Sermon for May 4, 2025
Easter 3 C
John 21:1-19; Revelation 5:11-14
Karl-John N. Stone
I recently came across a modern-day parable called “The Quest for the Burning Bush”. The story goes like this: A group of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim scholars set out on an expedition to the Sinai desert. Their goal was to find the burning bush that had appeared to Moses by Mount Horeb, in the hope that God “might perhaps use the bush again to speak to us at this critical time in history”. By day they examined every single bush they could find, on and around the mountain. By night, they would cook around the campfire and talk about what a blessing it would be to these three great religions if they could find the burning bush, build a shrine, and people of faith could journey there on pilgrimage. After three years of looking, they found no evidence of a charred branch, nor even a few sparks. “They listened carefully to the branches on every bush, but no one heard the voice of God, or any voices.” So they went home. At the same time as they were flying home from Sinai, there stood a farmer’s wife in South Dakota washing the dishes in her kitchen, and “her dish towel exploded into flames. Out of the flaming towel came a voice, ‘Mara, Mara, remove your slippers for the place where you stand is holy ground.’”
This parable was written by Edward Hays in his book of parable-stories called The Ladder (p.42-43). The parable has a lesson: How often are we searching for God according to our own agendas but not finding him? Meanwhile we miss noticing where God is choosing to show up right in front of us.
Think back to how Moses encountered that burning bush so long ago. He wasn’t looking for it. He certainly didn’t expect it. It caught him totally by surprise. But when he did come across that burning bush while tending his sheep in the wilderness of Sinai, Moses had the curiosity to wonder about what he was seeing. And he had the humility to listen to what God was telling him: “Remove your sandals for you are on holy ground.” In contrast, the scholars of the parable who went on their quest for the burning bush were motivated neither by curiosity nor humility, but rather a pre-determined idea about how they wanted God to be revealed. They had their own agenda, and were asking God to bless their goals; rather than seeking God’s agenda and asking God to bless them in the way God chose. Meanwhile, as the parable concludes, we see the holiness and just plain weirdness of God being revealed to a famer’s wife in the middle of her ordinary daily tasks.
We see this juxtaposition of ordinary and weird and holy in today’s scripture readings, as well. Any time you want something weird, just turn to the book of Revelation and you’ll find it. Chapter 5:11-14 provides the words for one of our liturgical songs that we often sing in worship. Worthy is….the king? No. The conqueror? No. The emperor? No. Worthy is THE LAMB?!?! Yes, worthy is the lamb who…escaped capture? No. Who was much smarter than we give him credit for? No. Oh, I know…Who never died? No. Worthy is the lamb who was SLAIN?!?! The lamb who was slain is worthy to receive “power, and wealth, and wisdom, and might, and honor, and glory, and blessing!” And every creature “in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea” is going to sing about it.
The Lamb who was slain, who’s begun his reign, is standing before the throne of God in heaven; this is an image of Christ crucified and risen. St. Paul assures us (in 1 Corinthians 1:25) that the message of this crucified Christ has a “foolishness wiser than human wisdom” and a “weakness stronger than human strength”. It is all very weird that in weakness God reveals Christ’s power. In defeat God opens the way to victory. In being shamed God opens the way to honor. In becoming cursed God opens the way to blessing. In dying God opens the way to new and eternal life. And in keeping with that theme, God reveals Christ’s greatness in simple things. You don’t have to go scouring the desert looking for a recurrence of a miracle that happened 3,000 years ago. Instead, look around you. Keep a sense of curiosity and humility for how God will reveal Christ’s holiness today. You are already standing on holy ground with him. And we see this illustrated in today’s gospel from John 21.
It began as an ordinary day—Peter the fisherman wanted to go fishing, and his friends went with him. And it’s almost as if they brought me (with my lack of fishing skills) along, too, because John tells us, “that night they caught nothing”. But then the real weirdness comes along. “Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.” Now, what’s weird about that?
Well, the disciples had just seen the risen Jesus quite recently when they were still down in Jerusalem, and they’d spent three years with him before that. You’d think by now they would have no trouble identifying him. And yet when he appears on the beach by the Sea of Galilee, they do not know it’s him right away. Jesus appears to them in his resurrection body, which has passed through death and lives now with different properties than before—it is still himself, the same person and yet somehow different. The theologian N.T. Wright likens the trouble with recognizing the risen Jesus to meeting someone from the 1500’s (who worked a printing press) and showing them “a computer logging on to the Internet. They hadn’t got electricity in those days, let alone microchips! The difference between our present body and Jesus’ risen body is like that only more so. This is a whole new world. It isn’t magic. It isn’t ghostly. It’s real, but it’s different.” (John for Everyone, Part Two, p.161)
The disciples finally do recognize Jesus only after he asks them to look at their ordinary lives as fishermen, but look at it a little bit differently: “Cast your net to the other side of the boat this time, and you’ll find some fish.” They do as he suggests, just a little bit different than before, and this time they catch so many fish they are not able to haul them all into the boat! It’s at that point where the Beloved Disciple turns to Peter because he realizes it must be Jesus, and says, “It is the Lord!” Once again, the ordinary, the weird, and the holy get wrapped up together in Jesus.
And that is what we’re going to see a little later in church today. This morning, little Oliver will be baptized, as we stand on holy ground with him and his family, and the risen Jesus promises to be in our midst. How weird and how wonderful that God chooses to use something as ordinary as water, connected with God’s Word of promise, to be the means of grace for uniting this beloved child of our congregation to God’s holy and beloved Son Jesus Christ forever!
How weird and how wonderful that God chooses to use something as ordinary as bread and wine, connected with God’s Word of promise, to be Christ’s body and blood given and shed for you, for the forgiveness of sin, in the meal of Holy Communion. Similar to the disciples gathering with Jesus on the beach to eat around a charcoal fire, we recognize our risen Lord in the breaking of bread.
And as we go from this place to other places out in the world, we go with the Holy Spirit’s weird and wonderful gift of faith, so we can join the disciples in accepting Jesus’ invitation to look at ordinary life, and the ordinary things in your life, but look at it just a little bit differently. With curiosity and humility (like Moses), you can keep an eye out for the unexpected ways our risen Lord may appear to you; maybe as you eat, or wash; maybe even your dish towel will one day explode in flames as you hear a voice calling to you: with Christ in your life, wherever you are standing is holy ground. Amen.