Sermon Title: "The Intrusion of Christ"
Date: April 18, 2010
Minister:  Rev. Charles Ensley

Lesson:  John 21:1-19

In a recent issue of Christian Century (2/23/10), there was a feature article on preaching in which the author discourages the preacher from talking about him- or herself in a sermon.  Naturally, there were several letters to the editor in subsequent issues in which those responding took exception to his thesis.  The writer, William Brosend then responded:  “The work … explores what preaching would be like if it intentionally followed the example of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels.  I still maintain that Jesus rarely refers to himself in the Synoptics, that the unintended consequences of frequent self-reference often outweigh any homiletical benefit, and that a habit of self-reference undermines the rhetorical impact of occasional self-disclosure.” (4/6/10)

Now you know that from time-to-time I use some personal illustrations.  I am not afraid of illustrating something I struggle with.  Yet I’ve taken enough preaching courses—and am indeed leaving this afternoon for a three day preaching conference in Seattle—to know that the preacher must not always be the hero in such illustrations.  Hearing a friend preach some years ago, I heard him tell one, two, then three stories about himself in which he was the hero in each.  I told Peggy afterwards that he should have had at least one in which he had failed at something.

You have heard me say in the past that one issue I struggle with is wondering when I’m confronted with a homeless person or someone asking for help or money, if I turn them away, which one of them was really Christ confronting me, or, for the purpose of today’s sermon, intruding in my life?

Thinking about my own preaching style on the eve of a preaching conference, I believe that my role as a Christian minister is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Looking over the past scripture texts for my sermons, well more than half are from the four Gospels.  I want Jesus to come alive off the written page for you, and for you and me together to discover how he influences, intersects, intrudes in our lives.

Which is exactly what today’s lengthy-yet-pointed lesson from John’s Gospel was all about.  John tells that this was the third appearance of the risen Christ to his disciples.  The past two Sundays we heard he appeared to Mary Magdalene in the garden after his resurrection, but she was alone.  Then he appeared first to the disciples on Easter afternoon when they were fearfully locked behind a door.  He appeared to them a second time a week later to satisfy Thomas’ doubt and disbelief.  Today, in a continuous reading from John’s Gospel since Easter, we find the disciples have reverted to their former profession—fishing.  Have they given up following Jesus since he was no longer among them?  “It was great while it lasted,” they mused.  “We gave it our best shot.  There’s nothing left to do but try to get our old jobs back.”  But Peter’s effort to get his old job back went from bad to worse.  He and his friends spent the night fishing and caught nothing.  Now he was a double failure:  denying Jesus three times, he had failed as a disciple, and now he and his friends couldn’t even catch a fish.

Then a stranger on the shore commands them to cast their net on the right side of the boat.  What did they have to lose?  They did, and netted a great catch.  The disciple whom Jesus loved looked at the shore and recognized the stranger:  “It is the Lord!” he shouted.

And for a third time, the risen Christ intrudes upon the lives of the disciples, once again jarring them from their complacency.  Sitting beside him on the shore, barbecuing some fish for breakfast, we are told they dared not ask who he was, “because they knew it was the Lord.”  “Jesus came and took bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish.”  I wonder if they remembered a meal in an upper room just a few weeks before, when Jesus took bread and a cup of wine and passed both among them, and infused them with a new meaning which we still celebrate today?

In a way, today’s story is a parable of our world after Easter.  The lilies are gone, the crowd’s a little smaller, we’re back to one service.  We are going about our everyday business, assuming that the old, familiar world is intact when the risen Christ intrudes and everything explodes into wonder, miracle, and extravagance.  Nothing can ever be the same once we believe in the good news of Easter.

I thought of cutting the lesson short today.  Nineteen verses is a lot to read, to hear, to comprehend.  But I didn’t want to leave Peter dripping wet after swimming to shore to greet Jesus.  Here was a man who needed Christ to intrude in his life once again.  Three times Jesus asks him, “Do you love me?”  Three times Peter answers, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”  Three times in succession Jesus tells him, “Feed my lambs…Tend my sheep…Feed my sheep”  Three questions.  Three answers.  Three commands.  Three:  the same number of times Peter, standing beside a charcoal fire outside the courtroom where Jesus was on trial, denied ever knowing him.  Then he went outside and wept over the biggest failure of his life.

Was not this episode on the shore that morning Jesus’ divine forgiveness of Peter?  Wasn’t it when he still thought he was worthless in Jesus’ sight that the risen Christ redeemed him and, much more, gave him a new mission?  The strange encounter on the beach ends with Jesus telling him, “Follow me.”  Follow where?  Into a new world where everything has been overturned by the powerful work of God in the resurrection of Jesus.

Jesus may not have preached about himself very much.  But he was fearless about intruding in the lives of others—the fishermen along the Sea of Galilee he passed early in his ministry, telling them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.  The Samaritan woman at the well, the blind man, the leper, the moneychangers in the temple. 

Just yesterday after a memorial service, a man told me he attended here as a child when Rev. Gabrielson was the senior minister.  He said his father had been raised Christian Science and his mother was raised in a convent, but he and his siblings really had little religious upbringing, for their parents couldn’t agree in which church they should be raised.  Today, we’re Roman Catholic he said.  “My brother teaches over at St. Bart’s, and my wife and I are active at our church in Laguna Niguel.  I could stand on the street corner and tell how the Holy Spirit worked wonders in our lives,” he declared with a smile.

Christ knocks at our door, just like the famous painting.  He dares to intrude into our lives, and change them forever.  But if you remember the original painting, located in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, the outside door had no doorknob.  Christ can go on knocking forever, but we must open the door before he can intrude and influence our lives.

“Feed my lambs. … Tend my sheep. … Feed my sheep. … Follow me.”  There’s a reason we still hear this lesson today.  It wasn’t intended only for Peter.