Sermon, 3rd Sunday of Easter

That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, "It is the Lord!" (John 21:7)

How do we know something to be true, to be real?  How do we know anything to be true, to be real?  More to the point of today's sermon, how can we know the Resurrection to be true, to be real?  Last Sunday I said that if the Resurrection is real, then a whole new universe has been created, as real as the universe in which we live with its Newtonian laws of motion and inertia and gravity.  This new universe has its own laws.  Judging by the appearances of our risen Lord, its laws don't have much respect for the laws of space and matter which we material creatures are bound to accept.

So how are we to recognize the Resurrection when it appears to us?  If any lesson is to be learned from the resurrected Jesus, it is that He is not bound by the limits of our time and flesh.  He can take on any appearance, any outward form.  And He can show himself at any time, in any form.  The resurrected Jesus appeared then and He appears now.  How do we recognize Him?  How will know that it's Him?  What if he appears as a her?  Would we recognize the same resurrected Lord?  How would we know?

Is the Resurrection something we can examine "objectively," without our perception being colored by our emotional involvement in the object?  Or is the Resurrection something we can know only in our hearts, a "subjective" knowledge?  As many post-modern writers claim; it is difficult if not impossible for anyone to achieve an objective understanding of something, separate from our emotional attachment to that thing.  We know from the science of physics that our very observation of microscopic atoms can actually change the motion of those particles.  A man, who just appears out of thin air, looking completely unlike what he looked like yesterday, and then disappearing in a flash, is hardly a suitable object for scientific examination.  But if the Resurrection is only "true" as I "know" it in my heart; then this "subjective" knowledge does not justify the outlandish claim made earlier of a new world, a new creation with laws as irresistible as the laws of the universe in which we live day by day.

In the conclusion of the Gospel of the Beloved Disciple, we see once again the new creation breaking into the old.  We see the same challenge of recognition and knowledge.  We see Peter and the other disciples out all night on the Sea of Tiberias with not one fish to show for all their labor.  We see a stranger on the shore, but who seems to know them.  "Children," He calls them, "do you have any fish?  No?  Then try throwing your net on the other side."  Why in the world would one find fish in this one spot in the entire lake, just on the other side of where found no fish, much less in the entire lake they've been wandering over all night?  It's a wonder they didn't tell the stranger to stick his advice where the sun don't shine.

Thankfully they take the stranger's advice, and toss their net on the other side, and get the fish story to end all fish stories – 153 in all – with a net so heavy they can't even pull it up into the boat.  And now we see again, "the disciple whom Jesus loved."  The disciple who was apparently Jesus's best friend: the disciple who seemed to best understand what Jesus was really about.  Was that disciple John, the son of Zebedee and brother of James, one of the Twelve leading apostles?  Tradition says that the Beloved Disciple and the Apostle John are the same person.  But John, apparently, doesn't care for the readers of his Gospel to identify him as a leader of the Church.  What is most important is that he be recognized as the disciple whom Jesus loved.

It is love that recognizes the abundance, the overwhelming blessing and gift that is felt in this world but can come only from that other world.  Love is the bridge between the old and new creation.  The stranger on the shore is just another object to be regarded with skepticism.  The risen Lord is the One who loves us more than anyone else in this world could ever love us.  And when we recognize those gifts of love that come to us without warning, we recognize Resurrection.  Does this sound like I'm just retreating back into subjectivism ?  Am I just saying that we'll know the risen Jesus when we feel him?  Am I still stuck in the tension between objective knowledge and subjective knowledge?  Absolutely not.  Love is never subjective.  Love always requires at least two persons: a lover and a beloved.  There is no subjective love without the object of that love.  To love someone is to know their existence with certainty.  To love is to know.

Some two millennia, a group of people knew Jesus of Nazareth, and they loved him before his physical death.  And amazingly, their love became more intense after he died.  Why, because they recognized him.  It wasn't always easy to recognize him.  But whenever they saw the unexpected gift, of intimate conversation on the road to Emmaus, of an enormous catch of fish in the sea of Tiberias, they recognized their resurrected friend, and they dared not examine or question him.  They knew the one they loved, and who loved them.

What are the laws of this new creation called Resurrection?  You do not look for it in the expected or the routine.  Resurrection blooms in our lives when we least expect it.  So, how do you recognize the unexpected?  When you receive a surprise, a blessing you had not expected, there is Resurrection.  When you yourself become that unexpected blessing, there is Resurrection.  Wherever you encounter love, there is the Lover.  There is the risen Christ.  There is the new creation.  There is the Lord, and Lover, of all.