Elsewhere Beyond this Darkness

    The scene: a moonless night of indeterminate length. Crickets in the lingering heat. The faintest rustle of the wind in long grass. Two men, rough from the road, smoking.

    “The light shines elsewhere, yeah?”

    “I guess. What?”

    “Light. Somewhere beyond this hill, this… beyond this darkness.”

    “What are you going on about?”

    “Every day it’s this. We stagger, arms outstretched with fingertips extended. Reaching…”

    A long silence. Long drags on the cigarettes.

    “Reaching for what?”

    “We’re all always reaching toward a glimmer of…”

    “What are you going on about?”

    “Light. The light! It flickers and goes out with the crash of thunder. And we wonder how long it will be before it returns. It shimmers there at the horizon, but we can never reach it. We dream about it all night long.”

    “Not me. I never dream. I lay down. I close my eyes. I wake up with nothing in between.”

    “But there are lights there too. Behind our eyes…”

    “Phosgenes…”

    “No. I’m sure that’s not it.”

    “You sure?”

    The still of the night lingers on. Heavy between them. The breeze, what there was of it, has gone on without them.

    “How long have we been at this?”

    “We’ve been walking for… Hang on, I can count it up.”

    He pulls at his fingers for some time.

    “No. It’s gone.”

    They smoke the last drags of their cigarettes. Even that little glow is gone. They flick the butts away.

    “The light still shines somewhere. It must.”

    “It must. It must? Why? I don’t understand. The light... The light? I sleep fine without it. In fact, that’s what I aim to do just now. I’m going to close my eyes and…”

    “A little sleep. A little slumber. And then?”

    “Leave me alone. What else is there?”

    “Light! There is light!”

    “Light? Are you still on about that? Go to sleep.”

    The two of them are quiet for a long moment. The crickets stop their song but there is snoring to fill the silence.

    “The light still shines. Somewhere. Maybe not here, but somewhere. And I will know it.”

John 1:5

This Was No Mystery

    We have, in this last hour, this latest hour of perpetual crisis, one conflict after another, come to realize that we have not escaped, cannot escape the horrors of our own making. We are reluctant to go outside. There are NRON QSR lighter than airships hovering over abandoned apartments. Cameras mounted at the intersection to record suspicious loitering. Looking for people and cars out of place. Significance surveillance determines the meaning of our interactions.

    Opened seals and broken deals. A suffering trumpet. Dividing the times and polarizing the populace. We are the prime recipients of a collective malicious ignorance. The little horn spy has an effective vision. The vibration in my heel is an implanted tracking device.

    Observed by reporters. Reported to the police. Uniformed antagonism and the eyes of a man speaking lies. Changing the times. Redrawing the map to reframe his ego without any of the finer virtues of kindness, gentleness, and mercy.

    Why do you marvel? This was no mystery. It wasn’t a matter of inaccurate predictive history. We saw it coming. You’ve heard that the Antichrist is coming. But he’s already here. Now. With many varied reflections. A third of the country has followed a third of the stars swept out of heaven. We called it out. Hoping for the world to calm down. Look! Look! Look!

    But we were shouted down.

1 John 2:18

Echoes of a Trusted Psalm

    Here is a trusted psalm, held up to the light of bare bulbs hanging from the untiled ceiling. The words of the song echo from the cold, rough stones of the room.

    Do not love the world.
    Or what is in the world – cursed confusion, secret fraud and corruption in every generation. Car accidents and other roadblocks. Angled and wrong.

    If anyone loves the world – the familiar noise of a shattering empire under one imperial flag -
    the love of the Father finds no home there.

    Because what there is in the world – lying, stealing, cheating, mistreatment of others, murder, dismembered bodily desire, the lust of disordered eyes, and the pride of parties in possession
    is not from the Father.

    The bottles on the wall rattle. Electricity hums and the lights flicker.

    It is the world
    and the world of disordered desires, accumulative abominations, acquisitions again and again
    is passing away in a burst of fire.

