Acts 9.1-19a
Psalm 33.1-11
Revelation 5.6-14
John 21.1-14

                                                                       Fish Naked!

There's a town not far north of here  -- some of you may know it -- where cleanliness and propriety are considered close to godliness, indeed the truth might be that, all things considered, these are held in somewhat higher esteem than godliness.  Yet not everyone there upholds the standards of decorum. One of this town's less reputable characters is a fellow who, to local consternation, brazenly displays on the rear of his car a bumper sticker: Fish Naked!  Those who see this take offense, apparently oblivious to the bumper sticker's clear allusion to today's gospel, unheeding its admonition to follow the example of St. Peter, who found that fishing naked was the only way to await the resurrected Lord.

The story opens with the disciples at loose ends. Jesus has appeared to them twice but these encounters have been inconclusive. It is clear that Jesus, apparently humiliated and defeated by being crucified by the Romans, has been vindicated by being raised from the dead. But the days are passing and things are not coming to the expected conclusion.  Jesus appears in the locked room where they are hiding out, but he does not summon them to lead an army of zealots to cleanse the Temple and cast out Jerusalem's rich, corrupt priests. No angelic host with Jesus the Messiah at its head has swarmed down from Heaven to destroy the accursed Romans.  Something miraculous has happened, but nothing is happening; the disciples must be ready to explode with anticipation, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Jesus commissions them: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you." But they seem befuddled, paralyzed.  Jesus breathes the Spirit upon them but it doesn't seem to take.  They have no idea what Jesus wants them to do. Surely, it can't be that they're to return to life as usual, can it? But what are they to do? Where is the victory of God?

Impetuous Peter can't stand it any more. The waiting is making him crazy. He's got to do something. "I'm going fishing."  Better a weary night out in the boat, even when there are no fish to be caught, than sitting around waiting for something to happen, waiting for the next enigmatic appearance that might - or might not - ever happen. Maybe Jesus will return with clear instructions; if not, this is the way back to the sad, old life, the life they lived before those few crowded years when they went about with Jesus, proclaiming the kingdom of God.

Then, a hundred yards out, as the day is breaking, they hear a voice from the shore. It's hard to imagine the disciples hearing Jesus calling from the beach without recalling something that happened on that same lakeshore a couple of years earlier.  Here, where John records Jesus' last encounter with his disciples, we hear the story that in Luke's Gospel coincides with the first meeting of Jesus and the disciples.  Early in Luke Jesus finds some fishermen washing their nets on the shore after a night of unsuccessful fishing. He tells them to go back out and put the nets down again. They do, and catch a gigantic load of fish. Peter, James and John, drop everything to become Jesus' first disciples.  (Mark and Matthew, the other synoptic gospels, leave out the story of the big catch of fish, but they do say Jesus calls these disciples as they are at work as fishermen.)

John's gospel portrays the conclusion of the disciples' careers as the mirror image of its beginning.  Everything is the same, yet everything is changed. They go fishing and, like that night years before, come up empty. Then there he is on the shore, telling them to put the nets down again, just like the first time they saw him. This time, without question, they do and once again they pull up the nets almost bursting with fish. How could they not have had Jesus' words from the first time ringing in their ears: "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people!"  Now I think they at last begin to understand: it is with their hands - and the hands of those who will come after them -- that God will reach down into the depths, into the cold and the dark, to find and save each lost human being.  They realize why Jesus enlisted them from the beginning: not for their glory or Israel's but for the glory of God, the God who rules by serving, whose glory lies not in breaking the legions of the powerful with greater power, but by breaking bread and giving it away.

There's another thing Jesus surely reminded them of as they came ashore and saw him cooking them breakfast.  It was on the side of this lake that Jesus fed the 5000. Starting with just five barley loaves and two fish, Jesus fed that huge crowd. This was an event of great symbolic significance.  Jesus came proclaiming - in word and action - the kingdom of God, announcing - and demonstrating - that at long last God was finally acting to deliver Israel from its sins, to return it from the "exile" of foreign rule, to defeat the forces of evil that oppress human beings, and establish Israel forever as a kingdom of priests that would reveal the one true God to all the people of the world.  Jesus came, not like John the Baptist, predicting that this kingdom of God was coming, but showing that in his life and work it was already coming into being, right before the eyes of his disciples. The lepers healed, the blind given their sight, the lame walk, the sick made whole, sinners forgiven, the hungry fed.  The eager crowd follows Jesus; it's late; they have nothing to eat. Jesus feeds them. They are sated; there is a superabundance of the provision God supplies in Jesus. There are twelve baskets of bread left over, symbolizing the resurrection and restoration of Israel, ten of whose tribes had by then long disappeared into exile. The excited crowd, experiencing all this, is more than ready to start the revolution, to thrust Jesus into the role of king and savior. They are expecting God, as he did in the good old days, to raise up a warrior king, a Messiah to destroy Israel's enemies.  Yet Jesus does not cooperate. Here, at what seemed the great juncture of Israel's - and the world's - history, Jesus, John tells us, withdraws to the mountain by himself. Surely this must have been a confusing and frustrating moment for the disciples, who like the eager crowds, anticipate righteous vindication of Israel, and of those within her loyal to her God, in a stunning display of divine power.

