This has been another tragic week in our country. Once again, we watched the unbelievable, this time on the campus of Virginia Tech.  Last weekend, I described our culture as a visual community which has trouble believing what we see. Surely the Virginia Tech murders are another example. Seeing is believing but what do we believe?

 

A Virginia newspaper reported that gun dealers said their phones were ringing off the wall. “When you tell people, ‘Lock your doors and don't go near the windows,' it makes them feel vulnerable," said one of the dealers.  "Those students were defenseless. No one wants to feel defenseless."  One customer’s solution was “They could do a background check on teachers and let them carry a gun," he said. Arm the professors. This is one interpretation of the horrific vision.[1]

 

The other perspective is that of gun control advocates. They point out that since the Columbine High School shootings in 1999, not a single major gun control law has been passed by Congress and that Virginia’s gun laws are often criticized along the Atlantic seaboard, including regular statements of concern by the mayors of New York and Washington about Virginia’s leniency. Advocates of this position see Virginia Tech as the need to limit our 2^nd amendment rights.[2]

Both responses are reflected in our congregation and I’m sure, both have passionate supporters. I think few are surprised to know that I lean strongly toward the latter position, given Jesus’ challenge to love neighbor as self and turn the other cheek. However, this isn’t a sermon about gun control. It is a sermon to help us understand. Both  perspectives…get a gun or get rid of guns…point to an American culture that is largely in denial about the reality of violence and death in the world. When we see it, we don’t believe it, or we explain it away as an aberration. This is because, as a whole, the causalities of our wars are invisible and the dying of our loved ones are hidden and infrequent. We’ve cut ourselves off from what many in the world face daily.  

 

As an initial response, we might confess our sin of indifference and become engaged in a world that desperately needs the love and compassion of Jesus. While our hearts ache for the 32 family and loved ones who grieve, we are blind to the large scale humanitarian disaster in Chechnya. At least 15% of its population has been exterminated in the last six years. Torture, rape and death squads terrorizing the population are an everyday reality.[3]  Over 70,000 people have been killed in the Western Sudan in the last three years alone along with millions in refuge because the government indiscriminately bombs villages and their militia chants, “Kill all the blacks.”[4]  In the Gaza strip, nearly one half million residents suffer massive rights violations with specific targets often being Christians. This week, there were bombings of Christian bookstores and internet cafes.[5] In the aftermath of the violence at Virginia Tech, for at least a moment, we can empathize with others who live with violence every day.

 

There's a scene from the Oscar-nominated film of last year, Blood Diamonds that's provocative. The movie is set in 1999 Sierra Leone while a civil war rages fueled by conflict over diamonds which are sold to pay for weapons. Leonardo DeCaprio plays Danny Archer, the anti-hero, a mercenary with something of a conscience, who along with good guys and bad guys, is hunting for this huge pink diamond. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) is leveling entire villages, chopping off the hands of some so they can't vote in elections, and snatching young boys to become soldiers in the rebel army.

 

In a quiet moment of reflection while mayhem explodes around them, Danny Archer chats with a journalist, Maddy Bowen, and reveals that his "Mum was raped and shot and  Dad was decapitated and hung from a hook in the barn. Sometimes I wonder. Will God ever forgive us for what we've done to each other? Then I look around and I realize. God left this place a long time ago."

 

When events like the carnage at Virginia Tech happen, it shatters our peace, it intrudes upon our consciousness, it interrupts and irritates and saddens and shocks, and we wonder, where God is in this. Where has God gone? Did God leave us?

 

I wonder if this was the question that was on Peter’s mind when he says to the disciples, “I’m going fishing.” Two thousand years after Easter, it is easy for us to chart a course for the disciples. It seems to us that there is a natural progression from finding a tomb open, seeing Jesus in an upper room and beginning the church. If indeed, as the gospel of John suggests, Jesus met with the disciples on the evening of Easter and then a week later, going fishing either demonstrates a lack of awareness of Jesus’ impending ascension or a lack of acknowledgement of the task at hand.

 

The answer comes in understanding where we find the story. It is in the Gospel of John. John is a deeply symbolic book, with stories and phrases that reveal much more about our relationship with Jesus and God than first meets the eye. Jesus is both our teacher and the Word that was “In the beginning….with God. (John 1: 1) Jesus says he is “the light of the world. Whoever follows him (me) will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life." (John 8:12) “This light shines in darkness and isn’t overcome…” (John 1:3) You can see how mysterious and symbolic this is. Some of the same things are operating in this story.

 

Take for instance, the lake. Being that we are a lake community, we are used to seeing water. But lakes in the first century were strange and symbolic places. Not unlike people’s infatuation with the Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands, they were convinced that beneath the surface, there were secrets and mysteries which they couldn’t explain or understand. Whether or not you believe in the Loch Ness monster, you can understand how someone might think this. After all, people have spent lifetimes trying to prove that “Nessie” really exists. Fairy tales use the images of lakes being symbolic, mysterious places. Carl Jung actually suggested that lakes represented our unconscious and that in a way, our dreams and fantasies are, in a way, fishing for what we hope for.

 

Now maybe you are beginning to see the possibility of symbolism in this story and another possibility for Peter when he says, “I’m going fishing.” Perhaps John wants us to see something very different. Maybe Peter and his buddies are trying to understand the mystery of Jesus’ resurrection. They are fishing for answers, fishing for what it means to them on the other side of death. If this feels like a stretch to you, I think you’ll be convinced that John sees this story as highly symbolic when I point something else out. 

John describes the catch this way: They “hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn.” Jerome, the scholar who translated the Bible into Latin and wrote commentary about the scriptures, said that at the time of Jesus, there were 153 known varieties of fish in the world.  And, as the net was not broken by all those fish -- the writer later makes a point of that as well -- we can only suppose that it was a symbolic picture of Jesus and his disciples drawing the entire world into the net of God's great purpose.[6]

When you realize that John is a very symbolic gospel and these symbolisms are pointed out to you, suddenly you realize the ending of John’s gospel isn’t all that different from Matthew. Matthew ends his gospel with the Great Commission, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19) This is what John is doing, having the disciples of Jesus fish for answers of what to do on the other side of death. It is the Johannine commission. But it is even more than Matthew’s commission because of what happens at breakfast.

 

Jesus, fresh from the grave, resurrected, on the other side of death, once again challenges his disciples to be catchers of people. But, he is also instructing them to care for them—to feed his sheep. Any fifth grade teacher of writing would quickly point out to John that mixing metaphors is confusing but in defense of John, the Good Shepherd saying feed my fish doesn’t sound right.

 

This story is all about what we do on the other side of death. That’s what the disciples are fishing for and it is what all associated with the Virginia Tech tragedy are asking. “What do we do now?” On the other side of death, we go fishing to find the answers. We fish the mysterious lake of God and find the answer. The answer is, God hasn’t left this place. God is here and Jesus will reveal himself again. That’s how the opening of this story begins. “After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples…” (John 21:1)

 

There is a memory verse that is worth your while. “After these things Jesus showed himself again…” (John 21:1) The disciples, grieving, trying to figure out what it means to be without Jesus, on the other side of death and “Jesus shows himself again”.  When the tragedy enters your world and hope is gone, remember, “after these things Jesus shows himself again”. When you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, there is a light ahead, the Light of the World. Jesus will show himself again. When you wake in the morning with a day bright with promise and without notice or cause, your world is shattered, Jesus will show himself again. This is the promise we have. When the light of the world was taken away on a cross, when darkness covered the land, Easter light dawned and Jesus showed himself again. This is our promise, this is our hope.

 

There is no explanation for why such pain and tragedy occurs in our world that offers solace.             Tragedy and grief so great can only lead to a descent into darkness. But at the end of that darkness is light and Jesus, standing on the shore, revealing himself again.

 

It is the affirmation that we make together, whether it be in our personal moment of tragedy or our corporate experience of grief like this week. God left this place of death a long time ago. God left the world of death and embraced a new reality of life eternal. This is what Jesus calls us to. When we are fishing for answers, there will be Jesus, revealing himself, calling us to a new day. God has left the tomb and is with us now and will be with us forevermore. This is our hope; this is our truth. Beyond every tragedy, beyond every grave is Easter.[7]

 

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