    But the echoes of the psalm ring forever and ever.

1 John 2:15-17

Allegedly

What follows is a transcript of the emergency meeting of the Jerusalem Sanhedrin, Tammuz 15, in the Year of the Consulship of Ocella and Sulla, otherwise counted as 786 Ab Urbe Condita¹ from a recording made on an Uher 5000 reel to reel tape recorder.² Those present were the rulers, elders, scribes in the presence of Annas, the High Priest as well as Jonathan, his son, and Alexander Unknown - all members of high priestly families and respectable men.

Elder 1: (Speaking to the detainees – by name Peter and John, and including the formerly crippled man) By what power and what name have you done this?

Peter: Rulers of th…

Elder 2: I’m sorry to interrupt…

Elder 1: Yes? Yes?

Elder 2: But what is the question under discussion here this morning?

Elder 1: What?

Elder 2: Is it the question of the healing of the crippled man…

Scribe 1: Alleged healing…

Elder 2: Yes. Alleged healing. Or is it the question of their heretical doctrine, namely the resurrection of the dead?

Scribe 2: Alleged resurrection.

Elder 2: Yes. Alleged Resurrection.

Elder 1: What?

Peter: Rulers of th…

Elder 1: The detainee will keep silent until he has been addressed. Now, what is the question?

Elder 2: Exactly.

Elder 1: What?

Elder 2: What is the question to be addressed here this morning? Is it the healing… alleged healing, or is the question of the questionable doctrine of the alleged resurrection?

Elder 1: What does it matter? We’re not here for questions; we’re here for answers. Now (to the detainees again) Why haven’t you answered my question?

Peter: Rulers of th…

Scribe 2: Could we have the question repeated for the record?

Scribe 1: I believe it was, “By what power and what name have you done this?”

Elder 1: Yes. Yes. That was it. By what power and by what name? And we are still waiting for an answer.

Peter: Rulers of th…

Scribe 2: Could you speak up? So we can hear your words and record your answer.

Elder 2: Yes. Do speak up.

Peter: Rulers of the people and elders! If you are questioning us about an act of kindness…

Scribe 1: Alleged act of kindness.

Peter: If you are questioning us about an act of kindness to a crippled old man, if you’re asking us how he was healed, then you all should know, that it was in the name and authority of Jesus of Nazareth – whom you crucified …

Scribe 2: Allegedly

Peter: …. and whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands on his own two feet before you today. Of all the given names in this world given to men, there is none other by which we can be saved.

The detainees were excused for the moment, sent back to the holding cells still bearing their fetters.

Elder 1: Your excellencies, what are we to do with these men? They are uneducated to be sure, but they are aweless and unafraid.

Ruler 1: Perhaps it is because they are uneducated that they are so audacious; they have not learned the proper respect for our position, or for theirs.

Elder 1: That may be so. We know them to be associates of the criminal Jesus, who was, like them, untrained and uncredentialed.

Elder 2: However that may be, the man has been healed.

Scribe 2: Allegedly.

Elder 2: Oh, lay off. We all know he was. We’ve all seen him in the court of beggars. We’ve seen him lying there for years. And now we’ve seen him standing in front of our eyes. And what is more, it’s obvious to everyone in the city that he’s been healed. These men are exciting the casual inhabitants of the city – the dockworkers, porters, hawkers, costermongers and the like. If we don’t silence them now, then all the bookbinders, clock-winders, and tailors in the city will be talking about this miracle.

Scribe 2: Alleged miracle.

Elder 2: Shut it, you old fool! You just saw him yourself.

Annas: Gentlemen, please. We are losing ourselves here.

Jonathan: Yes, father. You are quite right. Quite right.

Annas: What we want is stop this report from spreading any further.

Elder 2: And again, I am sorry, my lord, but which report is that?

Annas: What?

Elder 2: Are we trying to stop the report of the healing or the report of Jesus’ resurrection.

Scribe 2: Alleged resurrection.

