Morning Devotion for the Season of Advent
December 17, 2021
Feast Day of Dorothy Sayers
Invitatory
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God”
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end.
Amen.
Our king and Savior now draws near; Come let us adore him.
Reading: John 21:4-9
Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off. When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread.
Meditation – Peter Vanderveen
Is this the story you would have written?
I often ask myself this question when I read a text from the Bible. I never trust my interpretation if my answer to this question is “Yes.”
And yet, so many interpretations that others provide are so drearily predictable. And frequently this predictability is traceable to whitewashing details of any particular Biblical story so that it will more easily convey the picture of God that we may already have in our minds. This is our cultural inheritance: God is taken to be a vast and abstract power who, somehow, periodically, interacts with us, interrupting the usual course of nature or history – but in such a way that it is perfectly in keeping with the vast and abstract power that God is. Hence, God is miraculous. And just. And loving. And merciful. And so on. And all these qualities are then given infinite extension. And, thereby, they flatten out all the very specific contours of our reality. God’s bigness overwhelms our smallness; and just that quickly, God either becomes fearsome or irrelevant to our lives.
John’s tale tells of one of Jesus’ appearances after his resurrection.
Is this story what you would have expected? Does it provide the quintessence of what resurrection is and how it can be understood and envisioned? Or, more to the point, does this match what you have in mind when you yourself think about resurrection?
My guess is that no one, in trying to describe the resurrection, would naturally include the detail of a naked fisherman in a boat, or getting dressed in order to jump into the sea, or noticing that there was a fish being fried on a fire on the shore. Readers of John’s text are probably more inclined to focus on the catch of fish – the one thing that seems truly miraculous. But such miracles often serve to hide God behind the veil of what we expect, instead of revealing the God who is wildly and idiosyncratically present.
The quirky, strangeness of this story is important. The oddest details are the ones that should capture our attention. Because through them John informs us that Jesus’ resurrection was not an instance of what might be considered a general phenomenon; nor was it something that can be commonly described; nor is it a kind of “heavenly condition” that we can extract from the story. It’s misleading, I think, to refer to resurrection as some ethereal mode of being that we all will share. What John described, with hilarious peculiarity, was the distinct relationship between Jesus and his disciples that, by God’s passion, death could not end. “Resurrection,” thus, can better be understood as the term we use to name God’s posture towards us. And John says nothing more than this.
In so doing, God ceases to be an ineffable, abstract power and, as the whole of the Gospels attest, God is shown, instead, to be intimately aware and attuned to each of us. Only in this way can we be in relationship with God and personally interested – and, thereby, have a story to tell.
The Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
