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-- J F Kennedy. In his Inaugural Address to the Nation on becoming President of the United States on January 20th 1961, he ended a stirring speech with the words:
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what
your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.
He went on to ask the same question of the world
community before invoking God's blessing on the work in hand.
President Kennedy's words have often been quoted since he spoke them
and are used to encourage people to serve rather than sit back, to give
rather than to receive. It is a succinct summary of the principle of
the Christian service. Our Baptismal commitment is both to BE the
Church and to SERVE the Church, or rather to serve God THROUGH being
the Church.As we are to sit down, later this morning, to take part in our APCM it might well be an important idea to keep hold of - especially as we ask people to become more involved in the life, mission, ministry and witness of this Church. We are called not to ask what THE Church can do for us but what we can do for the Church. Presumably, if we take it seriously, people will be falling over themselves to do all manner of things to help us become a more active church, serving our community and serving God by seeking to bring that community under his just and loving rule.
At the end of the Gospel following the Resurrection Jesus gathered with his disciples at the mountain in Galilee, where, according to Matthew, Jesus lays on his followers the commission to Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them the things of God. St Luke has a similar scene with a bit more detail. Jesus teaches the disciples about the Messiah, opening their minds to understand the scriptures and ending with a reminder to them that they are witnesses to these things. At the beginning of his second volume, The Acts of the Apostles, Luke speaks of Jesus giving instructions through the Holy Spirit. This instruction, we are told, was about the Kingdom of God. So clearly, as today's disciples, we are bidden to follow suit. Our purpose is clear - to make God known and to witness to his saving love in Jesus Christ, Crucified, Risen, Ascended and Glorified.
The Church - you and me - is called to a life of service and of serving - of self-giving and self-denial; of offering ourselves as instruments of God's love in a dark and often loveless world. It's all stirring stuff. If we look at our Annual Report we will see that we are trying to do this in all sorts of ways and when the Rector asks for even more from you, doubtless you will quickly and spontaneously respond as Isaiah responded - Here am I send me rather than Here am I - send him or her!
But wait a bit - we might be getting ahead of ourselves by jumping to the commission of Matthew's and Luke's Gospel to be active in building up God's Kingdom. Something happened before all that which is truly tremendous and mind-boggling. Something which comes before all this service in our Lord's name.
Let's look at today's Gospel - the bit of John following the first Resurrection appearances to Mary at the Garden of the tomb to the disciples in the Upper Room and to Thomas a week later. On the shore of Lake Galilee, something happened which turns J F Kennedy's exhortation on its head. For it says, if you will accept it so, Don't ask what you can do for God, rather ask, what can God do for you.
The disciples were at a bit of a loose end. They'd accepted the joyous news of our Lord's Resurrection and they wondered what came next. In an odd way the Resurrection was a mixed blessing. On the one hand it was amazing and fantastic and wonderful, but, on the other hand, it signalled the end of the life they had led with Jesus 'on the road'. They had yet to be made what aware what was to come. They had not yet received the Commission I talked of earlier. So they did what they knew best - returning to old familiar ways, trying to take up the life they had left behind three years earlier. They went fishing.
It turned out to be a fruitless occupation because they caught nothing. This was symbolic of a truth which you might be familiar with - that there is no going back in life. We sometimes wish things were different and we look back on the past with rose-tinted spectacles - calling the past 'the good old days', but, even if were true, we can never recapture it. The disciples had been through too much; had been involved in great capricious adventure; had been worked on by God himself. How could they just go back to fishing. They caught nothing. And then the stupendous thing happens. In the twilight of approaching dawn Jesus appears on the shore. This too is symbolic becasue when God meets us, wherever he meets us, a new dawn arrives.
This is, after all, an Easter story and Easter is about new dawns, new beginnings, new outpourings of God's light, which as we remember from the other end of John's Gospel, overcomes darkness. In the shadowy time before dawn fully breaks Jesus is on the shore. We are told that they didn't know it was Jesus but later, did they remember that a long time ago he had stood on the shore of the same Lake when he called them into discipleship, on the great journey, which, was, ultimately, to re-fashion them and their destiny? Jesus is calling them again - to something even more new, even greater but he doesn't ask them to follow him. He simply says, children - and what an intimate and lovely greeting that is - children, you have no fish have you? Of course they haven't. They have been looking in the wrong place, but the right place isn't far away. Isn't that often the way? People look for enrichment of life and for meaning and purpose and they search the world for it, but it's in the other direction.
There's a story about a poor man from Krakow who dreamt that a treasure awaited him underneath a bridge in Prague. He set ou on the long journey, and finally, after much hardship, reached the great city. But the gate was guarded by an armed sentry, and the man has arrived after curfew. He begged the soldier to let him onto the bridge, but the sentry refused. "What's so important that you need to cross the bridge tonight?" he demands. Reluctantly, the man from Krakow told the sentry about his dream. "That's funny," says the sentry. "I've been having dreams that a treasure awaits me under the bed of a poor man from Krakow, but you don't think I'd be fool enough to go in search of it." The poor man returned to Kracow and searched his house - and there he found his treasure.
Just fish to the right, said Jesus - and sure enough there they were - so many that the nets almost burst. We are told, intriguingly, that there were 153 of them - something which has kept theologians and biblical scholars busy for centuries! Of course, it is about abundance and is an allegory of God's generosity. Like the wine at Cana it was about how God's bountifulness is always excessive.
And what happened next took this much further. Whilst they were trying to fish, Jesus had been busy. There on the shore was a charcoal fire and on the fire were some fish already cooking. Though he asked them to bring some of their fish, he didn't really need it. He just wanted them to feel good! "Come and have breakfast", he said. How ordinary can that be? Yet how amazing! The Risen Christ cooks his followers breakfast. In that very ordinary, extremely extraordinary act we discover something we should have known all along. God feeds us. The secret of the Gospel isn't about what we can do for God - it's about what God does for us.
And what God goes on doing - because we're here this morning in response to God's invitation - Come and have breakfast. Come and share in God's meal of feeding that we call the Eucharist. Obviously that feeding is concentrated on bread and wine prayed over and given as Christ's body and blood - food for our soul. But it's also about God feeding us with His Word - because the Eucharist is always in two parts. The Scripture feeds us, the prayers expand the scriptures, hopefully the hymns tell us something about the scriptures and then there is the Sacrament itself. But they cannot be exclusive. The Word fo God leads us to THE Word of God and only when God has fed us do we get sent out to serve Him. And that Service, because it follows the sacred meal we have together, grows from being served by God.
Like the disciples on the shore, we have been invited to breakfast with God. We need feeding by God because we are hungry for God. We need ministering to because only so do we begin to understand what a loving relationship we are being offered.
When that love for us is really felt then our service is put into its rightful context. We are to love, says St John in his first epistle, because God first loves us. So much so, that like a good mother, he puts food on our table when we have been toiling in the night of the world. We may take it a bit for granted but just stop and think for a moment. God stoops down to serve us, feed us, love us. Why does he do that? Because that's what God does. Just accept it as the truth it is.
Children, come and have breakfast. You can't get anything more amazing than that. You just have to respond.