Annas: Oh, for heaven’s sake. Call the detainees back in and warn them in the sternest terms possible not to speak of this or in this name to anyone ever again.

Jonathan: Yes, father. You are quite right. Again, quite right.

The detainees were called in before the members of the Sanhedrin once more and their shackles were removed from their wrists and ankles.

Elder 1: Gentlemen, you are hereby and forthwith ordered to stop all promulgation and proclamation in, of, about, or concerning the name of one Jesus of Nazareth, who was recently hung upon the executioner’s tree in this very city. You will, pursuant to the orders given by this governing body as incorporated under the authority of the emperor in Rome, Tiberius Caesar Augustus, cease and desist from all reckless speech and discourse, both here in the city of Jerusalem, and in the land of Israel and all her territories.

Elder 2: Now, what say you?

Peter: You are the judges, and you will judge what is right and proper. But we have seen what we have seen, and we know what we know. Is it right and proper for us to listen and to obey you, or to obey the voice of our Lord God?

John: We cannot and will not stop proclaiming what we know to be true.

Elder 1: I warn you again, I warn you most sternly: say no more to anyone about this or you will not fail to face the consequences. The next scream you hear may be your own.

John: And what, good sire, would those consequences be? What punishment is proper for the healing of cripples and restoring them to health?

Elder 1: …

Scribe 1: (Whispering) My lord, we have no chastisement we can give for this. I’m not even sure, my lord, if this can be described as a criminal action.

Elder: (to the detainees) Depart. And go with this warning.

The detainees, including the formerly crippled man, were escorted from the building.

Scribe 1: My lord, I forgot to ask earlier, but it’s important for the records: how old was the man who has been miraculously cured?

Scribe 2: Allegedly cured…

1July 2, 33CE 

2By a strange twist of asynchronicity it was the exact same Uher 5000 reel to reel tape recorder used by President Richard Milhous Nixon as part of his White House taping system. It slipped through time and space and wound up in the possession of the High Priest. It's presence in first century Jerusalem remains unexplained.

Speak Peace and Breathe

    In the old domains, vast dark plains
    and strong dominions,
    speak peace and breathe.

    The doors of death and hell
    may be locked and barred,
    speak peace and breathe.

    Doubt is touched and
    uncertainty probed like wounded flesh,
    speak peace and breathe.

    Love pulls us back to the place
    where everything ends
    and all things begin again.

    Speak peace and breathe.

(John 20)

The Mystery and the Longing

    Why are you weeping?
    The mystery and longing of this morning
    revealed and unrecognized, misunderstood
    “if you have taken him...”

    Ordinary extraordinary from the grave
    reach out but do not grasp
    further on further into mystery
    truly risen into unsettled perfection
    flesh and wonder spirit rise

    Why are you weeping?
    The mystery and longing of this day
    now named and recognized, realized
    “I have seen the Lord.”

(John 20:11-18)

A Good Friday Meditation

    Good Friday and the world has slipped from time. I spent the day walking in the wind and in the rain. Walking late and overtime in the cold.

    They took charge of Jesus, and carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the skull. Look into the dust of it. The scent and tang of earth upon the air. Dust to dust.

    “Happy Easter!” someone shouted from their porch as I passed. Golgotha.

    Why do they…? Why do I…? But prove all things by the strength of love. This love. Digged deep and love laid low.

    “He is risen!” I replied but it was too early. And there was no one there where they crucified him.

(John19:17-18)

John the Revelator Needs To Dream Again

 I've written and recorded (lofi - in the backyard with lots of wind) another song. I fumbled a little in the penultimate verse, but I don't mind if you don't mind. 

John the Revelator will show you the world,
the kingdom of heaven with banner unfurled.
Count up the cost
and restore what’s been lost.
John the Revelator will show you the world.

John the Revelator, tell me what do you see?
Tell us the things that yet could still be.
We want to believe
and from heaven receive.
John the Revelator, tell me what do you see?

