Below, for your consideration and reflection, is the sermon from Bethel's April 25, 2004 Sunday Morning worship service.  If you would like to read sermons from previous services, please click HERE.

The latest sermon will be posted here as soon as it is received – usually by Tuesday or Wednesday following the Sunday that it was presented.

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It had been a long night. Seven of the original 12, following Peter’s initiative, have returned to doing what they once did best. Fishing. Back to doing what they were doing when Jesus first called and they said “yes.” Back to a simpler life, blessed assurance yet more questions, perhaps, than they had even before they first met him. A return to hard work and fishing fundamentals, a familiar and arduous routine even for sturdy first century fisher folk. Not the leisurely casting of our recreational angling, but the hard, monotonous labor of keeping balance in a rocking boat as heavy nets get tossed and retrieved over and over again.

Their little night fishing session has apparently come up empty, or at least, they have caught nothing worth keeping. The nets yield no good results. But then, at daybreak, Jesus comes along, and at his direction, they cast their nets in another place. When they pull them in, they discover nets overflowing with fish. After dragging their nets to shore, the 7 join the Lord around a charcoal fire for a beach breakfast feast of fellowship and fish.

It is a quite amazing Easter story, isn’t it? -- the opportunity God gives people to cast nets in new directions. If we can but wait out the darkness, blessings of abundant nets will come, if only we stand fast, and don’t lose hope. The hope that stirs inside is not just hope for the salvation of my soul or your soul, but it is the cosmic hope that this world can be transformed into a better, safer, more lovely, more just, more compassionate place – and not just for us, but for all people everywhere.

Today, I want us to read this post-Easter story as a story that invites us to consider our responsibilities to care for this earth, God’s creation, our home.

It is a little noted fact that the Bible is a book that largely takes place outdoors. Sure, the temple gets built and rebuilt and the religious authorities have their human-fabricated ritual places, but all of the really important events of scripture seem to take place outside. Epiphanies come to Abraham beneath oak trees, to Moses at a burning bush, to Jacob under the stars, and to Elijah in the mouth of a cave. And the gospels really begin with wilderness John eating bugs, comparing people to snakes, and dunking the penitent in cold river water. And the end, at least for the fourth gospel, comes as the postmortem Jesus appears along the seashore, inviting his bedraggled fishermen followers to join him at the sandy beach around an open campfire.

If we truly believe that Easter is about new birth, new life, new possibilities, new hope, then I believe we should take seriously what this fishing story says about living in harmony with God’s good and grand and glorious creation. Indeed, what is the Good News, for both the human and the non-human creation, in these days of Easter? And can the message of our redemption finally separate the one from the other?

The resurrection of the earth begins as humanity wakes up and realizes that we must cast our nets in a new direction. The long night of doing business as usual in our treatment of the environment eventually leaves everyone, even almighty America, with an empty net. Maybe it won’t be empty here until my children’s children’s generation, or even later, but already, in many third world nations, the life of the earth is being sucked out of it because a global economy devours nature in order to feed an insatiable industrial-military appetite for bigger and better. We in this nation consume _ of the world’s oil and natural gas resources; it takes 29 billion barrels of oil per day just to keep America running. (from Weekend Edition, 4/24/04). I am convinced that it is the desire to protect our economic and lifestyle self-interests that has put us where we should not be, that is, right in the middle of the internal affairs of oil-rich nations. Jesus calls us to cast our nets in a new direction.

Quite frankly, most of us haven’t given a lot of thought to the ways our habits of working and spending and living impact the environment. Many of the world’s habitats and communities are in a condition of severe crisis: soil erosion and toxification, water contamination and depletion, air pollution, deforestation, species extinction, destruction of rural communities, disregard for indigenous cultures, and a sense of social cynicism and hopelessness.

The number of prison inmates in this country exceeds the number of farmers; an estimated 4 million tons of paper junk mail are sent each year in the US, and nearly half of it is never opened.; it takes 500 years for our styrofoam cups and plates to deteriorate in our land fills; we are trained in the arts of acquisition, not the art of being good stewards and caretakers of the earth’s limited resources.

We must learn to cast our nets in a new direction

The Kentucky farmer/essayist Wendell Berry, perhaps the nation’s most eloquent spokesperson for a return to the virtues of agrarian living and harmony with the land, writes that, “for the most part, [the church has] stood silently by while a predatory economy has ravaged the world, destroyed its natural beauty and health, divided and plundered its human communities and households.” (“Christianity and the Survival of Creation” in The Art of the Commonplace, p. 319).

The old way of night fishing simply doesn’t work anymore. Scriptures like “have dominion over the world” or “fill the earth and subdue it” have to be thought about much more carefully; the Enlightenment view of a great chain of being, a hierarchy with humans at the top, dominating, subjugating, controlling has to be reconsidered. The license we have given to corporations to strip mine coal, harvest the rain forests, or exploit mineral-rich wilderness areas will eventually leave us all with empty nets.

Almost any day, to read the paper is to discover another depressing report about the quality of our own air, the start up of another necessary cleanup of nuclear waste, or an example of a polluted stream or roadside. As Wendell Berry puts it, “The world, which God looked at and found entirely good, we find none too good to pollute entirely and destroy piecemeal” (p.311).

But as Christians, we cannot lose hope because we always have Easter, the assurance that we can change and that the earth can be renewed, even redeemed and made whole once more.

