Sometimes the scripture readings we hear don’t seem very human to us. Just for one example, there is that second reading today from the book of Revelation, angels surrounding a throne, countless creatures singing and shouting, everything in the universe all making a joyful, ecstatic noise at the same time. Perhaps that’s what resurrection will really be like, but it’s not a picture in which it’s easy to see ourselves, there dressed in white yelling our heads off, and liberated from everything.
But the gospel today that we just heard is an entirely different story, it’s another resurrection story, but one with human beings in it that we ought to be able to recognize.
Look what we find the disciples doing. Here Jesus has risen from the dead, the word is out, they have seen for themselves, and they say they believe it, but they have drifted back to life as usual, the occupation they know. Don’t they know Jesus is alive? That everything he said was true?
You might like to think that they would hardly be able to contain themselves, having seen someone rise from the dead. But here they are, back to normal life, trying to make a living, maybe, not really sure about what happened, or about what to do in response to what they saw and heard.
There is a common theme to all these stories of Jesus appearing after the resurrection; maybe you noticed this even on Easter Sunday. And that theme is how long it takes and how un-obvious it is to recognize Jesus alive. Even the disciples, who had a chance to experience Jesus in a way that seems to beat anything we could ever aspire to, even they seem to have been confused by his presence in these weeks after Easter more than they were overjoyed by it. The risen Jesus was a little elusive, seen by some people, but not by others, looking something like he did when he lived on earth, but apparently also hidden, only apparent after a delay.
Let’s admit it: if it was difficult for the disciples, it is difficult for us. It is hard to believe that Jesus has risen from the dead, and even harder to live as if he has. That is why it is so easy to see ourselves in this reading. This week our world has seemed senseless and awful, and it won’t be the last time. Things around us look very unredeemed, and maybe unredeemable. Like Peter, we could even look inside ourselves, and feel burdened by our own sense of how far we have fallen short, wondering if deep down we’re really even capable of doing the right thing. Next to all that, resurrection seems to be so quiet, even in the gospels it doesn’t change the world overnight. And the result is that we tend to live as if we think that Jesus isn’t here any more, that at best, at best, we’re in some kind of in-between time, between a time when Jesus was here and a time far off when he’ll be back. Like Peter, our solution is usually just to get back to fishing to keep ourselves occupied and wait until someone else comes along to save this world we’re in.
There really turns out to be only one solution to this problem of living as if Jesus is alive. Somehow the disciples today only recognize him when they eat, when suddenly they are seated together around a fire with Jesus and when they are together in the same way they were together when Jesus first inspired them. Then they recognize him, and see that he is still present. And not just distantly present, but present in the same way he has always been present. We are not in some in-between time when Jesus is gone from us, off in the sky, our church says that Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow. What that means is that he is just as risen among us in this place as he was around that fire in the gospel. The same.
So the gospel says there’s only one hope for us when it comes to trying to see the world with Jesus alive in it, according to today’s gospel. It is to keep gathering together with one another, doing what Jesus told us to do, again and again, to eat a meal and remember him. It’s hard to recognize that the place we are gathered together, not just this building, but any place we are gathered together is a holy place where Jesus is alive with us, not the only place, but a place where he tells us again and again to find him. We all know that the church is all too human; the people around us here are just regular people. That’s what we look like. It’s all so ordinary that the disciples didn’t see it clearly; and neither do we, most of the time. We don’t look very much like those people in the Book of Revelation, shouting and celebrating for all eternity. But the risen Christ is here, in the faith we bring into this building, and when we wonder where Jesus has gone in this world, we should stop fishing long enough to come together and remember him, and in a way that will suddenly surprise us, he will be in the faces around you, as he always has been.