John the Revelator, tell me what do you hear?
The voice of the thunders in your ears -
What did they say
on that black day?
John the Revelator, tell me what did you hear?

John the Revelator, should we look to the east
for the rise of a man who acts like a beast?
Or is he right here
living out loud and clear?
John the Revelator, should we look to the east?

John the Revelator, Babylon will fall.
It has become the home of all
the demons and beasts
who leave us no peace.
John the Revelator, Babylon will fall.

John the Revelator, tell me is this the end,
the moment in time towards which all things bend
or is there still time
to sing another rhyme?
John the Revelator, tell me is this the end?

John the Revelator needs to dream again,
stop what he’s doing and pick up his pen
‘cause all that he said
has gone out of our head.
John the Revelator needs to dream again.

We Wave Our Branches and We Shout Hosanna

This is a hymn I wrote for Palm Sunday several years ago. It’s sung to the tune Sine Nomine, and is based on Psalm 47 and John 12: 12-16. 

Love Leads to Truth

Last Sunday the pastor at the United Methodist church I attend (Pastor Chad) was out of town for the UMC annual conference. He asked me to fill in for him.  I did - but I forgot to post a copy of the sermon here on the old blog.

Love Leads to Truth

As the co-director of the Newton Community Theatre’s production of Arthur Miller’s play – The Crucible – I have spent the last several weeks, the last couple of months thinking about the Puritans and the Salem witch trials of 1692.  I have also been thinking about the events that inspired Miller to write the play – the red scare, the communist menace, the House Un-American Activities Committee and the outrageous accusations of Senator Joseph McCarthy.  I’ve been thinking about truth and lies – but since we closed last weekend, you’ve missed your chance to see our production of the play, and I’m glad to be done – mostly done thinking about these things.

But before I move on altogether…

“What is truth?” Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, and the Roman prefect’s question has been alternately described through the centuries as either the sincere question of an earnest seeker of wisdom or (more frequently) as the smug, cynical question of a weary skeptic who has grown tired of competing truth claims.  But the question remains: What is truth?

What is truth and how can we know it? In an age of fact checkers and snopes.com, what is truth?  In a time when our president has made over 10,000 false or misleading statements in his time in office – so far [i]– what is truth and how can we know it? Facts are ignored. Lies are spread.  And the witticism that has been attributed to at least a dozen different individuals seems true – “A lie will go around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.”

Before leaving his disciples, Jesus said to them, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. I will ask the father, and he will send another companion who will be with your forever. This companion is the Spirit of Truth, whom the world can’t receive because it neither sees him nor recognizes him. You know him because he lives with you and will be with you.” John 14:15 – 17

So we, as followers of Jesus, have this Spirit of Truth to live in us and to be with us forever and yet Christians often seem as blind to the truth as the rest of the world who neither sees nor recognizes that spirit.  In the history of the Church we have multiplied examples of Christians both telling and believing lies and falsehoods of all kinds. Even with the Spirit that will guide us in all truth (John 16:13), the Spirit who is truth (1 John 5:6), we seem as susceptible and prone to untruth as anyone else.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” So how can we recognize and agree upon the truth as Christians, as Methodists, as members of St. Luke UMC?

Lately I’ve been wondering if the commandment “Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor,” (Exodus 20: 16) might mean something more than simply, “don’t tell lies.” I recognize of course that the 9^th commandment is specifically about false testimony in a legal setting (Freedman 139) but what if we thought of bearing false witness as that carrying around of lies and falsehoods? What it we thought of it as including those untruths that we are unwilling to release?

It can be difficult to let go of those untruths – particularly when they either flatter or embellish our opinion of ourselves or when it mocks and distorts our enemies. Our pride and our vanity can blind us to the untrue things we believe about ourselves. We are blind to the thousand justifications and excuses that we make for our own shortcomings. And we nurse and rehearse the slanders and mischaracterizations of our enemies. The things we like to believe about them may have begun as slight exaggerations or rhetorical hyperbole for effect, but we go over them again and again, like picking at a sore that just won’t heal, until it becomes infected and inflamed; they become the lies and false witnesses that we bear with us everywhere we go.

