Feed My Sheep; Water My Lawn

Psalm 30; John 21:1-19
April 18, 2010
Perhaps it was the rain last week, or maybe it was readings. But for whatever reason, I could not get my mind off of water as I prepared for worship this morning.
Here in the mid-Atlantic part of North America we tend to take water mostly for granted. It rains. The rivers run full. We have plenty to drink, cook and clean with more than enough left to play in or simply look at. Something so abundant hardly seems worthy of sacramental status.
On the other hand, we cannot live without it and, at the end of the day, if you take out the dust what you have left of each of us is mostly water.
So perhaps it should come as no great surprise that so much of the Jesus story is surrounded by water.
From baptism, and turning water into wine, to finding his first followers among the fishers at water’s edge, Jesus’ life and ministry are touched by water. From calming the storm at sea and walking on the waters, to inviting Peter to cast his nets on the other side and then join him for a sea-side breakfast cookout, water is central to the stories that tell us who Jesus is.
Water is fascinating just by itself even if all you know is that it flows downhill and that it seeks its level. I think that’s why the justice waters always roll down – they are seeking the level place of God’s shalom and they cannot get to that level place absent equity and justice.
I think maybe Norman MacLean, son of a Presbyterian pastor, had that theological truth in mind when he penned the famous closing lines of A River Runs Through It:
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.
In the end, as MacLean well knew, as all peoples of the Book well know, we need a story that tells us who we are. The story that claims us and that names us as followers of the way is a story told by the waters’ edge. It is Peter’s story, and, if we allow it to be, it is our story as well.
So come on down to the river. Come to the lakeshore. Come to the font. Come to the waters and listen to this story.

John 21:1-19

Peter needs a fish finder, one of those GPS for fish. Then along comes Jesus, who proves much more accurate than an electronic aid, which can, as a general rule, be somewhat suspect.
I experienced that yesterday when I trusted Googlemaps over my own eyes and experience in picking a route home from Stony Point. That decision turned a 4 and a half hour trip into a seven hour journey. It also took me through Princeton, where I’d never been. I waved a jolly hello to Princeton Seminary, home of historic Presbyterian fundamentalism.
I had always wondered about the historic conservative bent of that school, but driving through the town and its surroundings and passing more private prep schools than I could count and some of the most outrageously huge mansions I’ve recently seen gave me some insight. People who live like that always want to conserve the status quo because they are on top.
But scripture is everywhere skeptical of the social wisdom of concentrated wealth. Passing through such places, I freely confess, brings out my inner Marxist. I try to channel that through the lens of Dr. King’s observations about the violence of consumerism, and thus acknowledge my own complicity. Of course, I am also mindful of the fact that King, in private correspondence and conversation, identified himself as a Christian socialist, and only kept that view private because he knew that America was not ready for that conversation.
If he were still alive he wouldn’t have to call himself a socialist; I’m sure the Tea Party would do it for him.
So what does that economic discursis have to do with our text for this morning?
Well let’s look at the famous concluding conversation. Jesus keeps asking Peter if he loves him. Three times he presses the question and three times Peter affirms it. It seems like a strange repetition for emphasis, but this is one of those places in the text where it is instructive to look at the Greek.
When Jesus inquires of Peter, the Greek word translated as love is agape, love which is completely and only concerned with the welfare of the other. It is selfless love. When Peter answers the Greek word translated as love is a form of philos, or brotherly love.
It’s somewhat like a classic junior high note passing. Do you like me? Yes. But do you like like me or do you just like me? Obviously on a considerably deeper level. But you get the picture. Peter is not exactly answering the question as Jesus is posing it.
Jesus is asking about a deep commitment. He is asking about discipleship. He is asking Peter to show his love in the way that Jesus always showed it: by caring for his sheep, the ones who gathered near him, including the least powerful, most vulnerable members of society. Moreover, he is asking Peter to care for them without self-interest, measuring the care and concern purely by the well-being of the other.
It’s no wonder the give and take takes awhile.
Dr. King often spoke of agape as the foundation of Christian nonviolence.
I was thinking about that over the past couple of days at Stony Point, and at two points in particular.
First when Dr. Obrey Hendricks, a professor at Union and author of The Politics of Jesus, challenged us to think Biblically and broadly about peace, about the Biblical image of shalom.
Hendricks suggests that shalom is only present in scripture when justice, right action, truthfulness and kindness are also present in our politics and our social structures.
Hendricks said, “What distinguishes Jesus from the rest of us is the range of his assumed responsibility. He assumed responsibility for everybody, for the whole of creation. That is not true for most of us, and most of us are not taught that we should. One of the practical implications of defining peace as above is broadening the scope of our own responsibilities. That sphere extends to every level of policy and policy formation at every level, and infusing every level with the constituents of shalom.”
We have to spread out like water and saturate society with shalom.
An example, and the second point at which I was thinking particularly about agape, came up when I was talking with my friend Clay Thomas, a pastor in Florida. Clay has done a lot of work over the past few years with the Coalition of Immoccolee Workers, the mostly migrant farm workers who take their name from the central Florida town that is the center of Florida’s vast vegetable farmer industry.
The Presbyterian Church has played a key role in support and solidarity with these farm workers, who until 2009 had not received a pay raise since I was 12 years old.
Think about that for a moment.
I’ve done farm labor. I’ve picked strawberries on my hands and knees for eight hours a day, seven days a week for the brief season when they are ripe.
I cannot imagine doing that for more hours a day, every day for years upon years – and never seeing an increase in pay.
Moreover, during the past several years, there have been at least four cases of slavery prosecuted in the area. Slavery. In the 21st century in the United States of America. And we’re not talking about unfair labor practices, we’re talking about people held against their will and forced to work for no pay. Slavery.
But it’s in Florida. A thousand miles away. We don’t know these people. We don’t speak their language. Oh, sure, we eat the food they pick sold to us at Burger King. But surely they are not the sheep of our flock.
Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep. Peter, do you love me? Tend my sheep. Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep.
Jesus is still asking that question, and he is asking it of us.
Let the justice waters role down.
Amen.

