A Fourth Church Sermon by Keith C. Harris

April 25, 2004 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Failing Forward

Keith C. Harris
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 30
John 21:1–17

“Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.”

Luke 21:6 (NRSV)

I want to begin this morning’s sermon with a story that I told at the Easter sunrise service, a story from Reader’s Digest about a young boy who had brought home very bad grades, mostly Ds and Fs. As his mother read through the report card and became angrier and angrier, she looked at her son and said, “Boy, what do you have to say for yourself?” He thought for a moment and said, “Well, Mom, you know one thing for sure: I ain’t cheating.”

If we are honest with ourselves this morning, we know some of us have cheated, that some of us have lied, some of us have stolen, and in many important ways we have failed. Some of us bring failures and struggles that are part of our workplace. Some of us bring failures in relationships with our families. Some of us are dealing with failures in school. Some of us are weighed down by failures trying to overcome those old habits. When we’re really honest with ourselves, we find many times we are sorely lacking compared to what we know God would have us do. And so we come and we gather Sunday mornings and in the evening hoping to hear a word of hope that somehow God might love us anyway, that there still might be hope, that there still might be a reason to go on.

My prayer is that as we hear what God would have to say to us through the scripture that you might hear a new word of hope that would release you not only from things in the past but also for your future.

I remember as I was studying for my clinical psychology degree that we learned about the Zygarnek effect. When we do something or complete something and it happens well, then we file it away in certain parts of our brain, but according to the Zygarnek effect, when we fail, when something is incomplete, there is a part of our brain that keeps running it over and over and over again until we find some sort of resolution or completion. That Zygarnek effect is what causes many of us to beat ourselves up and to focus a lot more on what we aren’t than what God has given us. I believe our scripture this morning speaks a word of hope and of challenge for us.

I want you to notice the similarities between Peter’s first calling to follow Jesus, found in Matthew, and this account. Both occurred on the Sea of Galilee. Both times Peter and the other disciples, or soon-to-be disciples, couldn’t catch a thing. Both times Jesus told them to throw the nets back into the water. And both times there is a miraculous catch. Isn’t it amazing that sometimes when we fall and we fail that we find ourselves going back to the last thing that we knew. For some of us, that is home. For some of us, that is an old habit. Sometimes when we have fallen, it’s good to go back to where it all began. Many counselors will have couples, when they’re having difficulties in their marriage, return to where they spent their honeymoon to remind them of what they had and to serve as a starting point once more.

Here Jesus is going to offer Peter and the others another starting point, a second chance to make things right. But before I go on, I want you to think about what are the failures, the mistakes, the things that are weighing you down this morning, that are blocking you from life, from love, from the abundance that God would have for us.

It says that afterwards Jesus appeared again to his disciples by the Sea of Tiberius, which you might notice is a different name but the same sea, the same body of water where many miracles happened. It wasn’t all the disciples, though. It was Simon Peter, Thomas the Twin, Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the brothers James and John, and two other disciples. If we wanted to speculate on who John was talking about, one good guess would be Andrew, because he was Peter’s brother and fishing partner, and maybe Philip, because throughout this Gospel, Philip has been listed alongside of Andrew. They were just kind of hanging out together. You might say, though, that they had a quorum of the disciples, seven of the twelve gathering together. They didn’t know what to do. They’ve experienced the resurrection, yet they didn’t know what to do. And Peter said, “I’m going fishing.” He knew fishing. Fishing had been most of his life. And the others said, “We are going with you.” For those of you that are struggling and dealing with failure, I believe there are five words of hope for us from this word.

The first is the importance of obedience. The disciples knew about fishing. They had fished all night. There had been times where they had caught nothing. Yet this time, about the time they were coming in, this man on the beach says, “Throw your net out on the right side of the boat.” Surely it had to go through their minds, “We know about fishing! Who is this? There’s just no fish to be had!” Sometimes God does not make sense to us. Sometimes what God asks us to do does not make sense. Sometimes what we go through does not make sense. The word of hope and grace for us is that we don’t have to have it all figured out. God doesn’t call us to be expert fisher people or have it all together. God calls us to obedience, even when it does not make sense. It’s a lot easier to worship the God of logic and common sense than it is at times to worship and follow the God of Jesus Christ.

There’s also a word that we might be called to do a new thing. Perhaps they’d fished all night on the left side where they normally did. And he said, “Cast it on the right.” You know some of us do the same thing over and over and over again and saying, “If God is God, God will produce a different result.” But there’s an old axiom that if you do what you’ve always done, then you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. Perhaps God is calling you not for a miraculous catch doing the same thing but to do a new thing.

The second is the way that God provides, the way God provides 153 fish. Scholars will tell you that that’s a little more than twice the average fishing haul would be. It’s interesting that John notes 153. Do you ever wonder about that? Others have. Sareal of Alexandria, a theologian, said the hundred represented the fullness of the Gentiles, the fifty symbolized the remnant of Israel, and the three left, of course, represented the Trinity. Augustine’s theory was that there were Ten Commandments and the number seven represented the fullness of grace—the perfect number—and that’s seventeen, right? Now if you add all the numbers from one to seventeen—one plus two plus three and so on all the way up to seventeen—you’ll get 153. And not only that, if you arrange the fish seventeen in one row and sixteen in the next, and so on, you’ll get a perfect triangle, which again symbolizes the Trinity. Jerome suggested the three different types of fish in the sea were symbolic of the church reaching all the people in the world.

