Daily Devotion - May 3
I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays)
while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara
John 21:1-19
You know what’s fun? What if games. Let’s play one.
What if everything shut down and you were required to stay home for 50 days and counting?
What would you do? Would you learn a new language? Finish that decade long work on a novel, (or scrapbook, as the case may be)? Would you transform unhealthy eating habits and responsibly get 8 hours of sleep a night? Finally read the classics? Reorganize your basement? Learn to crochet or take up woodworking? Our best selves in hypothetical circumstances are capable of so much!
But here we are actually living in the hypothetical What if game. Now we are bumping up against the reality of our sorry selves, and most of us are nothing like we thought we’d be. Maybe you couldn’t right now learn a new language if someone gave you a million dollars. Or you’re are watching old coping mechanisms you thought you’d outgrown roar up like they run the show. Maybe that organization project makes you want to shriek laugh because it’s taking more than you have just to keep up this endless treadmill of feeding and homeschooling people who are never not around. Maybe you’re more depressed, or angry, or lonely than you’re comfortable with and it’s scaring you.
And then there’s the internet.
It shows us things like that 100-year-old guy who walked a marathon in his back yard and raised over $30 million pounds for charity, that woman who has sewn 5,000 masks for health care workers, and those guys running a pop-up take out soup kitchen, and none of those people are us.
The big mirror of quarantine is revealing more than all the delayed self-maintenance of haircuts and beard trims, or the single pair of pants that lasts us the whole week and the shoes we can’t even find because shoe-wearing is such a minor part of our lives now. It’s showing too that maybe we’re not nearly as motivated, or disciplined, or positive and cheerful, or altruistic, self-sacrificial and kind as we thought we were.
The hypothetical turned real.
And maybe we feel a little like we’re failing the test.
The last time Peter saw Jesus in person, Peter was standing at a charcoal fire and across a courtyard Jesus locked eyes with him, just after the rooster crowed three times.
And the words Jesus said just a few hours earlier rang out in Peter’s head, “Before the cock crows this very night you will three times deny even knowing me.”
Jesus! I would never deny you! had been his reply.
And then the hypothetical turned real and Peter failed the test.
After Jesus died, eventually Peter went back to fishing. What else could he do? It was simple and familiar, and didn’t feel like hypocrisy.
That night is a terrible night with not a single fish. It’s a night that presses in on you with long, dark, empty hours, shouting inside, See? you can’t go back to how it was! Who are you now? Not what you were, that’s for sure. What happens next? Who knows? So catching nothing, they kept at it all. night. long. What else could they do?
And then Jesus appears to them, and once again nobody recognizes him until he does something so utterly impossible and unexpected and also familiar. He tells them to put the nets to the other side of the boat and when they do, those nets come up busting with fish.
And even though they are close to shore, dear, anxious, impetuous Peter pulls on all his heavy clothes and jumps from the boat to swim to Jesus, while the boat filled with his friends and the fish paddles calmly past him and lands on the beach ahead of him.
Jesus says, “Bring what you caught.” So Peter goes to the boat by himself and eagerly drags the heavy net holding all 153 fish right up to Jesus, who is standing at another charcoal fire, this one topped with warm bread and grilled fish.
And in the words of the grandma at the stove to pajamaed children, and the mom with a mug of hot coffee to her hungover teenager, and the husband to his exhausted wife just home from the night shift – Jesus says to them,
“Come and have breakfast.”
Come and be cared for. Come and receive. Come and let me bless you. Come and be nourished. Come and sit, warm yourself, fill your belly, rest a while, come and simply be.
Also bring what you have –your catch can be part of this meal.
Ripe with longing and dread, taut and pain-filled, Peter stands there, just beginning to dry, and Jesus walks up and locks eyes with him, like he had that night before his death, and asks,
“Peter Do you love me more than these?”
Yes, Jesus, I do love you.
“Then feed my lambs.”
Do you love me, Peter?
Yes, Lord, you know that I love you!
Then tend my sheep.
Peter, do you love me?
And now it hurts. “Please Jesus! You know everything! You know that I love you!”
And Jesus looks at him right in the eye and says to him a third time, “Feed. My. Sheep.”
Resurrection is life out of death, and it only happens when the real Jesus meets us in our real lives – right in our places of death. Peter is dead inside. It’s to that place that Jesus goes.
Right now there is a lot of pressure, from within and without, to be our best selves. Peter has learned, and we are perhaps just now discovering, that our best self is unpredictable at best, foolish and unreliable. We say things we don’t mean; we seek safety over fidelity, and choose the approval of others over what’s right, and when push comes to shove and things heat up, it’s more often than not our worst self that comes out, and we hurt the ones we love the most.
We can’t really plan on or count on our best selves. And for comparison’s sake, there will always be those heroes and martyrs whose best selves are better than ours could ever hope to be. They’re the ones, we might think, who really should be entrusted with the sheep. If God is looking for excellent representatives in the world, we are surely the wrong pick. Apparently, we can barely keep our own stuff together when all we are being asked to do is stay home and not spread a dangerous virus to others.