They must be reliving all this now, as Jesus turns the breakfast fish over the little charcoal fire and hands them the bread. And perhaps the truth is breaking at last: in the end God's rule, God's victory, God's kingdom, does not come by means of earthly power, however exalted.  It comes by the love of God that saves oppressed and oppressor alike, that does not kill his enemies but dies for them. . It took the disciples so long to understand. Recall that as late as the night of Jesus' arrest Peter still carries a sword, and uses it.  I wonder if only now, at long last, the disciples finally understand, if they finally see that it is the way of the cross, the way of self-giving love, not the way of triumphant power, that is the way of the God who comes to us in Jesus.

What does it mean for us to be following Jesus, to be setting out onto the unknown waters in search of those who need God's healing love and forgiveness?  Not to be clothed with the respectable robes of certainty, power and righteousness but like Peter naked and vulnerable. Not to be advancing a triumphant religion that accuses the world and demands it get right with God -- or else, but a faith ready to love and proclaim God's forgiveness in the name of the crucified Galilean?  I want to conclude with an old Yiddish story. This is a version that Alan Jones relates in his book Living the Truth:

Once upon a time there was a holy rabbi who was granted a vision of the last judgment, when the human race was on trial.  He found himself in a courtroom in which there was a table, and on it were the scales of justice.  There were two doors, both of them open.  Through one he could see the light of Paradise, through the other the darkness of Hell.  The defense counsel entered the courtroom carrying only a small bundle of good deeds under his arm - it had not been a great year for good deeds.  Next, the chief prosecutor came in with two assistants, each carrying an enormous sack of sins. Dropping their sacks before the scales of justice, they took a deep breath, and went back for more. "This isn't even a tenth of it," they said, as they dragged in more sacks. The defense counsel, whose tiny bundle of good deeds looked pathetic indeed next to the great pile of sins sitting on the floor, buried his head in his hands and sighed.

Just outside the door to Paradise someone was listening. It was Levi Yitzhak of blessed memory, the rabbi of Beritshev. When he was on earth, this rabbi had sworn that not even in death would he forget the plight of struggling humanity. When he heard the sigh of the defense counsel, he decided to slip into the courtroom. Seeing the tiny bundle of good deeds next to the huge sack of sins, Levi Yitzhak didn't take long to size up the situation.  Waiting until there was a recess, and the courtroom was empty, he began to drag the sacks of sins one at a time to the door leading to Hell. It took all his strength and a great deal of time to throw them in one by one. He was almost finished - in fact he was holding the very last sack - when the prosecutors and the defense counsel returned. Rabbi Yitzhak was caught red-handed. He did not deny what he had done. How could he?  He had thrown away the sins so that the good deeds would outweigh the bad.  Since the court was bound to uphold the law, the chef prosecutor demanded justice. "It is written that a thief shall be sold for his theft. Let Levi Yitzhak be sold at auction right now in this courtroom! Let's see if anyone will bid for him."

By now the demons from Hell and the angels from Heaven had heard all the commotion in the courtroom and they came to watch the two parties lined up beside the scales of justice. The bidding began. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob threw their good deeds onto the scales and the matriarchs added theirs. All of the righteous contributed what they could, but the dark forces were able to gather up numberless sins stored in the deep places of the earth.  The scale on their side went down and down. Rabbi Yitzhak was doomed. His crime had been to throw away the sins of the world so that we could be forgiven. "I buy him!" said the chief prosecutor, and dragged him to the door leading into the great darkness.

Just then, above the court room, from the Throne of Glory itself, came a voice. "I buy him!" There was a great silence. And God spoke, "I buy him: Heaven and Earth are mine, and I give them all for Levi Yitzhak, who would have me forgive my children."
 

Amen.
 
 

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