April
22, 2007
John
21:1-19
“Details
of Grace”
“Details,
details, details.” That is pretty much
my forte. Just talk to my co-workers and
they will confirm that attention to the smallest nuts and bolts of a meeting or
a plan or a project is what I do best. NOT! In fact, I am the guy who notoriously
under-budgets vacations, procrastinates on reconciling the bank statements, and
fails to consider that bulletins don’t hand themselves out. Thankfully, I work with ministry partners in
the office and in planning groups who have their feet more firmly on the
ground. While I am gazing at the stars,
others are diligently weeding the garden, ordering paper, planning the menus,
and setting up chairs.
Oh, I know there is value in seeing
the “big picture” as well – that it is possible to get so immersed in the
minutia that you lose all perspective and bearing. A wide angle lens is just as important as a
microscope – but the rest of that truth is that we overlook the small pieces at
our peril. The “devil,” we are reminded,
is in the details.
And,
as it turns out, often the beauty.
Trees, for example, are not simply green. They are complex palettes of intensities and
hues. Fine music is an interplay of
rhythms, notes and rests. A poem is not
merely words that rhyme, but meter and pace and pregnant phrases and an
inquisitive eye. If the devil is in
the details, so also is the divine.
And it is the details that captivate me in
this story from John’s gospel. The focus
in this lengthy passage is usually shared between the almost magical catch of
fish after a futile excursion of catching nothing, and the tender but
provocative three-fold questioning of Peter by Jesus: “Do you love me?” And while those major interests are worth
every sermon preached on them, I have been sidetracked by John’s inclusion of
small details – almost tiny facts and pieces of data that hardly merit mention:
– Fishing from
the “right” side of the boat;
– Peter’s
nakedness and need to get dressed;
– the
boat’s position of 100 yards off shore;
– the
charcoal fire that Jesus had prepared with cooking fish and bread;
– the
precise count of 153 large fish and the fact that, despite the weight, the net
was not torn;
– the
slightly shifted Eucharistic flavor of the breakfast.
Why
these intimate details?
The simple answer is, “who
knows?” Assuming that such specific
touches must be symbolic, scholars have been trying to decode them for
generations. Some have noted that it was
also a charcoal fire that warmed the onlookers in Pilate’s courtyard when Peter
staunchly and thricely denied his acquaintance with Jesus, suggesting that
these twin fires provide the subtle connective tissue between that courtyard
and this lakeside; between denial and restoration; between getting lost and
being found. Others have suggested that
the number 153 was the exact number of species of fish that Greek zoologists
had catalogued at the time of John’s writing, so that the miraculous catch was
to symbolize completeness.
Or what about the only slightly
larger detail of timing. Have you caught
the significance of when this story is supposed to have happened? This is a post-resurrection appearance; in
the days that followed the gripping trial and the numbing death and ultimately
the skin-popping resurrection. And yet
here we are. “I’m going fishing,” Peter
announced. “We’ll go with you,” chimed
in the others. It is, perhaps, the note
of ordinariness that both surprises and disappoints me. Everything seems rather blandly back to
normal for these who have only days before experienced what we might imagine to
be the most earth-shattering, mind altering reality possible. And yet here they are: back to their usual routine.
Maybe
it is in the nature of the human psyche, when a disrupting finger is thrust
into our pond, to simply close back up over the space once it is withdrawn,
erasing any trace of its disturbance.
Think 9/11. Think, perhaps how
little we are likely to think about the tragedy at Virginia Tech a month from
now – or a year, after the flags are raised back to the top of the poles. The disciples are doing what they had always
done before Jesus invited them to follow a different path. But what, given everything that has happened,
is “normal”?
Maybe
the “new” normal is – as John demonstrates instead of merely announcing –a
different kind of clarity of vision. At
least sometimes, perhaps, dramatic events – whether they are exhilarating ones
like an empty tomb, or tragic ones like 33 bodies strewn in a college classroom
and dorm – strip away the blurring haze of routine and habit and enable us to
look out on the world with fresh clarity and appreciation – the coolness of the
water on bare skin; the smoke of the fire; the orange pink of the sunrise and
the grating crunch of the boat hull on the sand. And the large, shiny, flopping fish in the
net – all 153 of them.
That’s
the detail that grips my attention and won’t let go. One hundred and fifty-three. What an incredibly precise count! Not 150, or simply “a net full.” 153.
Maybe that surprising number really is, as the church fathers loved to
speculate, the mathematical sum of all the integers between one and 17; maybe
it is some mysterious numerical code that only the holiest insiders can
decipher. Maybe it is nothing more than
a trivial piece of data from an eye-witness account that has survived all these
tellings with no particular significance at all.
But
in the clarity of this new day, I’ll tell you what I see. What I see is the signal that every one of
those fish was significant – no single one of them was generic enough to simply
gloss over in the counting. Every fish
was counted and tallied and brought to the surface in a net that was – thank
God – strong enough to carry them all.
Did you notice that detail? The
net – though full of the miraculous and precious catch – was large and strong
enough to accommodate all 153. Every one
made it to shore.
Not
a single one was lost.
I
think about that on this Earth Day, animated with chirps and barks and purrs
and flutters, whistles and growls and moos and grunts, hoots and honks and
buzzes and quacks; green grass and fluttering leaves, breaking buds and rolling
waves and mountain peaks and stretching trees and…
…and
on this day of mourning, perhaps most of all…
…people. Every single one precious, irreplaceable and
large or small, short or tall, red or yellow, black or white:
every one important to count.
That’s what I think of when I read this story: every single one was worth counting; and the
gathering net of God’s embracing arms is strong and deep enough to hold them,
every one. Because we can forget that
little detail in the daily and sometimes aggravating, annoying routine of
sharing, negotiating, working and living with and around the other people and
species who occupy, with us, this little orbiting ball.
Perhaps as we think
about all those who lost their lives this week, we can also look around this
room – look around the hallways as we drink our coffee and move from room to
room; as we watch our TV’s and drive along the streets and move among the
aisles of stores -- and recognize a little more clearly how precious are all
those we see. Whether we know their
names or not; whether we know anything about them; even whether or not we
particularly like them, they are something special, something valuable, and we
are privileged to share life alongside of them.
Every single one of them.
As
the story closes, Jesus calls Peter off to the side and asks him – three times,
as a matter of fact – “Do you love me?”
And Peter answers, “You know that I love you.”
To
which Jesus responds, “Then feed my lambs; tend my sheep.”
As
if to say, “Count my fish – every single one of them. Don’t let them get away. If you love me, pay attention to the details
of grace. ”