But that’s not God’s way of seeing, that’s ours. God is not calling us to be our best selves, or perfect representatives, or model helpers or heroes. Not us, not Peter.
God is calling to be the only you or me that has ever or will ever be, our real selves. Even if what we are is our very worst selves. Our denying, flailing, grumpy, hiding, self-serving, addicted, self-protecting, scared selves are who God loves and claims, and Jesus calls. When “the night is long and full of terrors” – and we can’t go back to how it was, and we wonder who we are now,
Jesus says,
Come, my beloved, come and have breakfast.
Come and rest beside me. Let me feed you, nourish you, and care for you.
Come, abide in my love, and also, bring what you have, what I have provided for you, bring that to the table too; you have things worth sharing.
Do you love me? Then care for one another – tend each other.
Feed my sheep. Not hypothetical ones, but the real people in front of you, the ones you’re connected to.
Resurrection happened for Peter when Jesus’ love claims him at his worst and reminds him he is part of God loving others.
You and I are not called to be our best selves, not now, or ever. We are called as our true selves into the tenacious love of God, to receive it, and to share it. That’s it.
There is no test. Only love. There’s no failing, only feeding and forgiveness -only being loved by God and joining in God’s love already and always happening.
Amen.
Here are the other's we've journeyed with this year:
(You can see their stories/sermons here: Hannah, Mary, Anna & Simeon, John the Baptist, Samuel, David (we had a theater performance, here's an older sermon about David), The Samaritan Woman, Mary of Bethany (preached by Pastor Lisa), Martha, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, Thomas (preached by Pastor Lisa, follow up devotion here, Cleopas)
CONNECTING RITUAL:
Perhaps tonight at bedtime, whenever that is in each of our homes, we might pray in this way and so join our hearts.
In this strange season, Holy One, reorient me to you,
in whom my life is found.
In this time apart, remind me whose I am.
Teach me to abide in your love and generosity,
grow gratitude within me, and compassion between us.
In this strange season, Holy One, renew me in you,
in whose image we are made.
In this time apart, remind me who I am.
Draw me again into full and joyful life,
call me into brave, enduring hope.
Let me now release what I have left undone,
the worries that plague me,
the fears that pressure me,
and the burdens I carry.
I lay down the anxiety that would prevent me from being free
in your presence, Oh God.
Rest me in your love.
Sleep me me in your arms,
and wake me to a new day.
Wake me tomorrow
to the gifts of a new day.
Amen.
(Prayer by Kara Root)
while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara
John 21:1-19
You know what’s fun? What if games. Let’s play one.
What if everything shut down and you were required to stay home for 50 days and counting?
What would you do? Would you learn a new language? Finish that decade long work on a novel, (or scrapbook, as the case may be)? Would you transform unhealthy eating habits and responsibly get 8 hours of sleep a night? Finally read the classics? Reorganize your basement? Learn to crochet or take up woodworking? Our best selves in hypothetical circumstances are capable of so much!
But here we are actually living in the hypothetical What if game. Now we are bumping up against the reality of our sorry selves, and most of us are nothing like we thought we’d be. Maybe you couldn’t right now learn a new language if someone gave you a million dollars. Or you’re are watching old coping mechanisms you thought you’d outgrown roar up like they run the show. Maybe that organization project makes you want to shriek laugh because it’s taking more than you have just to keep up this endless treadmill of feeding and homeschooling people who are never not around. Maybe you’re more depressed, or angry, or lonely than you’re comfortable with and it’s scaring you.
And then there’s the internet.
It shows us things like that 100-year-old guy who walked a marathon in his back yard and raised over $30 million pounds for charity, that woman who has sewn 5,000 masks for health care workers, and those guys running a pop-up take out soup kitchen, and none of those people are us.
The big mirror of quarantine is revealing more than all the delayed self-maintenance of haircuts and beard trims, or the single pair of pants that lasts us the whole week and the shoes we can’t even find because shoe-wearing is such a minor part of our lives now. It’s showing too that maybe we’re not nearly as motivated, or disciplined, or positive and cheerful, or altruistic, self-sacrificial and kind as we thought we were.
The hypothetical turned real.
And maybe we feel a little like we’re failing the test.
The last time Peter saw Jesus in person, Peter was standing at a charcoal fire and across a courtyard Jesus locked eyes with him, just after the rooster crowed three times.
And the words Jesus said just a few hours earlier rang out in Peter’s head, “Before the cock crows this very night you will three times deny even knowing me.”
Jesus! I would never deny you! had been his reply.
And then the hypothetical turned real and Peter failed the test.
After Jesus died, eventually Peter went back to fishing. What else could he do? It was simple and familiar, and didn’t feel like hypocrisy.
That night is a terrible night with not a single fish. It’s a night that presses in on you with long, dark, empty hours, shouting inside, See? you can’t go back to how it was! Who are you now? Not what you were, that’s for sure. What happens next? Who knows? So catching nothing, they kept at it all. night. long. What else could they do?