In the words of the feminist theologian Sallie McFague, we need a “new sensibility” towards creation. Our survival and the survival of the world depend on our capacity to, “imagine new models for the relationship between ourselves and our earth.” She writes that we can no longer see ourselves as namers of and rulers over nature but must think of ourselves as gardeners, caretakers, mothers and fathers, stewards, trustees, lovers, priests, co-creators, and friends of a world that, while giving us life and sustenance, also depends increasingly on us in order to continue both for itself and for us” (Models for God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age, p.13)

Cast your nets in a new direction, says the risen Lord. And in that new casting, an abundant catch will come.

These brimming nets, overflowing with 153 different kinds of fish is quite a powerful metaphor, I think, for the ecological diversity of the sea. But these fish, which the seven disciples undoubtedly divided up and took to the market after breakfast, also remind us that we have been given the fruits of the earth both for enjoyment and for the sustenance and nurture of life and health.

When we cast our nets in a new direction, we can see that the abundance God provides is really meant to help us see Christ in a new way; abundance serves as an object lesson instructing us about our God-dependence (not independence); challenges us to use the earth’s abundance wisely and prayerfully, and to see the interdependence of all things.

We see here, in this passage, basically two kinds of fish – the ones that Jesus provides that are already cooking as the disciples come ashore, and we see the fish of the disciples’ abundant catch. Anytime there is food, scholars of John’s gospel look for eucharistic symbolism. Food and mystery go together for John. And it is quite profound that this holy meal of reunion takes place on the seashore. “Jesus took the bread and gave it to them, and he did the same way with the fish.”

Nature, when treated reverently and with respect, can take on a sacramental quality. Nature reminds us that it is God’s Easter intention that all things discover their eternal destiny in God.

If there is anything that can help us through this profound ecological crisis that grips our planet, I believe it is learning to treat the creation as an expression of God’s sacramental love for all things. Just as Jesus and the disciples are one around that campfire, so nothing can live in isolation. We fail to acknowledge the interdependence of the animate and inanimate creation at our own peril and to the everlasting peril of the entire planet.

The disciples have worked all night without any luck; but their frustration turns to ecstatic joy as their labors now produce a great catch, but more profoundly, as they realize who is the stranger who has called to them from the shore.

Their delight in fellowshipping with their risen Lord is the kind of delight we, too, should experience outdoors, as we become aware of the marvels and the everyday miracle of creation. The Bible is an outdoor book, and the peace and plan and purpose of God often come to us best and most profoundly when we go out into nature and see God in new ways.

Here’s a poem called “The Peace of Wild Things”

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

We all know where the dark night of business as usual will eventually lead us. It can be hard to see the risen Lord through the early morning mist, to have hope that everything is going to be alright, eventually, if we but cast our nets in a new direction.

But will my little efforts at composting, or having a garden or recycling paper and plastic, or trying to use a little less electricity or picking up trash or even protesting governmental policies really do anything to bring light to bear on this nightmare we all have inflicted on the good earth?

Like the seven disciples marking time in a small boat, our planet is but a tiny world within the vastness of the universe and the vastness of unknown universes that lay beyond. But the seven and the others -- a tiny band though they were – had been given the vocation to carry the Jesus revolution forward. Even today, the Church remains a tiny boat floating on the sea of an environmental crisis such as the world has never seen before. If we don’t hear the summons to cast nets in a new direction, then who will tell the story of God’s Easter renewal and redemption of the whole creation?

Some pupils came to the Rabbi complaining about the prevalence of evil in the world. They asked the rabbi how they might drive out the darkness. The rabbi gave them brooms and asked them to sweep the darkness from a cellar. The pupils tried this, but they were not successful. So the Rabbi gave them sticks and told them to beat the darkness until it was driven away. Again, they tried, and when they failed, the rabbi asked them to try shouting at the darkness. The pupils did this also, but the darkness remained. “Then let us try this,” the rabbi said. “Let each person challenge the darkness by lighting a candle.” The pupils descended into the cellar. Each one lit a candle. When they looked about, they discovered that the darkness had disappeared. (Candles in the Dark, p 7).

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Prayers of the People

Gracious God, your word of creation caused the water to be filled with many kinds of living beings and the air to be filled with birds. We rejoice in the richness of your creation, and we pray for your wisdom for all who live on this earth, that we may wisely manage and not destroy what you have made for us and for our descendents. We praise you for the return of planting and harvest seasons, for the fertility of the soil, for making the fruitful earth produce what is needed for life.

Give us renewed reverence for this planet which you have entrusted to our care, so that abuse will end, justice will prevail, and all the nations of the earth will live in harmony with one another and with all of your creation.

In these days of Easter, continue to shine your light into the dark places of our lives, into the dark places of our government, into the dark places of the world where contempt and hatred have become watchwords for those who terrorize and destroy. Help us not to give in to despair when we see once more the pain of others whom we know and those whom we do not know. But keep us strong and courageous and faithful as we seek to live as your new creation, renewed by water and the Word.

Hear our prayers for the sick, especially those whom we know and care for: Ted Walton,

Hear our prayers for those who experience grief or other forms of hardship, for those struggling with problems or weighty decisions, for those who are imprisoned, hungry, homeless, or friendless. Help us to be your agents of care to others.

We pray for those who labor and serve in institutions of higher learning. We thank you for gifts of mind and intellect, cultivated with care and curiosity, gifts from you. We offer prayers for the work of Maryville College and other colleges and seminaries we support. May they be places that truly teach a new casting of the net so that this world might be a more humane and dignified place where all can live in harmony.

May your holy and life-giving Spirit so move every heart, that the barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease, and that, with our divisions healed, we might live in justice and peace.

This we pray in the name of our Lord, who has taught us to pray together:

The one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly;
The one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully