April 18, 2010 | 8:00 a.m.

Life on the Other Side

Sarah A. Johnson
Pastoral Resident, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 30
John 21:1–14

Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. He said to them,“Children, have you caught any fish?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast your net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.”

John 21:4−6 (NRSV)

One of the perpetual struggles of the pastorate is making something new out of something old.

Every year during the time of the high liturgical seasons, such as Christmas and Easter, we pastors come across the same Bible stories from the year before and find ourselves sitting in our offices somewhere around Thursday afternoon amidst a pile of books and a Diet Coke, thinking, “How can I possibly speak a new word into a story where everyone already knows how it ends? (Talk about poor odds) How am I to find new life in the familiar?”

There is a great UK television series called The Vicar of Dibley, which follows the exploits and lives of a vicar and her parishioners in the fictional Oxfordshire village of Dibley. In one episode, Kate, the vicar, and one of her parishioners, Alice, are getting the church ready for Christmas by decorating the church Christmas tree. As they are decorating, Alice makes polite conversation by remarking that she is so looking forward to hearing Kate’s first Christmas sermon.

Smiling politely, Kate reminds Alice that she has actually been at the church two years and that this will not be her first but be her second Christmas sermon; perhaps she recalls last year’s? “Oh,” Alice says. “Well maybe last year the story was a little boring.” “The birth of the Son of God boring?” Kate asks. “Well, yeah,” Alice says. “I mean the story is the same year after year. You know: angel, wise men, shepherds, blah blah blah. . . . Maybe you could spice the story up a bit this year.” (Kate is not really sure what Alice has in mind for “spicing” up the story. It’s not like Mary is going to have twins this year.)

It is hard to find something new in our stories and in our circumstances when it seems that nothing has changed at all.

And so it often is for life on the other side of Easter. On the other side of Easter we all get back to it. Life goes on, just as it did before. Churches take a big sigh of relief, glad that all the chaos has passed and that Easter only comes once a year. (Who could possibly sustain that level of energy?) A few wayward, still-growing tulips, like the empty cake plates after a party, are all that we have left as evidence that the whole thing even happened at all.

If you looked at the church three weeks (or two thousand years) after Easter, it all seems lot like a dream—the flowers, the lines of people, the Hallelujah Chorus—doesn’t it? Like nothing ever happened, and the world goes on just as it did before. Back to the news, the chores, the income tax.

We are not alone in this strange experience of the other side of Easter. The story from John’s Gospel this morning is about life on the other side of Easter; life on the other side for the disciples. The event has come and gone for them, and their Easter Day was far less impressive than ours: no cathedral, no Tower Brass, no grand choir processional, not even a sermon to help parse it all out or Easter candy on the aisle at CVS as a sign of the times.

No, their Easter was far less compelling than ours. All they had to go on were a few disconnected appearances and conversations with the risen Christ, whom they never seem to recognize anyway.

Following Easter there is nothing left for the disciples to do but get back to life, to get on with it. Isn’t that what we usually expect from people when they have lost someone or something that they love? We give them the necessary time to mourn; we sympathize with them, write them cards, send casseroles, stop by with prayers and visits for the first couple of days.

But after a while, when it comes down to giving them some serious and sound advice, we say, “Now you really must get on with it. Do something. Stop doing whatever it was that you did before, and move on. Pull yourself together!” We have all said this to someone else and perhaps even to ourselves on the other side of life following a great loss. It’s time to move on.

So the disciples take their own good advice and get on with it. Simon Peter announces to the others that he is going fishing; he is going to go back to work, back to Galilee, back to doing something that he was doing before, and the rest of the lot shrugs their shoulders and agrees that perhaps they ought to go with him.

The Fourth Gospel doesn’t tell us for sure that the disciples were fishermen by trade, but fishing would have been something familiar—a common practice—and to be fair, disciples did have to eat. So off they go, back to fishing, back to the affairs of their everyday lives.

But their return to the everyday task of fishing turns out to be a disaster. They fish all night and they don’t catch a thing. Their efforts are completely unproductive even though it is all that they know how to do.

