I sometimes tell people I grew up on the beach. We didn’t exactly live at the shore, but we were just a quick 20 minute drive from beaches either on the Chesapeake Bay or Virginia Beach, on the Atlantic. Saturday mornings we’d hurry through chores, with the promise that, if the work got done in time, we’d spend the afternoon at the beach. Sundays after church, we packed up and headed to the beach. Sometimes in the summer, we’d go down to John’s Island SC, outside of Charleston, for a couple of weeks at my uncle’s farm – and we’d spend practically every day on the beach.
My favorite thing about the beach was the water – the apparently limitless expanse of the ocean, and the constant movement of the waves. Waves are still mysterious to me, these great piles of water that appear out of nowhere and thunder down on the shore. My dad taught me how to ride them – today they call it “body-surfing.” To me, it was just catching a ride to shore in the midst of the tumbling water. The part I loved most was being carried along completely inside the wave, the noise of the water filling my ears, a sound I was sure must be exactly like the voice of God.
So it makes perfect sense to me that, after the resurrection, Jesus would meet his friends on the beach. The sea was a center for them, the source of their livelihood, and surely a place of deep spiritual and emotional connection.
After all the tumult of the crucifixion, it was easy to understand why the disciples would leave the crowded city and find their way back to the sea. Following Jesus had been an amazing experience, but now it appeared to be ended. So of course they would go back to normal, back to what they had been raised to do. They went fishing.
What happened next, as reported in the Gospel of John, was a series of events both remarkable and yet ordinary.
The fishing expedition seemed to be a failure. They caught nothing. Then a stranger on shore called out and told them to put the nets down on the other side of the boat. The disciples, veterans of the fishing trade, must have thought the man was nuts, but they humored him. When they did put down the nets, to their great surprise, it was filled with fish.
The miracle provided recognition and soon the boat was docked and the men gathered around their Lord, who had prepared breakfast for them. It is a lovely, peaceful scene, the Prince of peace at peace with his friends, enjoying a picnic on the beach.
But the gospel writer does not allow the story to end with this quiet scene. Instead, Jesus brings up some unfinished business. A week or so ago, standing near a small fire in a bustling courtyard, Peter three times denied knowing Jesus. Now, gathered around a similar fire on the sandy shore, Jesus turns to his friend. “Peter,” he asks, “do you love me?” I’m convinced that in that very moment, Peter again heard a rooster crow. But he answered the question. “Of course, you know I love you,” he said.
I’m not a big student of languages, but I really did enjoy the study of Greek in seminary, mostly because of moments like this. You see, when you look at the original Greek, Jesus asks Peter to profess agape – “unconditional, sacrificial, universal love.” Peter responds with philia, the word for limited love, the kind of love we have for friends and neighbors. Three times Jesus asks the same question and Peter never does quite measure up. He never manages to say “agape.” He cannot claim unconditional love.
But Jesus accepts his answer, and gives Peter a mission. “Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep,” he says.
I think we could excuse Peter for feeling a bit confused at this point. He is a fisherman, not a shepherd. And, for the last many months, he has been trying hard to do some version of what Jesus is now suggesting. Walking with Jesus all the weary miles through Galilee and into Jerusalem, Peter left his beloved boat behind and helped Jesus tend the sick, feed the hungry, and minister to the broken-hearted. Now, Jesus makes it sound as if the task has just begun, as if the mission is starting all over again. “Follow me,” says Jesus.
Follow me. Again? Still? Can’t you just hear Peter saying, “But…I thought we were done.”
They were not done. Jesus was now meeting them at the beginning of new life. Not A new life, but new life, new life not just for Peter and the disciples, but new life for all creation.
We are also in that new life which is timeless when reckoned by human terms. We live it one day at the time, and celebrate it especially in this Easter season. Resurrection is an amazing, impossible thing, yet year after year, Christians have greeted the Easter dawn with the same assertion: Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!
Across the centuries the Easter acclamations have become a thousand times more glorious with each passing year. Pageantry overflows. Our celebrations vie with one another in terms of music, liturgy, flowers, and even attendance. Folks who don’t darken the church door any other time of the year will show up at Easter because – well, it’s just what you do. New life is importunate, it cries out to be recognized.