Personally, though, I have my own theory. I think it’s mentioned because there were 153 in the net. I think the reason that John notes this is because in their culture, Peter, being the skipper, would have gotten about 20 to 21 percent of the fish, which would be thirty-two of them, and John, being first mate, would have been given about 16 percent or twenty-five. The other five then would get the normal 10 to 10-1/2 percent, which would have been about sixteen fish. You see sometimes we as a people of God get so caught up in the details that we forget the whole picture, and the whole picture is that God not only provides but provides in abundant and miraculous ways for us.

I want you to note that God does not give them a sermon or a lecture first but already has fish cooking on the beach when they get there and asks them to come and have breakfast. Jesus was aware that the hunger they had was not only emotional and spiritual but very much physical. And we all know it’s hard to learn or hear anything when your stomach is growling. Jesus knows all of our needs and meets them.

The third lesson that comes from this great story is that God doesn’t give up. God doesn’t give up. Up until the time I had to prepare for this sermon, I always thought this was just one of those first appearances to the disciples. John tells us it is the third time. I would like to think that if I saw someone beaten and crucified and dead who then appeared to me afterwards that I would kind of get it. And whereas I might not get it the first time, then certainly the second. John tells us this is the third time that Christ appears to the disciples. I think there is a strong word for those of us struggling with failure that God never gives up on God’s people. I want you to note that this fire that they talk about that’s on the beach where Jesus is cooking the fish is the Greek word “Anthracian.” This word “Anthracian, the Greek word for a charcoal kind of fire, a special kind of fire, is found only twice in scripture. It is the fire at this breakfast that Jesus is cooking and in the courtyard when Peter denied Christ three times. Peter warmed himself in darkness by a charcoal fire; now he finds himself warmed by a fire at sunrise with Jesus. God never gives up on God’s people. Sometimes I think that we as people of faith are walking on eggshells and we’re afraid that if we just do one too many bad things or the wrong thing, God will zap us and we’ll be forever out of God’s will. I think these scriptures powerfully remind us again that God never gives up on God’s people.

The fourth lesson from this is that God gives direction. The disciples are floundering. You would think they would know. They’ve got the great commission, but they weren’t for sure. And sometimes we’re not for sure what God wants us to do either, but God doesn’t allow us to float adrift and whatever happens, happens. God provides direction, both amidst the storms and in peaceful times. God doesn’t always speak as clearly as we would like. God doesn’t always say what we would like for God to say, but rest assured, God does provide direction for God’s people.

The fifth and last lesson is that God wants us to get fishing. God wants us to get busy, now not fishing for literal fish, but fishing for people. At the end of the breakfast, God pulls Peter and the others aside and says, “Do you love me? If you love me, then feed my sheep. If you love me, tend my lambs.” You see, the real work of people of faith isn’t just what we say, but it is what we do—failures and all. I want you to note that Jesus doesn’t say, “If you love me, feed the sheep that you get along with.” Notice that Jesus doesn’t say, “If you love me, tend the sheep that will appreciate it and will say ‘Thank you’ afterwards.” Jesus says, “Feed and tend all of my sheep.” We don’t like that part very well, do we? There are some sheep we just as soon would go astray and get their just deserts. But perhaps this is more powerful for Peter and the others because they are very aware of their own failures: times when they ran; when they denied they’d betrayed with their actions. There is a sea of people out there who are lonely, who are hurting, who are desperately needing to know the good news and the hope that we have as people that fall and fail. Jesus says, “Tend my sheep. All of them.”

I want to close with a story, a true story that happened in the late 1800s and was told by an evangelist named Henry Moorehouse, who made several trips to this new America to preach. On one of those occasions, he was walking through a poor area of town, where he saw a little boy leaving a dairy with a large pitcher of milk. The boy tripped and fell on the stairs; the pitcher broke and milk went everywhere. Henry Moorehouse went to the boy and found him unhurt, but very distraught. He kept on saying over and over again, “My mamma will whip me. My mamma will whip me.”

So the evangelist took the boy to a store down the street and got a new pitcher, filled it to the top, then walked the boy all the way to his front yard. He asked the boy, “Will your mamma whip you now?” A wide smile spread across the boy’s tear-stained face, and he said, “No, sir, ’cause this is a lot better pitcher than we had before.”

You see, in a miracle of love, as we fail, as we fall, God doesn’t just replace it with the same thing, but God causes us to fail forward, to receive even more than we ever dreamt possible. The theologian Karl Barth said, “Jesus was the word that became flesh, and then through theologians it became words again.” There is a strong call to us that our lives of faith as we fail, as we grow, as God picks us back up again, are not to be just about saying the faith but living the faith. Tend God’s sheep, and remember that in a miracle of love in Christ, we fail forward, not backward. Now and always. Amen.