The Message

Easter Sunday 2010
John 20:1-18
A colleague shared this preacher story with me recently.
Seems the preacher wanted to liven up his sermon with some visuals. So to start things off he pulled out four worms and four jars and put them on the dais. He filled the first with beer and dropped in a worm. He filled the second with cigarette smoke and dropped in a worm. He filled the third with chocolate and dropped in a worm. The fourth he filled with rich dirt and dropped in a worm.
At the conclusion of his sermon he reported the results. The first three worms were dead; the fourth was just fine. So he asked the congregation what they’d learned, and one voice piped up: “if we drink, smoke, and eat chocolate then we’ll never get worms.”
Sometimes the message does get lost in the delivery. The good news gets obscured by the way we present it.
The Easter story can be like that for some people. It has been that way from the beginning. In John’s account of the first Easter Mary comes to the tomb, finds it empty and is completely befuddled. Matthew and Luke have women come to the tomb, and fearfully head back to inform the others that Christ is risen. While we give the call and response: Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! with gusto, there is none of that enthusiasm to be found in the gospels. I am particularly fond of the Easter story in Mark, whose likely original ending simply has the disciples leaving the tomb in fear and saying nothing to anybody.
That’s the way Thomas Jefferson ends the Jesus story in his classical Enlightenment rendering of scripture, and it’s probably the way a lot of us sons and daughters of the Enlightenment would prefer it to end. Modernity asks: Did it really happen? How did it happen? Can you prove it?
Walter Wink says, ”Easter is a scandal, not a comfort. It answers death—by blowing our whole world away! It is unintelligible, impossible. And the gospels do nothing to soften the shock.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote of Easter: “A whole host of questions – curiosities, delight in superstitious things, mystery mongering, none of which can ever please us – questions rambling from one to another, never satisfied.”
Still, as I read again the old, old story this year, I am guided perhaps most by Anne Lamott’s simple observation that Easter is about “living in wonder rather than doubt.”
The questions are not how and by what means, but rather, why and for what purpose? Easter is about living in wonder rather than fear. After all, if doubt means questioning, then clearly it is a part of faith itself, not something opposed to it. On the other hand, fear is the haunting opposite of faith, and that is why, for the disciples, the Easter experience tests not their trust in Jesus but their faith in God.
Surely they must have echoed Jesus’ own words from the cross: “my God, my God, why have you forsaken us?” Why have you let this happen? Why have you let them take away our lord? Our teacher? Our friend? The one who taught us how to speak with you? The one who taught us what it means to be your creatures? The one who taught us how to live? Why? Why? Why?”
Those are the questions of fear and trembling, and they are not answered merely by an empty tomb.
Fear is not answered by the empty tomb; fear is answered by the risen Christ.
More to the point, fear is answered by the message of the risen Christ: the message that God’s love is greater than our fears; the message of God’s great yes to life; the message of faith, hope and love.
If we are to live resurrection lives they will be measured by the extent to which we live out that message, the extent to which we answer fear with love. Look at the things we’re doing together just this month: we’ll answer the fear of loneliness with a community dinner and a congregational brunch; we’ll answer the fear of broken relationships with an evening devoted to forgiveness; we’ll answer the fear of homelessness with a day of home building; we’ll answer the fear of meaninglessness with another life direction lab series; and every single Sunday we will gather here to sing praises to the One whose love for us makes all of this possible, the One whose promise is that love will conquer fear, even unto the fear of death.
The story of Easter offers an invitation to live just such lives.
We welcome the invitation. The truth is: that is why you are here this morning. You want to respond to this invitation. You want to live such a life. You want your life to be filled with meaning. You want to live unafraid. You want to be part of a community that lives that way together. You want to live resurrection lives.
Otherwise, why bother? Why bother getting out of bed early on a spring Sunday morning to gather in a church building when that very gesture is so culturally out-of-step? So passé? Truth be told, so open to ridicule?
