“He’s Back!”

Scriptural basis: Acts 9:1-6(7-20), John 21:1-19

 Have you ever stopped to think about the first time you encountered Jesus? The first time you had a clear sense of what you believed and why? Do you remember when you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and made a commitment to follow him? If you can’t remember all of these occasions, or any of them, you’re not alone. I don’t remember when I first encountered Jesus, and I don’t remember the day and hour that I committed my life to him. I recall during my seminary days getting some clarity around what I believed and the reasons why, but I couldn’t tell you exactly what day that was. Actually, I don’t remember ever not believing. Like many of you, I grew up in a church-going family, where getting up on Sunday morning and heading off to worship was part of the routine. Grace was said at every meal, there was always a Bible around, the church newsletter came every month and the denominational magazine was always in the stack of bathroom reading material. Like some of you, I’m a cradle Presbyterian who always “knew” what I believed because, well, it’s what you did. Being a Christian is as normal to me as breathing. I didn’t have a conversion experience like Saul, with a blinding flash of light and a disembodied voice booming in my ears. My blinding flash of light and disembodied voice experiences had to do with my parents and police officers, and while they were transformative moments, they weren’t exactly spiritual conversions – although I did pray. My father switching on the garage floodlights and bellowing “what are you kids doing out there,” while it got my attention and that of several neighborhood kids didn’t cause me to go blind. It did cause me to put my bicycle away and proceed immediately to my room in terrified silence. Officer Ferguson’s spotlight in my rearview mirror and his calm voice over the loudspeaker asking me to move my car didn’t result in my being led away to someplace I didn’t want to go – although I suppose it could have. It did bring an abrupt end to my date that evening.

 I sometimes find myself feeling jealous when I hear folks tell of their conversion experiences, like I somehow got shortchanged because I didn’t fall to the ground in a moment of ecstasy, speaking in tongues and seeing Christ standing before me. When TV preachers talk about being born again, and can cite the exact moment of the exact day that it happened, part of me feels somehow diminished. As if that detailed memory is something I should have. How come Saul got to have that life-changing event and I didn’t? Why did Jesus appear bodily to the disciples at the seashore and not to me? How come they got to say with great excitement “he’s back!” and I don’t?

 Both of the encounter stories in today’s Scripture readings are kind of hard for us in the twenty-first century to completely accept. We tend to demand proof, hard evidence of something like these two stories. A video would be nice. Beyond that, while many of us may long for such a direct encounter with our Risen Lord, how many of us really want the consequences of it? None of us want to be struck blind and have to be led to our next destination; certainly none of us want to suffer the kind of death Peter would suffer to glorify God. And yet we want to see Christ, not only in one another but as a tangible presence right in front of us. We want to be an instrument chosen to bring Christ to the world, but we don’t really want to suffer as Saul would to be that instrument. We’d love to have breakfast on the beach with Jesus, but none of us are willing to have our feelings hurt when our love of him is questioned three times. These stories are really about mileposts on a faith journey, both for Saul and for the disciples, and we’re all somewhere along the road of our personal walks with God. So what are we to do? How can these stories help us get to where we want to be? How can they help us come nearer to God, closer to Jesus?

 Saul’s encounter on the road to Damascus may well be the prototypical conversion experience, but at the same time it’s so dramatic that it’s off-putting. As I said earlier, for those of us who haven’t had such an experience there’s a tendency to jealousy, to “conversion envy” if you will. We can become defensive about our faith and say to ourselves, and maybe to others, that “even though I didn’t have a Damascus Road experience, I believe God has been working in my life,” and he most certainly has been but let us remember that what happened to Saul is important precisely because it isn’t the way most people came to Christ, then or now. Precious few have been so fortunate, or unfortunate, as to have so profound a life-changing event in their lives. Thankfully not too many of us need God to give us the two-by-four-to-the-side-of-the-head attention-getter, but then not too many of us are “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” I’m not sure that a more subtle approach to Saul would have resulted in his proclaiming Jesus in such a way that “all who heard him were amazed.” Remember, too, that Saul didn’t sign up for this conversion event. God chose Saul as an instrument to spread the Word so the obvious first step was to get his attention before he set him on the right path.

 And there is little doubt, at least from our vantage point some two millennia down the road that Saul was on the wrong path. In his zeal to persecute the nascent church, Saul had pretty much terrorized the believers in Jerusalem and was now on his way to Damascus to apply his not-so-gentle persuasive skills to “those who belong to the Way” in that important commercial center of the Roman Empire. Saul had loudly and violently rejected Jesus as God’s Messiah and set off down the path of destroying the church, and his reputation had spread far and wide. If you recall, Ananias didn’t want to have anything to do with Saul because of his actions against the believers in Jerusalem but he did as the Lord directed him and in Jesus’ name restored Saul’s sight. Once he could see, not only physically but spiritually, that he had been on the wrong path, he made a course correction and became the first and arguably the most effective theologian of all time. But that course correction came at God’s hand, in God’s time and to serve God’s purposes.

