Pastor Jim's Sermon April 14, 2013

If you'd like to read this morning's sermon, the full text is found below.  If you like to hear Pastor Jim preaching the sermon during this morning's service, click on this audio link
https://www.box.com/s/5xlfo1hgv9qqq0pal079

Christ United Presbyterian Church

The Third Sunday in Easter

April 14, 2013

“We Get Tired, Lord”

John 21:1-19

I like a lot of different kinds of music, but hard-core country eludes me most of the time.  You know, the kind that has murder, suicide, love, heartbreak, and despair, and that’s just in the first verse.

Over the last few years we have all seen too much that brings us to despair. After the past few years we could all sing a lot of verses about murder and suicide and love and heartbreak and despair.

And through it all we want to cry out:  WHY GOD?  Why are we going through this?

For the disciples in our Gospel lesson today, life was beginning to fill with despair. This story happened sometime after the resurrection. First they saw the Lord in that upper room, and then he disappeared.  They’re frightened and discouraged. Their beloved leader was executed in a painful and humiliating way.  They do not know yet what Jesus' resurrection means. All they know is that they'd given up everything—home, career, a normal family life—to follow Jesus. And now he'd been crucified and buried.

As so many people do in the aftermath of tragedy and despair, they tried to find solace in the routine of their daily work.  The things that they had done before Jesus interrupted their lives.   Peter announces to the others: "I'm going fishing." And, so, they join him. At least they have something to go back to, a way to make a living.  

That night the fishing was very poor, and it wasn’t distracting them very well at all. They worked all night, catching nothing. Now they were really tired and discouraged.

Just then, someone calls to them from shore. "Have you caught any fish?" In their frustration and their failure, and maybe because they did not expect to see Jesus in this place, and maybe because the figure did not really look like Jesus, they did not at first know if it was Jesus.

Jesus is often hard for us to recognize in his post-resurrection appearances.  You and I often miss him.  But he is right there, alongside them and he even tells them what to do.  They think he’s some presumptuous stranger, until….  until they catch more fish than they could handle.

It’s funny how we think that we recognize Jesus through success, but we have a hard time seeing him when we are filled with despair.

We have many causes of personal despair, and we have many causes for despair in our society. So much violence and random death.  The horrific mass murder at a movie theater in Colorado last July, another at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in August. And Minnesota has not been spared.  This past September 6 people died at Accent Signage in Minneapolis, as well as the shootings in Red Lake, MN killing school children and employees in 2005 —and then the unthinkable nightmare at a Connecticut elementary school this past December.

Over the past 30 years there have been at least 62 mass shootings across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii. Twenty-five of these mass shootings have occurred since 2006, and seven of them took place in 2012. 

In each case there are also stories of heroism:  people who tried to stop the violence and sometimes died themselves in the process.

So much sorrow; so much despair; a glimmer of courageous hope.

The promise of the Gospel lesson today is that the Risen Christ still comes to meet us when we are filled with terror and despair.  Christ is present in our world today, in spirit. And whenever life fills us with despair, we can count on it that Christ will be there, be with us to help and to comfort and to care.

But sometimes we feel anger.  Anger at God.  Anger at other people.  Anger at God. Disappointment in God.  Anger at God.

The psalmists knew anger at God. They knew disappointment in God.  As I thought about these things I was led back to Psalm 88:

 Psalms 88:8-18 (MSG)

⁹ blinded by tears of pain and frustration. I call to you, God; all day I call. I wring my hands, I plead for help.

¹¹ Does your love make any difference in a graveyard? Is your faithful presence noticed in the corridors of hell?

 ¹³ I'm standing my ground, God, shouting for help, at my prayers every morning, on my knees each daybreak.
¹⁴ Why, God, do you turn a deaf ear? Why do you make yourself scarce?
¹⁵ For as long as I remember I've been hurting; I've taken the worst you can hand out,  and I've had it.
 
¹⁷ You've attacked me fiercely from every side, raining down blows till I'm nearly dead.
 ¹⁸ the only friend I have left is Darkness.

Have you ever felt that way?  Did you ever want to say, “I’m so tired, Lord!”

Did you feel that way this week?

I did.  I know that I’ll feel that way again.

The Psalmists knew something that we sometimes forget:  God can handle our anger.  God can handle our cries of desperation and abandonment.  Sometimes we need to share that anger, that rage, that despair with God.  We need to share it so that God can heal us.  When we take our anger and despair to God whose presence we do not doubt, then God can help us begin to heal. 

Christ comes to us today, by his spirit, in the lives and sacrifices of other people. Just ask anyone who has come through some horrible experience, and they'll tell you what it means to be surrounded by the love and care of other people.  Wherever there is love like that, we have seen the Risen Christ, in spirit, come to be present among us in human persons, people just like us.

When life gets too much to bear, the Risen Christ comes to meet us in the midst of our trouble, our pain, our frustration, our failure. But, we, too like the disciples, can fail to recognize him when he comes to us in unlikely places or unlikely persons.

The Risen Christ comes to meet us when life seems meaningless, but we need to keep alert, and watch for him, even in unexpected places, in unlikely persons.  

Amen.