A lot
of folks these days are too spiritual to be religious.
Some of
them do exercises and meditations
to get themselves into the zone.
Others
just think about how everything is as it should be
and exude positivity.
They
are often contemptuous
of the merely religious people in
churches.
We are too
ordinary, small minded, and boring.
If the
spiritual people wanted to read a Gospel,
John would be the one for them.
In
John, we don’t see much of the human side of Jesus.
Someone
said, in John’s Gospel, Jesus’ feet never quite
touch the ground.
John is
about believing your way into a mystical union
--believing in something too mysterious to express.
Only
near the end, does love come up.
that is absolutely unconditional
-- which I would be
entirely for
– if only I were
capable of it.
My
capacity for love is more humanly flawed.
People
have to be pretty lovable for me to even put up with them.
It’s a lofty
thing we got going here.
Jesus
had been lofty all along in John,
Then his
first three resurrection appearances
were over the top.
He
walked through walls.
He
invoked the Holy Spirit on the disciples.
He was
loftier than ever.
Then
things take a very odd turn in today’s lesson.
This is
a very different Jesus.
John
has the appearance to Mary Magdalene,
then to all the disciples,
then to doubting Thomas.
And
there the book stops with Thomas’ conversion from doubt to belief.
That’s
the thrilling conclusion.
John
explains the purpose of the book and says “the end.”
The
curtain comes down. It’s over.
Then
John runs back on stage and says
“Wait! Wait! There’s something else!”
And we
have today’s lesson added on like an afterthought.
Here’s
what happened:
John’s
community, reading their story that ended
with last week’s lesson,
practiced
their mystical spirituality for several decades.
But
reality kept tripping up their spirituality.
They
were hemmoraging from internal strife.
They
fought like cats and dogs while preaching agape,
unconditional love, all the way.
in the art of spiritual love,
they remembered one of the old stories.
They
remembered another appearance of the Risen Lord
that hadn’t seemed important before –
because it didn’t fit.
But now,
it became so important,
they added a chapter to their gospel.
They
added this story.
Remember
in the previous Resurrection Appearances,
Jesus was even more elevated and
spiritual
than he had been before.
But in this
last appearance, Jesus is different.
He
shows up unassumingly on the beach.
He
seems like a grizzled old fisherman.
They
don’t even recognize him.
He
offers, not spiritual wisdom, but fishing advice
-- as old fisherman do.
The disciples
finally recognize him and rush to worship their Lord.
But
instead of doing something spiritual,
Jesus has built a campfire.
Instead
of saying something profound like
“I live in the Father so if you live in me and
I in you,
then you will live
in the Father and the Father will live in you
and you will all be
one as the Father
and I are one” or some such
thing – instead, he says,
“Let’s cook up some of those fish and
have breakfast.”
This is
a very human Jesus – a Christ of the ordinary.
This
disconcertingly normal appearance of Jesus cooking breakfast
over a charcoal fire as poor people do
all over this earth
is where we get our Anglican sense of
“the sacred ordinary.”
In his
classic essay, The Anglican Way, Dean James Fenhagen
described our pedestrian spirituality
as “holy worldliness”
and “worldly holiness.”
“The sacred is in the ordinary . . . .
It is to be found
in one’s daily life, in one’s
neighbors, one’s friends and family,
in one’s own backyard.”
Much of
what goes by the name “spirituality” is not like that at all.
It is pretentious.
The
“spiritual” people are better than the ordinary clods,
way better than the religious clods in
churches.
Much of
what goes by the name of “spirituality” is escapist.
Do a
special technique taught by an exotic person with an accent
and imagine you are in some pristine place
of peace and solace.
It will
take your mind off the messiness of reality.
You can
forget about unpleasant things
like hunger in Haiti, gang violence in
America,
or the loneliness of elderly people
in Nevada.
But Anglican
spirituality is the spirituality of today’s lesson.
It is pedestrian.
It cooks breakfast.
It even
washes the dishes.
Brother
Lawrence was a Carmelite monk
whose monastery job was cook, waiter, and bus boy.
He
wrote his classic book, The Practice of
the Presence of God,
about finding God while keeping house.
The
most brilliant theologian I’ve ever met, Sarah Coakley,
said in a sermon at Harvard,
“I am not good enough to be spiritual. I’m
religious.”
This pedestrian
spirituality does not make us better
than anyone else.
It is too
ordinary.
It
calls for an ordinary way of life – nothing to brag about.
But
back to our Gospel lesson.
After
breakfast, Jesus took Peter aside.
They
needed a little reconciling after Peter had denied Jesus
three times in Caiaphas’s courtyard.
Jesus asked
him,
“Simon . . . do you love me more than
these?”
But the
word he used for love was agape.
It
meant, “Simon do you have the most unconditional,
highly spiritual love for me of any of the disciples?”
But when
Peter replied, “Lord you know that I love you”
Peter
used the word phileo – an ordinary word, not so spiritual.
“I love
you as a friend.”
Jesus
said, “Ok, feed my lambs.”
Then
Jesus gave Peter another chance.
He
asked again, “Simon do you agape me?”
But
again Peter failed to rise to the spiritual challenge.
He
said, “Lord you know that I phileo you.”
So
Jesus said, “Alright, tend my sheep.”
The
third time, Jesus changed the question.
He met
Peter on his own human level.
“Simon, do you phileo me?”
All he
asked now was a human love,
a human friendship, the kind of thing
an ordinary bloke like Peter might be
capable of.
And
Peter said, “Yes, Lord, you know I phileo you.
I love
you as a common man loves his friend.
I am
not an enlightened saint but I can do that.”
Jesus
said, “Feed my sheep.”
The
good news is that an ordinary, fallible human love
is all we have to do.
The bad
news is the sheep and lambs part.
Ordinary
human love doesn’t elevate us to a higher plane
than ordinary people.
Quite
the opposite:
it will get us mixed up with those ordinary people
who need us as sheep need shepherds.
Someone
said,
“The problem with inviting Jesus into your life
is that he brings his friends.”
And so
it is.
Loving
Jesus in our little human way
doesn’t make us the least bit special
but it will
entangle our lives with an odd lot of other folks.
Jesus
will get us mixed up with all the wrong kinds
of people.
Worse
yet, we may even wind up caring about them.