But as the sun is breaking over the horizon and the disciples sit defeated in their empty boat, Jesus appears on the shore. John tells us that the disciples (as usual) don’t recognize Jesus but that they do hear him.

“Children, did you catch anything?” he asks them. Although he clearly sees their empty boat and their empty nets, Jesus, like any good lawyer, never asks a question to which he doesn’t already know the answer.

“No,” they tell him. You and I both know that there are a variety of no’s in this world. We don’t know which “no” the disciples’ answer was. Maybe it was angry? “Clearly you can see that we didn’t catch anything.” “No, were you going to help?” Maybe it was sad? “No,” hanging their heads, “we didn’t catch anything.” Maybe it was confused? “We don’t understand why we didn’t catch anything.” Perhaps it was some combination of all of them—anger, sadness, confusion, hope for a little help.

It is a great question that Jesus asks them, “Did you catch any fish?” It’s not a question about fish, really. It’s a question about them and about their lives: “Did you catch any fish? How are you? Are you doing OK? How is your life? Did you catch any fish? Are you satisfied with the things you are doing? With your work as a teacher or an entrepreneur? Are you satisfied? Are you happy with your life? Are you happy with the things that you produce with what it is that you think you do best? Children, my little ones whom I love, do you have any fish? Do you have anything to show for how it is that you spend your time?”

“No,” of course. The disciples, you and I, often have very little to show for all our efforts, for all our work and imagination. The day has come and gone and we have labored and toiled and we wonder what is the point of it all.

But Jesus tells them, “Cast your net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some fish.” Most scholars and commentators report that there is no need to delve into popular speculation about Jesus’ instructions concerning the “right” side of the boat and whether maybe this had something to do with the right side being the lucky or the better side (I am sure that Fox News would just love to have a stab at that).

Jesus’ instructions to his disciples have nothing to do with politics or preference, the left or the right side. What matters is that it is the other side.

“Whatever side you are currently laboring on,” Jesus tells them, “cast your net on the other side.” Try the other side.

The disciples follow Jesus’ instructions, and presto! a net full of fish—153 fish to be exact! It’s so heavy that the disciples need help hauling it in.

Jesus reminds them that life on the other side need not be the same. There is abundant life to be had through Christ in the here and now. Life on the other side isn’t about some over-spiritualized ghost story, faint and wispy, ungraspable, about life to come. Life on the other side is tangibly in front of us in the here and the now in the midst of what we do, in the midst of where we are. The disciples don’t have to wait for the coming of the Lord in glory, until the end of the world, until heaven itself, to find life abundant.

No, Jesus finds the disciples fishing in their everyday work and labor, in a tangible meal shared with friends in the first light of day. You don’t have to die to know the resurrected life.

There is so much to be a part of here at Fourth Church—too many things to even be listed on a single page. We offer classes and concerts, speakers and special events, art exhibits and t’ai chi. We offer these things in the hope that friends and members alike will benefit from these programs and feel welcome to discover Fourth Church as a place to make new friends, to learn, to grow, and to play.

But more than that, we hope that you will open yourself to the possibility that meaningful life on the other side is about the abundant life that Christ offers you and me in the here and now, life that looks less like simply attending programs and more like discovering the strange possibility that you begin to be more fully yourself by giving yourself wholly away to others; that abundant life in Christ offers freedom to stop making a living and start making a life. Freedom from captivity; freedom from the routines of what we always do; freedom to get your hands dirty, to love and serve in ways more abundant than you could have imagined.

That’s what truly makes us church, isn’t it? What make us more than four walls with pretty stained glass windows and a front door on Michigan Avenue?

Life on the other side for our disciples meant transformation. Having filled their nets on the other side, they recognize their living Lord. Peter gets so excited that he barely has time to put one some more clothes (one of the stranger details in the New Testament) before reaching the shore to greet Jesus.

Life on the other side is life offered today to you and me. It is not the dream of the resurrection day gone by but the resurrected life each day. If you want to know what that is like, “cast your net on the other side” and let Christ fill it more abundantly, more joyously than you could ever imagine. Abundant life: isn’t that what you want? What we all want? You don’t have to die in order to live. Cast your net on the other side.

All thanks be to God. Amen.