What if “thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor,” means that we should release these falsehoods? This would require a rigorous self-examination that we often find too difficult and unpleasant. But can the Spirit of Truth be said to inhabit us now and forever if we are clinging to and embracing those lies and calumnies? Can the spirit of truth guide us into all truth if we are bearing these false testimonies against our neighbors in our hearts?

Today, on this Pentecost Sunday –we celebrate the unity of the early church, gathered together in one accord (Acts 2:1) in the mighty wind and burning fire of the Holy Spirit. And if we want that same unity of the Spirit- the spirit of truth- we must give up our treasured falsehoods.

Before Jesus left his disciples he gave them a promise that another Comforter would come for them – but he prefaced that promise with a condition and a command. “If you love me you will keep my commandments. I will ask the Father and he will send you another companion.” But what commandment?  A few sentences before this he said to them, “I give you a new commandment: love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other.” (John 13: 34-35)

Love leads to truth, or it at least opens us up to be able to receive it. If we will love each other – and even love our enemies – we will not want to believe all the horrible, untrue things we’ve been told, and that we tell ourselves. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Corinthians 13: 4-7)

“Teach us to utter living words of truth which all may hear
the language all may understand when love speaks loud and clear
till every age and race and clime shall blend their creeds in one
and earth shall form one family by whom thy will is done.”

O Spirit of the Living God, Thou Light and Fire Divine- by Henry Hallam Tweed

Freedman, David Noel.  The Nine Commandments: Uncovering the Hidden Pattern of Crime and Punishment in the Hebrew Bible. Doubleday. New York, NY. 2000.

---

[i] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/29/president-trump-has-made-more-than-false-or-misleading-claims/?noredirect=on

When I Am Lifted Up, or How a Modern Appliance Fulfills the Ancient Text

The pastor stands to break the sacred bread;
he offers too the Eucharistic wine,
and in this way our lord and king, our head
is thanked and praised in action and in sign.
But e’en as he tears, piece by piece,
and holds aloft the bread that is our lord
who brings us renewed life, and health, and peace,
crumbs of the bread fall down upon the floor.
Now these, when all the congregants have supped,
will be, at last, by vacuum lifted up.

John 12: 32

Your Prefect Now

Pontius Pilate questioned Jesus again saying, “Are you refusing to speak to me? Surely you know I have power to release you and I have power to crucify you?”  Jesus replied, “You would have no power over me at all if it had not been given to you from above…”

Then those that were in the praetorium with them interrupted Jesus. “Be quiet,” they said to him. “Pilate is your prefect now.”

(John 19 sorta’)

Biblical Limericks: Strange Friendship

Here’s friendship of a very strange brand -
a relationship based on demand:
said Jesus at the end
to those he would call friend,
“you’re friends if you do what I command.”

John 15:14

Biblical Limericks: What Did He Write?

"Should we stone her, hit her with a brick?"
They intended the question as a trick,
but Jesus, he knelt down
and he wrote in the ground...
did he perhaps write a limerick?

John 8: 1 - 11

Biblical Limericks: Why We Hate Them

Children, there’s much we need to discuss;
this letter is not superfluous:
the Antichrist will come,
indeed there’s more than one,
and we hate them ‘cause they came from us.

1 John 2: 18 - 19

Biblical Limericks: Make Them One

It’s not only for these that I pray
but for all who will believe some day -
Father, please make them one
else my work is undone;
if they clash help them love anyway.

John 17: 20 – 26

Biblical Limericks: An Interpolated Angel

When the angel comes the water’s stirred;
first one in gets all his ailments cured -
but closer inspection
of this gospel section
shows it’s an interpolated word.

John 5:4

or read the same verse in Haiku form...

Through the Dark, Toward the Dawn (a sermon on John 21)

“I’m going fishing,” Peter said. What else do you do when you’ve lost everything, but go home? What can you do when the way is blocked, the future dark? You go home, back to what you know, or what you knew, or what you thought you knew.  “I’m going back home, back to fishing.”

