The Other Side
May 1, 2022 + The Third Sunday of Easter + Acts 9:1-6 + Revelation 5:11-14, John 21:1-19 + Pr. Craig Mueller
Often after significant events we feel a kind of letdown on the other side. After a party, a wedding, a graduation, a holiday, a trip, a retreat. Our letdown is often one of lethargy and decreased energy. We celebrated Easter Day two weeks ago. Sure, the liturgical season of Easter is Fifty Days, but it’s hard to keep up the energy and excitement of the great feast. What’s it like to live on the other side of Easter? How do we truly live an Easter life?
In addition to letdowns, it is easy to get a one-sided view of life. That’s just the way things are, we say to ourselves. It could be the “poor me” syndrome. Nothing’s right with my life--my job, my finances, my relationship. It could be the cynic deep within that thinks that nothing will ever get better. It could the self-fulfilling prophesy that I can’t change and that I’m destined to recycle the same personal issues or failures throughout my life.
Does the resurrection of Christ make any difference in our world and in our daily lives? Today’s readings give us pictures of life on the other side of Easter. The story of Paul’s conversion reads a bit like science fiction. A light from heaven flashes around him and he falls to the ground. A mysterious voice calls Saul the persecutor of Christians to become Paul the great witness to the resurrection. As this radical truth dawns on him, scales fall from his eyes.
Koenig, Peter. Conversion of St Paul, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=58543 [retrieved May 2, 2022]. Original source: https://www.pwkoenig.co.uk/.
Our spiritual lives might not have such a dramatic one-time conversion. But our baptism calls us to a lifetime of conversion. Of opening our hearts and minds to new and radical spiritual realities. As Easter continues to become more and more real to us, maybe we can hope that scales continue to fall from our eyes throughout our lives.
And then there’s that vision from the book of Revelation. Sometimes people talk of heaven by saying, “I’ll see you on the other side.” Amid Revelation’s dense symbolism and its relation to the persecution of Christians at the time it was written, it reads like a vision of the life after. It’s not meant to be a movie reel of literalism, but more like a dream with symbolism. From Revelation, if we can say one thing of heaven it that is permeated with praise and worship. And the heavenly hymn is the one we sing in our liturgy. The one that begins “this is the feast of victory for our God.” And the words of the song go like this: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”
St. Vitale - Agnus Dei, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=31930 [retrieved May 2, 2022]. Original source: Image donated by Patout Burns.
Several weeks ago I was tuning into Myra Glass’s public radio program “This American Life” as I was driving around. He was interviewing a fundamentalist who said there was nothing in this life of value. She was living entirely for the world to come, for life on the other side. I was taken aback by those words and greatly saddened. Of course I then learned that she was dealing with a serious illness that made her body filled with pain and she was waiting for a better life.
Yet the gift of Easter is for the here and now. This is the other side. This is the feast. Throughout our lives we learn to sing the song of heaven, even here on earth, that we might make of this earth a heaven. That we might get beyond ourselves and glimpse God in all of life. Our sacred space exhibit is a very concrete example of this. The various pieces are drawn from the very ordinary lives of the creators of them. But within them is the power of the sacred, the presence of God.
And finally there is the gospel reading. After the letdown of Jesus’ death it appears that the disciples have gone back to fishing. And they’re not catching much. It’s a slow day which reflects their attitudes as well. The Risen Christ invites them, challenges them, to let down their nets and the other side of the boat. And the catch is immense, abundant, amazing.
JESUS MAFA. Miraculous Catch, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56452 [retrieved May 2, 2022]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).
The disciples do have a mission, a purpose, a call. They are promised that their spiritual nets will be overflowing. And then cowardly Peter, the one who denied Jesus three times receives a three-fold questioning from the Risen Lord: Do you love me? Then feed my sheep. Make your life count. Be a witness to the resurrection. Give your very life for me as I gave my life for you.
Maybe that is our Easter call as well. To let down our nets on the other side. As Peter Gomes writes, “Try the other side. Cast your net in some other area, in some other place. Try something else, something new, something different, try responding to the invitation that Jesus Christ gives us. For many of us, living consists of maintaining unfulfilled lives, doing what we do because we cannot imagine doing anything else. When Jesus says to try the other side, he is offering new life to those of us who are trapped in making a living and not in making a life. He is offering the possibilities of freedom, freedom from our routine and the captivity of what we’ve always done, and freedom for a new and abundant life that is full to overflowing.”1
The disciples shared a brunch of bread and fish with their Lord. Through the ages the fish has been a symbol of Christ. And the bread reminds us of the meal we share this day. Our feast is a foretaste of heaven. There is life before death. On this side of Easter.
And after we have been fed with the abundance of God, we are called, like Peter, to feed others. To invite others to try the other side.
1Peter Gomes, Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1998.