But careful attention to the scripture shows us that none of Jesus’ resurrection appearances were accompanied with pageantry – not even a trumpet fanfare. There were no liturgical processions, no glorious anthems – and precious few people in attendance. Instead, Jesus appeared in the garden to just one person – Mary. Then he showed up in a locked room in the midst of his small band of terrified disciples. Now, here he is with them again in the solitude of an early morning on the beach.
And isn’t it true that this is where we are most often able to encounter God? Certainly God is present in our glorious celebrations, but far more often we meet the Divine in the more mundane, everyday places. Jesus comes to where we work. Jesus shows up for breakfast. Jesus is on the beach, in the meadow, and all the ordinary locations of our lives. This is the important truth of the incarnation: that God chooses to be present in this world, in this place, sharing our flesh and blood. We honor this truth whenever we baptize a new Christian with life’s essential but ordinary element – water. This is the certainty we experience when we break bread and share God’s meal at this Table. Jesus is Lord of Heaven, but Jesus is also Lord of THIS world. This is the creation God loved so much that he sent his only Son, to wear our flesh, to experience our pain, to die so we could live forever.
This Sunday, in addition to celebrating the resurrection, we are also celebrating the beauty of this good earth. You see, Jesus’ resurrection does not lead us out of this world, but INTO it. The resurrection bids us honor all life, because God blessed life in this world with his own breath, his own body, his own blood. By our very nature as Christian believers, we are called to care for this planet and all that is on it because it is hallowed by God.
Now, like Peter, we may think we’ve already been doing this. We have been honoring and celebrating this good earth. Haven’t we done everything we, at least, are able to do? I’ve changed the light bulbs, use cloth grocery bags, recycle everything I can think of, drive a “green” car, and grow tomatoes on my patio. Surely whatever is left must be done by those in positions of more power than I possess. I’m convinced I’ve already said “yes” to this mission and done my part. In truth, what I have done is offered to God philia, a very limited human love.
What God asks is agape – the unlimited, unconditional love of Jesus, who invites us one more time: Follow me. This is a radical, life-changing call. This love is universal, sacrificial and yes, uncomfortable and challenging. But these Great Fifty Days of Easter offer us the opportunity to begin again, to remember the mission anew, to pick up where we left off, to find new ways, to speak new words, to change ourselves and the systems that entangle us and our world.
The beaches I loved when I was young are almost all gone. The last time I visited Virginia Beach there was an elaborate system of pipes and pumps, moving the sand from one end to the other. It seems that changes in the ecosystem, wrought by decades of overdevelopment and commercialization are literally changing the shape of our shoreline. Kiawah Island, SC, a favorite playground for me and my cousin, used to be an uncultivated, overgrown place sheltering a herd of wild horses in a huge meadow in its center. The meadow is gone. So are the horses.
Recently, I spoke to a clergy friend whose parish was also planning to celebrate Earth Day this Sunday. He said, “I really don’t know what to preach. Jesus didn’t have much to say about the environment.”
It’s true. Jesus didn’t talk a lot about this world. Jesus simply died for it. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end…” From birth to death, Jesus submitted to the earth. Even at his Transfiguration, standing in glory with Moses and Elijah, Jesus – who could in that moment, have chosen to “take over” the universe, instead spoke to them about his death, his coming crucifixion. Like all human beings, Jesus would return to the earth.
More than any other of the gospels, the gospel of John retains and communicates this radical understanding of the incarnation. Like Genesis, John opens with the words “In the beginning…” Then the writer proclaims “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…in order, so that the world might be saved through him.” God loves this WHOLE world and everything on it. At creation, it was all proclaimed good. Through the incarnation, through the presence of Jesus on this earth, all who follow him and believe are charged with living that same love, charged with caring for this earth and all its creatures.
For just a moment, close your eyes and see your favorite spot on your favorite beach. It’s sunrise. Feel the ocean breeze. Hear the music of the waves. See Jesus, standing on the shore. He says: Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, follow me.
The moment is timeless. He waits for our answer still.