Peter hadn’t read Thomas Wolfe’s novel or he might have known, “You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood…back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame…back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.” (Wolfe)

You can’t go home again, not really. But who could blame Peter for trying? “I’m going back to fishing, back to what I know, back to where I know or where I knew or where I thought I knew who I was and what I was doing.”

And the others with him: Thomas (the Twin), Nathanael (from Cana), the Thunder Brothers-James and John (the sons of Zebedee) and two others said, “We’ll go with you. What else have we got to do? What have we left to lose?”

Jesus, their rabbi, their teacher, was gone. Jesus, their friend, was dead. Killed in a grisly execution. And the three years that they’d followed him were gone. All that time lost. Wasted. So they went, or tried to go, back home, back to Galilee, back to fishing, back to the smell of the wet wooden boat, and the wind off the water, the smell of leather aprons and the fleshy smell of fresh caught fish. They went back to hands calloused by flaxen nets (Hanson) and muscles sore from the repetitive motion of throwing out and drawing in the heavy sodden nets.

And there on the Sea of Tiberias (an overblown name if ever there was one for that lake, 13 miles long, 8 miles wide and less than 200 feet deep) Peter and his friends spend a long night fishing.  They fished at night because it was cool, and throwing and drawing the nets was hot, sweaty work. They fished at night because that’s when the fish were more active and more easily caught. (Brown 1069)

But perhaps they also went fishing at night because it was dark. Because it was easier to hide. They could hide in the dark out on the lake the same way that they had hid in that closed and locked room in Jerusalem, hiding in fear of the Jews. Hiding because maybe they knew, without having read Thomas Wolfe’s novel, they couldn’t go home again. Maybe they were familiar with the Greek philosopher Heraclitus’ cryptic utterance, “Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers." - No man ever steps in the same river twice; no one ever fishes in the same lake twice. Everything changes.

Would there have been a chorus of “I told you so” greetings from former friends and family members they had left three years prior to follow that itinerant rabbi from Nazareth? Would there have been scorn and mockery? “Here come the ones who thought they would change the world? What happened to all your idealistic talk about peace, and love, and the Kingdom of God?” Would there have been, perhaps, a measure of fear as well?  After all, if their rabbi and master had been arrested and executed as a common criminal, what could be said of these, his followers, skulking back into town?

So Peter and the others went back to what they thought they knew, back to Galilee and back to fishing, back to calloused hands and tired backs and spent the night fishing on the lake in the dark. But, as sure as you can’t go home again, Peter and the others couldn’t go back to fishing. Not really. They fished all night and they caught nothing. Nothing. Not a thing. Each and every time they threw out the net they hauled it back into the boat empty. They blistered their hands and strained their muscles for no reward.

Perhaps it should be noted that we never actually read in any of the four canonical Gospels of the disciples catching any fish except with Jesus’ help. (Brown 1071)

I usually try to refrain from using clichés in my sermons, but sometimes they prove helpful. The proverbial statement that “it’s always darkest before the dawn”[1] isn’t exactly true scientifically; it is darkest at the midpoint between dusk and dawn, when the half of the earth experiencing night time is facing 180° from the sun. It may not be physically true, but it feels right. In a metaphoric, poetic sort of way it is true. Things just can’t seem to get any worse for Peter and the other disciples. Everything is lost and broken; the past is gone and the future is dead. But then comes the dawn. Then comes the light of the rising sun, an appropriate symbol for the risen Lord.

Dawn finds our dejected disciples about to give up. There’s nothing left for them, not even fish. It’s then that they are hailed by a strange figure on the shore, his features obscured by distance and early morning fog. “Boys, you haven’t any fish, have you?”

