Your Image of God Creates You Easter 3C 2022
Your image of God creates you. Richard Rohr wrote this. It
is surely a provocative assertion. I have written this on a post-it note,
posted on the window in front of me as I Live Stream Noonday Prayer Monday thru
Friday. Along comes the story of this fishing expedition in John 21:1-19, with
the bonus story of Peter’s rehabilitation after denying Christ three times during his trial and execution. This story illustrates my image of God:
Jesus sitting on a beach with a charcoal fire, grilling some fish and bread, saying,
“Come and have breakfast,” and then distributing bread and fish to each of
them, including Peter. For in the end, it’s all about Love.
Peter decides to go fishing at night, and some others come
along. They revert right back to what they were doing before Jesus called them
saying, “Follow me.” Despite several appearances of the Risen Christ, the
events in Jerusalem seemed make clear that proclaiming the Good News of Jesus
Christ is going to be dangerous work.
Notice that Jesus knows just where to find them – fishing
right where he had found them in the beginning. He also knows they have been
fishing all night, and their net is empty. The fishermen see an unfamiliar
figure on the beach calling out to them, “You have no fish, have you?” It would
be natural for them to think, who does this guy think he is? We’re fishermen.
We know what we’re doing. But alas, they reply, “No.” This stranger tells them
to throw the net on the other side of the boat - to reverse what they are
doing. Repent means to turn back, reverse course, and walk in the way of God.
Suddenly, the net is filled with very many fishes! There are
153 large fish! The boat is foundering under the weight of the net. One of the
fishermen, known only as “the one Jesus loved,” cries out, “It is the Lord!”
Peter is so excited, working all night with no clothes on, dresses himself and
then jumps into the water fully clothed to go ashore while the other labor to drag
the net full of fishes to the shore.
There on the shore is the stranger sitting by a charcoal
fire, grilling some bread and fish. He calls out to them, "Bring some of
the fish that you have just caught." Demonstrating the same kind of
humility that has characterized him throughout the gospels. He might have said,
“Bring the fish I helped you to catch,” but he doesn’t. Humility is at the
heart of the Christ imaged life.
At the heart of the story, he distributes Bread, and then
Fish. It is a sacramental meal. It is Eucharistic. He is giving it all away as
he did in Jerusalem on the Cross. They recognize him in the breaking of the
bread. Then he asks Peter, the denier, three times, “Do you love me?” Peter
says yes three times, redeeming himself. Jesus says to tend my sheep and feed
my lambs. And come, follow me. Love is giving it all away as I have, Peter. It’s
dangerous work, but it’s what we are here to do: love one another, love our
neighbors, and even love our enemies.
Part of the Ordination Process in the Diocese of Rhode
Island, where I first perceived the call to follow Jesus, was a series of
Canonical Exams. Twice a year for three years we would troop back to Rhode
Island for these exams. It was usually an hour written exam followed by a group
oral exam with the Commission on Ministry. At one of my last exams, New
Testament, I figured someone on the Commission would ask us each to share our
favorite New Testament verse. I was prepared. Sure enough, they asked. When my
turn came, I said, “Come and have breakfast.” There was an awkward silence. A
priest on the Commission who had been very tough on us every year asked, in a
somewhat disbelieving tone of voice, “Where is THAT in the New Testament?” I
paused. All eyes were on me and him as he sought to trip me up. “Why, it’s in
the 21st chapter of John, the third resurrection appearance of Jesus
to the disciples who were fishing all night with no success.” I paused again.
“And, it happens to be the Gospel for this Sunday, the Third Sunday in Easter,
Year C.” The room was silent. My student colleagues were fighting the impulse
to grin.
This is the image of God I have treasured since that day in
Rhode Island. One like us, tending a fire on the beach, grilling bread and
fish, and despite whatever failures and disappointment the disciples exhibited
that night on Lake Tiberias – a reminder that the Empire still surrounded them
on all sides – Jesus empties himself, taking the form of a servant, not
considering equality with God something to be grasped, but rather is to be
given away, because as he had recently experienced, we are all going to give it
all away one day. Such a God, inviting us to breakfast, still reaches out to us
and asks, “Do you love me? If so tend and feed my sheep. And follow me.
Wherever I go, you go; wherever you go, I’ll be there. And we know where he
goes. To the lost, the rejected, the broken-hearted, and all those with physical,
mental and spiritual dis-ease.
The Scotsman and Franciscan, John Duns Scotus famously believed
that sin is not the reason the Christ comes to us, Love is. Before the moon,
the sun and the stars were born out of the energy of whatever Big first Banged,
the Christ and Christ’s love were hidden in the heart of God. Whether or not
sin had come into the world, and there is ample evidence all around us that it
has, Christ would have come. Christ is the first in God’s intention to create
and to love.[i]
Your image of God creates you. Pray with this image of
Christ on the beach inviting us to “Come and have breakfast!” Let him give you
his bread as a sign of his eternal forgiveness and love. We can be grateful for
John to have included this episode of Christ tending and feeding his friends
when they were lost and needed a shepherd.
Sit for some time with the God who says, “Come and have
breakfast. Who gives you his bread. Who trusts you to accept his never ending
Love so you might give it away to others. All others. Amen.
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