After all, this is not mid-20th century Protestant America where showing up at church could get you ahead at work, and this is certainly not one of the tall-steeple churches where some people still go to be seen.
No, this is a small band of followers of the way of Jesus – a way of love and justice, trying, just like that first small band of followers, to overcome our fear and seize this moment to be faithful – because we know that it’s our lives that are at stake.
I don’t mean that in terms of any orthodox, creedal way. I don’t mean “you’re going to hell if you don’t accept Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior, if you don’t believe in the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection, if you don’t accept the Bible as the literal inerrant word of God.”
No, I don’t mean any of that. I mean this: we are here because we trust in the message of Easter, and that has made all the difference. Trusting that we are loved has liberated us for lives of loving service. Trust in the way of Jesus has freed us from fear, and opened us to living transformed lives precisely at a moment in history when so much transformation – personal and from the culture – is so desperately needed.
Like the preacher in the story I began with, I have been searching for some striking, dramatic, memorable way to convey this simple message. In other words, I’ve been looking, for the past several weeks, for an ending to an Easter Sunday sermon – some example of resurrection, of new life, of light shining in the darkness that the darkness shall not overcome.
I’ve come across lots of ordinary resurrections – the everyday rising up of the people of God into new jobs, new families, new lives – but nothing extraordinary. Then the other evening, after I’d given up the searching, I picked up a Mary Ward Brown short story called A New Life. It’s a simple tale of a middle-aged Southern woman, Elizabeth, whose husband has died too young. She’s been lost without him for more than a year, unable to let go, unable to move on.
Some of her friends have joined a new evangelical church called the Vineyard, and they’ve been praying for Elizabeth. They come to visit, and the man asks if she’s “saved.” They take her to worship. Lots of young people come calling on her, and tell her they’re praying for her, too. The pastor clearly wants her to join the Vineyard, and invites Elizabeth to turn her grief over to Jesus.
While Elizabeth appreciates their concern, she grows weary of this, and one evening simple ignores the knocking on the door.
A while later the knocking begins again, and when she looks out the police are standing on her front porch with some of the young people and the pastor – who have jumped wildly to wrong conclusions about their unanswered knocking. Elizabeth assures them that she is OK, that she just felt the need to be alone. She also tells her friends that she is not going to join the Vineyard, that all of that just has to stop.
They turn away, and it’s clear that they are turning away for good, deeply disappointed in Elizabeth’s decision and their failure to save her. But as Elizabeth stands at the door, Brown writes, “Out of the blue, Elizabeth is suffused all at once with what seems pure benevolence. For a split-second, and for no reason, she is sure that everything is overall right in the world, no matter what. And not just for her but for everyone, including the dead! The air seems rarefied, the light incandescent.”
The people of the Vineyard, sweet and well-intentioned, missed the message entirely. They believed, as the church too often has, that Elizabeth’s salvation was up to them. They believed that they needed to make her a convert, that they needed to save her in order for her to find new life. They believed that all of that depended upon Elizabeth understanding the story of Jesus in exactly the same way that they did. In the end, Elizabeth’s salvation – her healing and wholeness – became secondary to their need to save her.
But they did not need to save her – indeed, they could not. Her salvation, and ours, was accomplished already, before the dawn of creation when the God of infinite grace and love spoke a word and breathed life into all that is.
Easter, resurrection, new life: these are the works of that God and they are signs of that grace and love.
That is why we are here. It does not matter – truly, it does not matter at all what you or I believe about the story of the empty tomb. We can wonder away from it in confusion, we can proclaim it as if we understand it. None of that matters.
All that matters is the message. It is enough to suffuse your life in light that no darkness can overcome. All that matters is this: God’s love is stronger than our fear; God’s singular yes outstrips all of our nos; God’s embrace of light and life overcomes the darkness of death. Now and forever. Amen.