 At one time or another, all of us end up on the wrong path in our journey through life and on our faith journey. For many, it’s a short run down a blind alley that is easily corrected. For others, it’s a long and winding road that is a painful detour for both the traveler and their loved ones. Think about alcoholism, drug abuse and habitual criminal activities. All can be dealt with, but the longer one goes down those destructive paths the harder, and longer, the trip back home. Think about the hard-charging business types, the ones who idolize Gordon Gekko from the 80’s movie Wall Street, the ones who buy into the idea that “greed is good.” How many of them lost marriages, relationships with their children and the support of friends and families? In our current political climate, think about the extreme partisans from both the left and the right who would rather bring the legislative process to a grinding halt than compromise. Whatever your political persuasion, the rancorous tone is destructive and isn’t the right path to bring about useful changes. I think that former President Gerald Ford pointed to the right path when he said “we can disagree without being disagreeable.” Many, many folks, myself included, have spent some time in our faith journey walking along a parallel path that some have described as being “occasional Christians,” the ones who show up on Christmas and Easter and maybe for the men’s fellowship events, the ones who never stop believing and praying but who forget, for a time, that ours is a connectional faith that relies on the broader community to come to full fruition. I got back on the right path, but it took the death of my favorite aunt and a long evening in the sanctuary at Grosse Ile Presbyterian Church for God to get my attention and correct my course. That night in April of 1982 was when I stepped back onto the right path in my faith journey. That was the night that I was reintroduced to Jesus Christ in a way that changed my life, but it wasn’t in a blinding flash of light accompanied by a booming voice. It was more of a gentle hand on my shoulder and a sense of knowing that it was time to come home. How about you? Do you remember a time like that, a time when you met the Lord again for the first time?

 And what of the disciples on the shores of the Sea of Tiberius? For the third time since the Resurrection, Jesus appears to them, once again without their being sure of whom he was until the Beloved Disciple announces to Peter that “it is the Lord!” Ever wonder what the disciples were doing, going fishing just days after the events of Good Friday and Easter? Some commentators suggest that they had drifted back to their prior lives following the death of their teacher because they didn’t know what else to do; others have assumed they needed to make some money before they started their evangelizing journeys. But I think their going fishing is a pretty normal reaction to the extreme trauma they’ve been through. I’m not a fisherman, but I can understand how the disciples would have wanted some normalcy in their lives after the last couple of weeks and so went fishing. It was what they knew best. I know that when my world seems to be spiraling out of control I do things like cut the grass or wash the car or futz around with the boat. Things that I don’t need to think about, things that give me a sense of accomplishment without my having to invest any emotional energy in them. It’s a defense mechanism, a distraction, a means for letting the subconscious mind work on problems. Now I’ve never quite understood why Peter got dressed to jump in the lake when he recognized Jesus, or for that matter why he was naked in the first place on a fishing outing with his friends, but it is entirely possible that the appearance of Jesus was such an emotionally overwhelming event that Peter didn’t stop to think and in his typically impulsive way simply did something. Maybe he was ashamed at being naked, maybe the story of Adam hiding from God in the garden came to his mind although in Peter’s case he didn’t let his shame stop him from approaching the one he loves and who loves him. Even though this was the third time Jesus showed up, the impact for the disciples hadn’t diminished, especially in this instance when they hadn’t had a bit of luck all night and then had their nets filled to the breaking point when Jesus told them which side of the boat to drop their nets in. They must have been discouraged, tired and hungry come daybreak and in an act of faith they tried one more time and were rewarded with a hundred fifty three large fish. They took another step on their faith journey, trusting that the voice they heard from the shore was guiding them on the right path. After breakfast, Jesus gives Peter a little more guidance. Three times he asks Peter if he loves him, three times Peter says yes, three times Jesus says take care of my sheep, take care of my children, take care of your brothers and sisters. Jesus sets Peter on the right road, shows him the next steps on his faith journey, and foretells where and how that journey will end.

 You know, it really doesn’t matter all that much if you remember the first time you encountered Jesus. It really doesn’t matter if you remember the first time you had a clear sense of what you believed and why. It really doesn’t matter if you remember when you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and made a commitment to follow him. You’re no less a believer if you didn’t see a blinding light and hear a booming voice calling you to discipleship. All that matters is that you remember the last time you encountered Jesus and showed him a bit of hospitality. All that matters is that you believe in God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and that you govern your life accordingly, that you live in such a way that God in all three persons smiles. All that matters is that you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and are doing your level best to follow him every day of your life.

 All that really matters is that you never, ever forget that you are loved and that you are called to love others as he loves you. If you want to shout out to the world “he’s back,” go right ahead. He is. But truthfully, he’s never really left.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.