Sermon Preached By: Dr. Larry Corbett, Pinnacle’s former senior pastor
Date: April 22, 2007
Scripture: John 21: 1–19
Sermon Title:

"The World Turned Upside Down"

My childhood memories of fishing are not on the Sea of Tiberius, but standing on the shore line of Tappan Lake not far from home. I remember fishing with a neighbor and his son, all of us holding long bamboo poles with little round red and white bobbers near the end of the line. The hook had a worm on it. Perhaps six or seven years old I remember wrinkling up my nose at putting a worm on the hook and somehow got one of the others to do so, and it was the same for removing the little blue–gill fish that I caught. There was no way that I’d try to catch that little bugger flopping around on the end of the line. But with patient nurturing and showing me how to do it, I soon learned the basic rudiments of lake shore fishing.

Typically, it was a serene spring–day–experience watching the bobber from the shoreline, waiting for it to be pulled beneath the water’s surface, and feeling the tug of the line in my hands. Fishing was fun, relaxing, even soothing; a time for story telling, imagination, and if lucky, enough fish to take home for an evening meal.

Not quite the experience of the disciples on the Sea of Tiberius. It’s sometime after the crucifixion and resurrection, not a placid, serene day, but a time still of shock, grief, and chaos. Their world had been turned upside down as ours was this week. After the confusion, fear, and uncertainty of the past few days it was no doubt a relief to think of getting back to some routine and going fishing.

Peter’s decision to go fishing is not surprising as a death of a loved one is very unsettling. It’s good to get back to routine and back in control. With death one feels vulnerable and out of control. I often suggest to family members to get a little note pad to carry with them and write down things that come to mind that need done. The very act of making a list helps one to begin to feel like you can regain some control and balance in your life.

It’s important to feel in control of one’s life and know what is expected. That’s why we have wedding rehearsals, so that the participants in the wedding party and the extended family members of the bride and groom will know what is expected of them. No one wants to embarrass themselves or feel out of control of their circumstances. As someone has observed “Surprises are good on two days only, Christmas and birthdays, and not at any other time.”

But there are those in the counseling profession who would say that balance and control are an illusion, as security is an illusion. In spite of the reality that people are organisms that seek balance, serenity, and calm such moments are often fleeting, and the calm is shattered by acts of terrorism, rage, or an accident and unanticipated death. The world is turned upside down, or as my friends book is entitled, “When the River Runs Backwards.”

What happened at Virginia Tech a few days ago was very methodical and precise by the perpetrator of the crime; the aftermath was anything but. It was very human, very non–technical, and very compassionate. People reached out to one another on line, by telephone, and by their presence to those suffering the impact of death.

In a national newspaper on Thursday there was an extensive article about a Presbyterian minister in Blacksburg, the Rev. Alexander Evans, pastor of the Blacksburg Presbyterian Church. Mr. Evans also serves as a chaplain to the police. He has listened and spoken to those closest to the 32 Virginia Tech students and faculty. He counseled the police who rushed into Norris Hall and found all but the two victims who had been shot dead earlier. He commented: “There is no way to prepare for this, to train for this… it demands all of our compassion as human beings. It demands that we help each other through it.”

He said he hoped he had been able to show both the police officers and victims’ relatives who are suffering that they were not alone and that they were not without God. “I think God is crying with all those who are crying and giving encouragement to all those giving encouragement, and urging us to find ways to make a safer, more peaceful society.” (New York Times, April 19, 2007, page. A19)

The Rev. Mr. Evans is so right… when events like the carnage at Virginia Tech happen, it shatters our peace, our sense of what is right. It intrudes on our consciousness, it interrupts and irritates and saddens and shocks, and we wonder if God is absent; if God hasn’t left this place a long time ago, like the empty tomb in the garden. But then, surely that’s what the disciples must have thought at the entrance to the empty tomb. Their world was turned upside down by the resurrection, not by a massacre of students and faculty. They, too, were confused, fearful, and uncertain about discipleship, the presence of Jesus, and the nature of God.

When I read this lectionary passage in preparation for today’s worship it hit me that the opening verse of the reading says that “Jesus showed himself again to his disciples.”

I believe that Jesus wants to show himself today with our congregation, and with others gathered together today in worship throughout the land. The text goes on to say that “he showed himself in this way.”

What way?

The way is revealed in a miraculous haul of fish, a communion–like tone of the breakfast of bread and fish, and the conversation between Peter and Jesus. That conversation is truly fascinating. Do you remember that it was Peter who denied three times that he knew Jesus? Here, Jesus gives him an opportunity three times to respond with a faithful “yes” at daybreak, once for every denial of Jesus made in the night of that garden.

Peter goes on to live a costly discipleship, and not many of us are asked to become a martyr or to leave all we have to serve our Lord. But faithful discipleship does cost us time, energy, money, comfort, maybe even safety and security.

How then can we bring the grace of God in Christ to this hurting world?

We can become agents of reconciliation in a world of polarization — polarized politically, economically, racially, and ethnically. As Christ is the one “who has broken down the dividing wall of hostility” (Ephesians 2) we, too, can bring a spirit of reconciliation to the world around us.

We can empathize with others who live with violence every day. Not wishing to minimize what happened in Virginia, but to place it in perspective, consider those who live with the threat of violence every day in Iraq, in the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, the west bank, Darfur, the Sudan, and elsewhere. Children of God suffer and die on a daily basis by human generated violence.

We can reach out to others with prayer and compassion. I was moved by a photo of a delegation from the Amish community from Pennsylvania, parents of young students shot down in their school last October, who went to Blacksburg to stand together with the families of the 32 victims. It brought to mind the Apostle Paul’s words in II Corinthians, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.” (II Corinthians 1: 3–4)

In an on going basis, in every way imaginable, we need to empower parents in today’s world to be parents. Please understand me, here, I am NOT laying blame for Mr. Cho’s horrific actions on his parents. They, too, are grieving and burdened with feelings of helplessness. As a parent of an adult child who lives with chronic mental illness one can be the best parent possible and it is never enough. One can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and secure the finest psychiatric treatment, and it will not thwart an impulsive act of violence. We need to seek every imaginable way to support parents in today’s difficult world.

We need to expect fathers to have backbones and mothers to have spines, to be able to consistently set boundaries and enforce the boundaries for their children. We need to find ways so parents can love each other, and love their children, even if it means saying “No” to them, and believe me, it does. If children don’t learn disappointment and differed gratification what will they do as adults? Life is full of disappointments, loss, and pain. And children have such endurance at wearing parents down. (But then didn’t we as children?!?)

I’m talking personal responsibility. It’s part of our faith. I learned early on that I couldn’t whine and cry and woo my neighbor into putting that squiggly worm on the hook… or remove the fish from it. To put it simply, we can’t forever let someone else put the worm on the hook and someone else take the fish off the hook, and still call it fishing. Each of us is called to discipleship in a broken world.

The abundance of fish in this story and the gracious meal of bread and fish indicate that God’s gift of abundant life is available in the risen Christ. The tomb is empty, our world is upside down, and God is present with us now. May we believe that, and trust it, and live it together. Amen.

I have relied on the follow sources for this sermon: New York Times, April 19, 2007; Theology and Worship, a section of the PCUSA web site; material by Timothy Merrill, editor of Homiletics; Pulpit Resource by William Willimon; Journal for Preachers, Easter, 2007; The New Interpreter’s Bible, a commentary on John; and The Anchor Bible on John XII–XXI, Raymond E. Brown.