that feeling you often get after a major religious holiday, where there’ve been weeks of preparation and built-up, like Lent, where you’ve invested mentally and spiritually, you’ve run on an increased level of ‘doing Church’ and ‘doing God’, where there’ve been more religious celebrations than just the weekly one, and then the main event, in this case Easter.
And then…nothing.
The buzz slowly peters out and you wonder “What now?”
Is that how the disciples felt after encountering the risen Lord?
There’s no bigger spiritual high than that, meeting Jesus after the Resurrection.
But when they had come down from that high, reality was calling.
For three years they had been on the road, they had experienced marvellous and often confusing things, they had been ‘doing God’ 24/7.
And after the main event, after Easter, it was back to reality, back to their daily lives, back to their families and friends and jobs.
After having lived a life of extreme spiritual intensity, after going through joy and deep sadness and unexpected joy again, after all that…
they went fishing, because they were fishermen.
The next part of our text is full of symbolism:
· Jesus is standing by the shore, at daybreak when the night is ending and the dark is dissipating, and he calls out to them, calling them ‘children’. The boat is often interpreted as the Church, the shore as the heavenly shores;
· Even though they at first don’t recognise the Lord, they do seem to trust this stranger enough to do as he advises them;
· Then Peter realises who it is, and he throws on some clothes because he was naked: after all they’ve been through together, Peter still seems reluctant to show the Lord his vulnerability;
· When they reach the shore, the Lord is waiting for them, he has prepared a place for them, with a warm burning fire, a cooked meal ready for them;
· After checking the net, it turns out they’ve captured 153 fish: apparently, there are a 153 different species of fish in Lake Tiberias (or at least there were in Jesus’ time).
We could go on for hours.
Back to life, back to reality.
God in our daily lives, God present in our daily occupations.
God calling us, asking to trust him and perform our daily vocations, to find joy and satisfaction in them.
Love and grace not just in church, not just on Sundays.
When we hear the word ‘vocation’ most of us will automatically think of bishops and priests and other clergy, or perhaps lay preachers: men and women who are called by God for service in his Church.
And that’s certainly the vocation of most people who serve in ministry.
But vocation isn’t limited to them.
Martin Luther, the German reformer, made the distinction between ‘Estate’ and ‘Office’ (To the Christian Nobility, 1520): this means that all Christians are considered to be part of the priestly estate or order, the priestly status, all are part of a royal priesthood because of Baptism.
Some Christians however work as ministers of Word and Sacrament or lay ministers, that’s their office, their job.
Luther insisted that we recognise that a vocation isn’t just for monks and priests, we all have our vocation to fulfil, be it mother, father, blacksmith, baker, preacher, politician…
God is the God of daily life.
God is the God of our daily lives.
That reality is a reality where God wants to be, it’s a reality where God wants to meet us, waiting for us and calling us ‘children’.
Sometimes it’s difficult to recognise God in our daily lives, but he’s there.
Are we willing to recognise God in that stranger on the shore?
What if God was one of us,
Just a slob like one of us,
Just a stranger on the bus... (Joan Osborne, 1995: some of the best hymns are songs we hear outside of church)
God doesn’t shy away from the messiness and ‘smallness’ of our human existence.
Yes, you can most certainly find him in the service on Sundays and on the high holidays, in Scripture, in the Sacrament of Holy Communion, but you can equally encounter the risen Lord in other daily occupations, in everyday music, in a good meal with friends, in people you thought you would never talk to or wanted to talk to...
God is absolutely at ease in the ordinary of our ordinary lives.
The divine fully and willingly present in the mundane.
Perhaps the greatest vocation we human beings can have is exactly that, to be human and to live our human lives to the fullest, full of God’s presence.
And we can never be human on our own, we need the whole of creation to stay true that vocation.
That’s a gift, a Resurrection gift, and a responsibility.
Because isn’t that what a vocation is: a job, a responsibility, but hopefully one that you carry out joyfully and to the best of your abilities, hopefully one you feel you were called to do.
So, no more high holiday blues, no more post-Easter melancholy.
Back to school, back to work, back to our daily vocations.
Back to appreciating our daily vocations, where we can find God as much as in a church or in a monastery.
Back to being human, recognising the humanity of all, recognising the Lord’s presence, listening to his call.
Back to being the people of God, a God welcoming us to the shore, with a warm fire and a hot meal ready for us.
Back to life, back to reality
May mercy, peace, and love be yours in abundance. Amen.