May 4, 2025 Reflection

I’d like to begin with a confession.  Over the last 30 years, on the numerous occasions I have preached a sermon based on our scripture reading for today, I confess that I have been hard on the disciples on Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, the sons of Zebedee (aka James and John) and the other two disciples.  According to John’s gospel, it has now been more than a week since Jesus has mysteriously risen from the dead.  Twice now he’s appeared to his disciples. He’s broken through the locked doors of the home in which they were hiding for fear of the authorities.  He’s spoken words of peace and breathed into them his spirit of new life and forgiveness. He’s shown his wounds to Thomas and Thomas has thrust his hands right into them. He’s given them a mission to live the good news of their faith. He’s done all these things and many other signs in the presence of his followers.

And what are his closest and most loyal followers doing in response to all of this? They’re going fishing. They’re  going back to doing the same old thing, in the same old way, just as they were doing when Jesus first appeared to them and called them to follow in his way as if none of the miraculous events of the last few weeks that they had witnessed had ever happened.

So yes, I confess that I have been hard on them for this behaviour. Perhaps that’s because I can see myself in them.  I know exactly what it is  to want to stick with what is familiar, comfortable and known. Like them, I know what it is like to be so disoriented after experiencing a tragic loss that you barely know how to stand up let alone take a step forward in a new direction even though your life of faith has promised you new life awaits you on the other side of all that has been. I know what it is to be called to a bold and daring ministry and to say no, that’s not for me. (which is what I said when I first read the job description for lead minister at this church)  Perhaps I have been hard on the disciples in this story because I see myself in them and I have a tendency to be hard on myself. And maybe you too can see yourself in their “stuckness”.

Or, perhaps I have been hard on them because I just really don’t like fishing. So it comes as a bit of a disappointment to me that after all they’ve experienced of Jesus and his ministry and of all the possibility resurrection holds, they’re just going to fish.

Many of you know that my family has a cottage on a fishing lake.  In fact, our cottage is part of what used to be a fishing camp. I have grown up around fishing.  My mother loved to fish, my brothers love to fish and it turns out my children also love to fish.  So it is that I found myself out on a fishing boat in the Sea of Cortez just a few weeks ago during our Spring Break vacation.  My brother Andy, his neighbour Harley, my sons Nathan and Joel and Andy’s friend Lorenzo, the owner of the boat, all spent the better part of a day out on the water together chasing after grey whales, dolphins and sea lions and fishing.

Nathan was the first to catch a fish.  It happened almost immediately, as soon as he cast his line out into the sea.  There was great excitement in the boat when this happened as you can imagine.  It was a pretty good sized skipjack.  So then began the quest for Joel to catch a fish. At one point he had a really big one on the line and there was great excitement. But it got away so the quest began again.  The lines would go out. The lines would be reeled back in.  Lorenzo would move the boat and out the lines would go again.  After this fruitless quest had gone on for a couple of hours something occurred to me about fishing that had never occurred to me before.  It occurred to me that fishing is all about hope. Hope that we would catch an elusive fish.  Hope that the next generation would find joy in what we find joy in.  At its core, hope that we would find something to feed on and sustain us, perhaps something we could even share with others.

There we were, out on the sea, casting our lines over and over again, full of hope. 

I wonder, if it possible, that when Peter turned to the others and said “I am going fishing” he wasn’t just slipping back into his old ways full of shame and despair. I wonder if it’s possible he was kindling his hope, relying on his muscle memory to help him feel in his body once again what he hadn’t been feeling very much of lately. I wonder if it’s possible the disciples went back to casting their nets because it was there by the sea their teacher, Jesus had first come to them calling them into their purpose, calling them to life and they were just trying to get in touch with that once again.  And if he came to them before, deep down inside perhaps they were hoping he might just come to them again.

And then it  happened, there he was after a long and fruitless night of labour. There he was as sure as daybreak standing on the shore calling out to them “Children, you have no fish have you?” “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.”

In the 20 years that I have had the privilege of ministering with you, there’s not side of this boat we have not cast our nets from looking for a catch.  There is not an initiative that the United Church of Canada has launched in which we have not participated: the Water Project, the Wonder Café, Embracing the Spirit. We’ve learned about the end of Christendom and the difference between adaptive and technical challenges, the Art of Hosting, the two loops theory of change, emergent design and core teams. We’ve brought in consultants Rob Waller, Keith Howard, David Ewart, John Pentland, Chris Corrigan Caitlyn Frost to name a few. We’ve Lived the Questions, engaged in the intensive Disciple Bible Study, Life Groups, Meditation, Soul Collage, Death Cafes and Pilgrims’ Path. And in a bid to connect more with our neighbours and to have a “mixed economy church” we have grown and grown and grown our Thrift Shop and most recently added in a café for good measure.  And just when we thought that we’d cast all the nets we could cast out from the inside of our building , we started casting them from what only a month or so ago was the lawn.

I know there have been times when we wondered if our labours were in vain. Times when we tried something out and it just didn’t work.  Times, like after Covid when we came back to worship and wondered where have all the children had gone, wondered if there was anything we could lure them and their parents back with. There have certainly been times when our prayers and actions for peace and justice have seemed like they were empty, like we have worked and worked and worked for nothing and all we wanted to do was go back to the way things were before.

And yet we’ve never given up hope. We keep on casting out our nets.

 Is it possible that like Peter and the other disciples we come to this place to exercise the muscle memory of our hope?  Is it possible we believe that all the spirit of joy and peace, the presence of the sacred and the good news we catch in this place might just be worth sharing with others, that what has fed and sustained us might feed and sustain others?

What’s clear to me in this story is that it doesn’t really matter which side of the boat we cast our net on. What matters is that we listen to the voice of the one who calls to us from the shore and we allow that voice to guide us. What makes our catch abundant is when we stop relying on our own resources alone and we  allow ourselves to be led and fed by grace, by love and by the mystery of the Risen Christ.

After the disciples hauled in their abundant catch that day that the Risen One called to them from the beach, he took some fish and bread and he fed them. He fed them with a memory of another time in their lives when they were gathered on a hillside and they wondered if there would be enough to go around and he took the little they had, five fishes and two loaves and made it into something more than they could imagine. More than 5,000 people were fed that day. It was the memory of that miracle he was feeding them with on the beach that morning.  Never forget what has been done for you in the past. Trust in what is possible once again.

It does not escape me as I stand before you today at the end of my ministry with you, that the scripture text Rev. Dan Chambers preached at my covenanting service with you 20 years ago was the story of the feeding of the 5,000. That day Dan reminded us of God’s gracious provision for our lives, a minister for you, a community of faith to serve for me.

As so as I take my leave from you today I compel you to keep casting your nets,  keep on fishing, keep hoping in the future that could be but more importantly keep listening for the voice of love that has called you and will never steer you wrong, the source of life whose provision never fails.

By the way, Joel eventually caught a lovely red snapper that day we were out on the Sea of Cortez. There was a lot of excitement in the boat and then Lorenzo turned the boat around and we headed back to shore to eat fish, break bread and to rest.