“You Know that I Love You,” detail from the half-sleeve tattoo on my right arm, created by Vick, a tattoo artist at Laughing Buddha in Seattle.
“We will go with you.”
What a lovely thing to say.
They will go with their friend, who has told them, “I am going fishing,” his way of saying, “I am going back to doing the thing I know how to do. I am going back to my day job.” Their response is simple, and supportive: “We will go with you.”
Together, and at work doing the thing they’ve known how to do their whole working lives, these seven friends pass a bad night. They catch nothing. This disappointment follows a couple of very recent traumas: the violent execution of their leader and friend, and then his bizarre, ineffable return into their midst. Deeply rattled and unnerved, shaken to the core by all that they had experienced, they went back to their old ways … and then even those old ways failed them. Their nets are empty. A whole night’s work wasted.
Can we relate? I think so. In the wake of pandemic trauma, in the wake of climate-crisis trauma, in the wake of economic- and social-upheaval trauma — and even in the middle of these ongoing traumas — we might try to go back to 2019, or 2009, or some other time in the gauzy past, and try to live our lives the way we did then.
It doesn’t really work.
But maybe “We will go with you” still rings in Simon Peter’s ears, even as he gazes, exhausted, at the empty nets. “Simon Peter”: Peter is Simon’s title, an honorific given to him by Jesus, a title that means “Rock,” or “Rocky.” And so the friends said to Simon Rocky, “We will go with you,” and in my reading of the story, Rocky won’t soon forget that kind and encouraging gesture. And then, with the early dawn stealing over the eastern Galilean hills, all seven of them spot a mysterious person on the shore. Worn out by a long night of fruitless work, they don’t immediately know who it is. But when this person surprises them with a wondrous catch of fish — a sign of God’s abundant blessings — well, who else could it be? It is their executed but resurrected leader and friend, alive again, vaguely familiar, but also a disturbing stranger. Rocky jumps into the sea, a little foolishly — he hasn’t yet shaken off some of his impulsivity; he is still a person in formation, a work in progress — but the others, they sensibly row the boat to shore.
“Come and have breakfast,” the mysterious person says to them.
What a lovely thing to say.
But this invitation is complicated. This breakfast is not just avocado toast, hot coffee, and catching up with old friends. This breakfast is lovely, deeply grace-filled, powerfully good … but it is dreadful and devastating, too.
Maybe Rocky sensed this when he saw the charcoal fire. The last time he saw one of those, he was trying to warm himself on a cold, brutal night, the night he betrayed his truest friend. Back before the traumatic death and the baffling resurrection, Rocky warmed himself in vain by a charcoal fire, and then the rooster crowed, sealing his identity as one of the many who handed his friend over to the authorities, over to death. And so, as Rocky struggles to his feet on the beach and notices the charcoal fire, does he already feel the electric tension?
He may already sense that this breakfast is going to be hard. He is going to be confronted about what he did that he should not have done; he is going to be challenged, broken open, pushed to grow, to develop, to change.
This breakfast will be an event of painful re-creation. In this breakfast by the sea, the risen Jesus re-creates: just as God formed the human ones from mud in the garden of creation, so the risen Jesus will grasp these human ones and rebuild God’s own relationship with them, forming them into apostles, into messengers of Good News.
This is a creation story.
Rocky had denied Jesus three times, a betrayal so destructive that he lost his confidence, his trustworthiness, his most important friendship, and his title. He went back to being Simon again. And the risen Jesus knows this. “Simon, son of John,” Jesus says, and right away everyone can hear the demotion. “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? Do you love me? Do you love me?” Three questions, one for each denial. A three-step conversation — a three-step conversion — in which the wreckage of Simon’s destroyed self is cleared out, and a new Simon Peter is formed. And this is hard on Simon: he feels hurt by it, maybe frustrated too. He is being confronted, and radically challenged, by his leader and friend.
And yet, all of this happens with his friends around the fire with him, sitting in silence. “We will go with you,” they had said, and they were true to their word. And by staying there with him, all seven of these weary fishermen were re-created. (Seven is the biblical number of fullness or completeness: seven people implies that the whole entire human race is invited to this breakfast.) And they are more than just restored; they are more than just forgiven: they are reborn in this awful, yet lovely, reconciling encounter.
And we are invited to go with them. “We will go with you”: that can be our prayer this morning. Whenever we gather on the day named after the sun, the first day of the week, the day of resurrection: whenever we gather in the name of the risen Lord, we are saying — in actions, words, prayers, and songs — we are saying to Simon Peter, “We will go with you.” We will go with you to the brutal seaside breakfast. The charcoal fire will singe our toes as we stumble into our place in the circle. The Risen One will sear us with his gaze, even as he extends his wounded hand in graceful yet wrenching reconciliation. And we will be re-created, right here, Sunday by Sunday. Christian community is a place where God re-creates the universe, one restored and renewed human being at a time.
Now, we are not changed into something entirely new, please understand that: God does not make junk, and nothing we do can destroy the human dignity we have been given and have enjoyed every day of our existence on this good earth. Rocky became Simon again, but Simon wasn’t such a bad person. And yet the restored Peter gleams with God’s glory: he goes from this breakfast to raise up those who are sick or suffering, lonely or afraid; to fill his friends’ hearts with courage; to shine true hope across the landscape like the rays of a new dawn, shepherding God’s traumatized people so worn out by injustice, upheaval, violence, and sorrow. We too are re-created in this way, when we gather here week by week. We are re-created to be bright rays of hope, shining out from here in the bright morning of God’s resurrection life. It will ultimately be worth the pain and frustration of being confronted, of being challenged to grow and to change.
One of our most beloved Anglican writers, C.S. Lewis, says it this way: He writes, “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what [God] is doing. [God] is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently [God] starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is [God] up to? The explanation is that [God] is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but [God] is building a palace. [And God] intends to come and live [there].”
“Come and have breakfast,” God in the risen Jesus calls out to us, to us who are so worn out by a long night of fruitless work, and so exhausted by a long two years of grievous pandemic illness and isolation, and so disturbed by a long generation of global conflict and crisis. “Come and have breakfast” — what a lovely thing to say. And what a terrible thing to say, too. Our transformation into shining apostles of the Good News is sometimes deeply painful. But we are invited to turn toward one another for support in all of this, as our boat – groaning under the weight of God’s abundant blessings – grinds to a stop on the sandy beach. We are invited to turn toward one another, and to say to one another, in friendship and in courageous love,
“We will go with you.”
***
Preached on the Third Sunday of Easter (Year C), May 1, 2022, at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Acts 9:1-20
Psalm 30
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21:1-19
Work cited: Lewis, C.S., Mere Christianity.