And then Jesus appears to them, and once again nobody recognizes him until he does something so utterly impossible and unexpected and also familiar. He tells them to put the nets to the other side of the boat and when they do, those nets come up busting with fish.
And even though they are close to shore, dear, anxious, impetuous Peter pulls on all his heavy clothes and jumps from the boat to swim to Jesus, while the boat filled with his friends and the fish paddles calmly past him and lands on the beach ahead of him.
Jesus says, “Bring what you caught.” So Peter goes to the boat by himself and eagerly drags the heavy net holding all 153 fish right up to Jesus, who is standing at another charcoal fire, this one topped with warm bread and grilled fish.
And in the words of the grandma at the stove to pajamaed children, and the mom with a mug of hot coffee to her hungover teenager, and the husband to his exhausted wife just home from the night shift – Jesus says to them,
“Come and have breakfast.”
Come and be cared for. Come and receive. Come and let me bless you. Come and be nourished. Come and sit, warm yourself, fill your belly, rest a while, come and simply be.
Also bring what you have –your catch can be part of this meal.
Ripe with longing and dread, taut and pain-filled, Peter stands there, just beginning to dry, and Jesus walks up and locks eyes with him, like he had that night before his death, and asks,
“Peter Do you love me more than these?”
Yes, Jesus, I do love you.
“Then feed my lambs.”
Do you love me, Peter?
Yes, Lord, you know that I love you!
Then tend my sheep.
Peter, do you love me?
And now it hurts. “Please Jesus! You know everything! You know that I love you!”
And Jesus looks at him right in the eye and says to him a third time, “Feed. My. Sheep.”
Resurrection is life out of death, and it only happens when the real Jesus meets us in our real lives – right in our places of death. Peter is dead inside. It’s to that place that Jesus goes.
Right now there is a lot of pressure, from within and without, to be our best selves. Peter has learned, and we are perhaps just now discovering, that our best self is unpredictable at best, foolish and unreliable. We say things we don’t mean; we seek safety over fidelity, and choose the approval of others over what’s right, and when push comes to shove and things heat up, it’s more often than not our worst self that comes out, and we hurt the ones we love the most.
We can’t really plan on or count on our best selves. And for comparison’s sake, there will always be those heroes and martyrs whose best selves are better than ours could ever hope to be. They’re the ones, we might think, who really should be entrusted with the sheep. If God is looking for excellent representatives in the world, we are surely the wrong pick. Apparently, we can barely keep our own stuff together when all we are being asked to do is stay home and not spread a dangerous virus to others.
But that’s not God’s way of seeing, that’s ours. God is not calling us to be our best selves, or perfect representatives, or model helpers or heroes. Not us, not Peter.
God is calling to be the only you or me that has ever or will ever be, our real selves. Even if what we are is our very worst selves. Our denying, flailing, grumpy, hiding, self-serving, addicted, self-protecting, scared selves are who God loves and claims, and Jesus calls. When “the night is long and full of terrors” – and we can’t go back to how it was, and we wonder who we are now,
Jesus says,
Come, my beloved, come and have breakfast.
Come and rest beside me. Let me feed you, nourish you, and care for you.
Come, abide in my love, and also, bring what you have, what I have provided for you, bring that to the table too; you have things worth sharing.
Do you love me? Then care for one another – tend each other.
Feed my sheep. Not hypothetical ones, but the real people in front of you, the ones you’re connected to.
Resurrection happened for Peter when Jesus’ love claims him at his worst and reminds him he is part of God loving others.
You and I are not called to be our best selves, not now, or ever. We are called as our true selves into the tenacious love of God, to receive it, and to share it. That’s it.
There is no test. Only love. There’s no failing, only feeding and forgiveness -only being loved by God and joining in God’s love already and always happening.
Amen.
Here are the other's we've journeyed with this year:
(You can see their stories/sermons here: Hannah, Mary, Anna & Simeon, John the Baptist, Samuel, David (we had a theater performance, here's an older sermon about David), The Samaritan Woman, Mary of Bethany (preached by Pastor Lisa), Martha, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, Thomas (preached by Pastor Lisa, follow up devotion here, Cleopas)
CONNECTING RITUAL:
Perhaps tonight at bedtime, whenever that is in each of our homes, we might pray in this way and so join our hearts.
In this strange season, Holy One, reorient me to you,
in whom my life is found.
In this time apart, remind me whose I am.
Teach me to abide in your love and generosity,
grow gratitude within me, and compassion between us.
In this strange season, Holy One, renew me in you,
in whose image we are made.
In this time apart, remind me who I am.
Draw me again into full and joyful life,
call me into brave, enduring hope.
Let me now release what I have left undone,
the worries that plague me,
the fears that pressure me,
and the burdens I carry.
I lay down the anxiety that would prevent me from being free
in your presence, Oh God.
Rest me in your love.
Sleep me me in your arms,
and wake me to a new day.
Wake me tomorrow
to the gifts of a new day.
Amen.
(Prayer by Kara Root)
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