“Recruited for the Future”

The Reverend Tom Steffen

18 April 2010

Readings: John 21:1-19

Acts 9:1-6

Last Sunday the Gospel reading focused on Thomas, and today, of course, the focus of the reading is Peter. It is a long reading, as was last week’s. Last week it took several lines to cover that memorable episode of doubt and belief and the showing of the scars. It was and still is Jesus’ scars that move and trouble His followers. Well, we should not be surprised to find that it takes some effort to highlight denial, confrontation, forgiveness and finally recruitment. That’s a lot to cover, for sure.

Some of you know that I’m fond of the name “Snodgrass.” It is an unusual name, and I got in the habit of using the name when I’m referring to an individual, any individual, in a point I’m trying to make. For example, “if we were to ask Snodgrass what he really thinks about universal health care.” I picked up the habit from a friend who refers to Snodgrass often, a friend who is a close follower of baseball. Snodgrass has a first name, by the way. Fred Snodgrass played for the New York Giants, I believe in center field where the sun can really get into your eyes from time to time. The thing that made him famous was a mistake he made during the 1912 World Series. The Giants were playing the Red Sox, and the teams were tied in the 10^th inning. A ball fell into Snodgrass’ mitt, after some effort, I suspect, but he dropped it. The Red Sox won that day, but the error stuck to Fred like gum sticks on your shoe. Sixty-two years later, his New York Times obituary read: “Fred Snodgrass, 86, Dead; Ball Player Muffed 1912 Fly.”

History could have been hard on Peter. But no where do you find an obituary etched in St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome: Simon Peter, Fisherman; Denied His Lord in 33 CE.” In fact, as the joke goes, that magnificent cathedral is a pretty over-the-top headstone for a first century fisherman. But Peter muffed it that night around the fire. It was a cowardly denial, no way around it. And after he denied knowing Jesus, he returned to his fishing business. And we are told that the rest of the disciples went with him. Had it been today, Peter might have said: “Last one out shut down the computers” and the lights for that matter. I suspect that he thought to himself, well, it was great following this unusual Rabbi while it lasted, but I need to go home and see if I can get my old job back. And that’s what happens, but it doesn’t hold much promise for Peter or his friends.

In today’s reading, we are told that they return to fishing, but they can’t catch any fish. That’s not only a waste of time but very bad for business. And so, and so, it is into this context of failure – a double failure, you might say – it is into Peter’s heavy cloud of discouragement that the risen Christ enters. Again, did you notice that it is a fire that Peter and the Christ gather around, which could have been a painful reminder in and of itself. They break bread, and if you know anything about this story line, you know that most of the important stuff takes place around broken bread. And Christ asks Peter: “Do you love me?” Three times He asks Peter, and three times Peter replies “Lord, you know that I love you.” And the Christ says: “Feed my lambs, tend my sheep,” and, in so hearing these strange words of enlistment, Peter experiences the beginning of a renewal and restoration that would change everything. History marks this encounter as the first day of the rest of Peter’s life.

And it is just like Easter. Morning comes and the risen Christ shows up where we least expect Him. We somehow find the courage to confront our failures or set backs or broken dreams. And when there is honest and sincere confrontation, the promise of the Gospel is that we will rediscover that God’s love is deeper than our denials. Do you believe that? And it is the promise of the Easter Gospel that every once in awhile, we rediscover that God’s calling on our lives is stronger than our inadequacies to live up to it. Do you believe that? In our 45^th year as a community of faith at the crossroads, do you still believe that God is calling us to service in this place and time that is – on the surface – beyond our capacities? But, God willing, God’s grace and power are stronger than our capacities.

In a sermon given at Riverside Church many years ago, William Sloan Coffin, one of my favorite preachers, said it this way: “Christ is risen to convert us, not from this life to some other life, but from something less than life to the possibility of full life.…Easter is a demand not for sympathy with the crucified Christ, but a demand for loyalty to the resurrected One.”

While visiting our parents in Arizona this past week, I was listening to an “easy listening” station and got reacquainted with the song “My Way.” It is a favorite of many and familiar to nearly all, I suspect. Paul Anka supposedly wrote it and Frank Sinatra popularized it, but I think I read that ours is the English version of a French song. However that may be, it is set as a reflection of one at the end of his or her life: “And now, the end is near, and so I face the final curtain. My friends, I’ll say it clear; I’ll state my case of which I'm certain. I've lived a life that’s full – I’ve travelled each and every highway. And more, much more than this, I did it my way. Regrets? I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention. I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption….And more, much more than this, I did it my way.” And there is the confession that we do, from time to time bite off “more than we could chew,” but even so, facing it all, standing tall, the refrains declares that “I did it my way.”

I find the song rather moving and honest, honest about our loving and laughing and crying. But the words that don’t sound quite right come at the end of the rhetorical question: “For what is a man, a woman? What has she got? If not himself--then he has naught. To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels. The record shows I took the blows and did it my way.” It is a haunting line: “to say the things one truly feels and not the words of one who kneels.” Whoever said we have to choose between the two – honest speech and prayer? I thought they were the same? The trick for Peter was to speak honestly about his hurts and hopes and to say them on his knees. Don’t you think? And I suspect the same is true for you and me, Frank Sinatra and Fred Snodgrass, for that matter. Not literally on our knees, perhaps, but that would be rather appropriate. But with utter reverence, always reverence and humility, as if opening up our hearts to the living Christ, sitting across us, peering into a fire. And when we so speak about whatever it is that keeps us trapped in the tombs of our failures, fears and disappointments, well, we rediscover – like finding something again for the first time – that our way is His way, and His way is meant to be our way. As John puts in another place, this is the way, the truth, the life, and this is the Easter hope. Thanks be to God.

I am grateful to Reva Allington, friend and member of St. Peter’s UMC, who edits my sermons.