The disappointed disciples answer, “No.” And the stranger on the shore, a mere one hundred yards away, told them to throw their net on the right side of the boat, that there they would find a large catch of fish. This isn’t necessarily a miracle. It was common practice for fishers on the Sea of Galilee in their boats to use a spotter on the shore to help point out large schools of fish. The disciples, as exhausted as they were, threw the net out one more time, on the right side and, just as the stranger said, they found the fish. The nets were full and straining, but did not rip. They were unable to pull the net into the boat they caught so many fish.

This may not have be a miracle, in the same way that water was turned to wine, or the way the royal official’s son was healed in Capernaum, or the paralytic was healed at Bethsaida, or the crowd was fed on the Galilean hillside. It may not have been a miracle in the way that Jesus walked upon the waves of the sea of Galilee or the blind man was made to see at the Pool of Siloam, but something in this event, something in the unexpected catch of fish triggered in “the disciple that Jesus loved” a sudden recognition: “It is the Lord!”

The risen Jesus is strange and unrecognizable Lord. Even when seen he is unseen, unrecognized. Mary Magdalene in the garden early Easter morning saw him, spoke to him even but did not see him. Not until he called her by name. Then a sudden recognition came to her. And again sometime later, as the disciples prepared to come ashore with nothing in their nets and nothing in their lives, they saw and spoke to the risen Lord, but did not see him. Not until the sudden catch of fish. And even then they’re not really sure.

On the shore they share a meal with the Lord of fresh cooked fish and bread, cooked over a charcoal fire, but even they as they are sitting at his feet, sharing a communal meal with their rabbi, their Lord, they still not quite see him for who he is. This is so strange that none of them dared to ask, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord. They saw, but couldn’t see. They knew but couldn’t understand. “They recognize him, but are puzzled and unsure. The Jesus they knew has undergone transformation in becoming the risen Lord” (Brown 1076).

This is how the darkness is broken and dawn blooms over the horizon, how light breaks in and spills over the lake and their lives. It is a sudden recognition, a sudden (but still incomplete) understanding. Jesus meets with his confused and disconsolate disciples with an intimate meal on the lakeshore. They’d shared a meal of bread and fish with him on alongside this lake once before (John 6: 1- 15). He’d shared with them the bread of life, the bread that came down from heaven. He’d shared with them the kingdom of God and as he shared that simple meal on the shoreline with them they slowly began to understand.

The light of dawn does not come all at once, it grows in intensity and brilliance till the morning is bright and clear. And an understanding of the Kingdom of God – with peace and joy and confidence – does not come all at once to the disciples (or to us), it grows in intensity and fullness. It comes in fits and starts, with the occasional sudden realization-an a-ha moment (It is the Lord!)-and with slow gradual understanding (They dared not ask him, “Who are you?”).

Moments of darkness and doubt and confusion, long dark nights of the soul when all seems like loss, and waste, and death will be part of our Christian life. This is unavoidable. We will have times when, despite all our effort, we come up empty and unfulfilled. We may want to give up and go home, go back to what we thought we knew, and who we thought we were. But the way (and we are followers of the Way) is forward through the dark, toward the dawn, from loss and despair to renewed joy and comfort in the risen Lord.

  

Brown, Raymond E. The Gospel According to John xiii-xxi: Introduction, Translation and Notes. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc. 1970. Print.

Hanson, K.C. “The Galilean Fishing Economy and the Jesus Tradition.” Biblical Theology Bulletin Vol. 27. 1997.

Wolfe, Thomas. You Can’t Go Home Again. New York: Harper and Row. 1940. Print.

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[1] Which may go back to Thomas Fuller’s 1650 work A Pisgah Sight of Palestine. 

Biblical Limericks: The Twin

Thomas Didymus is called “the Twin”
but to our continued deep chagrin
his sibling is never
identified, ever;
still there’s a lot of speculatin’

John 11: 16, 20: 24, 21: 2

Biblical Limericks: Ambiguous Pronouns

Peter, do you love me more than these?
Jesus, tell me which do you mean please:
more than disciples true?
or more than they love you?
or more than I love fishing the seas?

John 21:15