I would like to explain one of the most important and overlooked aspects of Christian (and Jewish) faith to you. It has to do with God’s purpose for us in life. I am going to give you some of the Biblical underpinnings for it. Then I will give you a scientific perspective from my own musings as well as from Einstein. Finally we are going to talk about today’s Gospel in the context of God’s purpose for us. It’s a tall order. Let’s get started.
Last week was our first Sunday in the seven week season between Easter and Pentecost. During this time we hear about the appearances of Jesus following the resurrection and before his ascension. The psalm appointed for last week was 150. It was one of about a dozen of a type scholars refer to as “psalms of praise.” It is the final psalm in the entire collection of psalms and its location there indicates its importance.
How are we to live? How are we to worship? The answer is with praise. Halleluiah! The Hebrew Scriptures use seven different words that are translated as the word “Praise” in English. In Hebrew Psalm 150 begins every line with the word “Halleluiah,” literally “praise God” or better “Praise God’s holy name.” In contrast to the other six words for praise, “hallel” indicates joyous, raucous, even boastful (but not prideful) praise. Some dictionaries have distinguished “hallel” from its other praise words by calling it “clamorously foolish;” a phrase that recalls Paul’s “fools for Christ.”
How are we to live? The answer is clamorously foolish. How are we to worship? Clamorously foolish. Last week I had the choir chant the Latin words for psalm 150 while the psalm was read with the congregation. The ancient Latin words “Laudate dominum” (praise the Lord) “omnes gentes” (all the people), “alleluia” (praise God) were sung to a moving modern form of chant. I was trying to underscore the idea of praise because we need to let it work through our heads and into our hearts. Clamorously foolish.
When I went to the pool the other day to work out a man in the locker room saw my clergy collar and asked if I was “some kind of minister.” I replied that I was the new priest at Grace Church. As soon as I finished he jumped in uncomfortably to explain that he “should have the word ‘atheist’ tattooed across his forehead.” Life must be hard for atheists in the Midwest.
As I started doing my laps I reflected on the atheist position about human life. Since there is no creator, all of life and all of the universe is nothing but one gigantic, cosmic accident. We are a winning ticket in the cosmic lottery. Galaxies, planets in their courses, oceans, DNA, human life and your life are all one big accident according to the godless theory.
But if you start to really think about the odds it gets funny pretty fast. Even in the vast time and space of the universe the odds of one planet orbiting a medium sun with large oceans and an orbital position neither too far nor too close – like Goldilocks neither too hot nor too cold. The odds are pretty slim. Then you have to multiply that times the human race surviving killer volcanoes long enough for us to get out of the caves and create cities. Then you have to multiply that times the odds of avoiding an extinction level killer asteroid collision.
About one sizable object whizzes by in between the earth and the moon every hour. If one of these hit the earth it would wipe out a metropolitan area say from Tulsa to Muskogee. Every few years an asteroid whizzes inside the lunar orbit that would be capable of eliminating all life on the planet. Geologists have located two such craters on the Earth from 30 & 60 M years ago. Truly there but for the grace of God goes humankind. If you think this is all a cosmic accident, I suggest you go purchase a bunch of lottery tickets because they have much better odds of winning.
Or you can take the position of Albert Einstein, “There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” We are living miracles and we are to live and worship God in a way that is clamorously foolish. Whatever life we have however fleeting or long, however much suffering or joy is a miracle. And we should give thanks and praise to God for whatever life we have been given. Halleluiah!
In today’s Gospel Peter and the other disciples are still discouraged in spite of having seen the risen Christ twice. In an act of utter frustration Peter decides to return to his former occupation. He returns to what he was doing the day Jesus called him. He returns to that boundary between his old life and his new life. The setting for this story takes place on two such boundaries one is on the beach between sea and land, the other is at daybreak between night and day. The point is that God enters our world at those boundaries where our dreams are also big and clamorously foolish.
Notice that this fishing expedition has labored all night without success. At daybreak a stranger calls out to them from shore telling them to do the opposite of what they had been doing. No self respecting fisherman would follow this kind of advice but it comes to them in this boundary between despair and hope, between night and day, between sea and land. The advice is foolish but their dreams are big and they follow the stranger’s advice.
Without Christ in our work we can do nothing. When we enter this big foolish dream that Christ invites us to, our work becomes miraculous. We haul a catch of fish like never before. But also notice that the fish did not just jump into the boat. Landing the fish required that Peter and others jump in the water and work together to bring the fish ashore.
What does this mean for Grace Church? 1. We must follow Christ’s invitation not our own desires. Christ’s invitation may come first to us as a big, bold, foolish, clamorous, audacious dream. [I think the single biggest shortcoming of the Episcopal Church is thinking and acting too small.] 2. Responding to Christ’s invitation may at first seem foolish. Think of Noah building the ark, or the dream of a defeated country lawyer named Lincoln who said “I think I will run for president” or the simple desire of a diminutive Sister Theresa who said “I want to touch a poor child in Calcutta.” Christ calls us to dreams that are often bigger than we think we are. 3. And finally, once we respond to Christ’s call, it is going to take a lot of coordinated effort.
You called me here to help coordinate that effort. Christ calls you to get in the water and haul the nets. Nets filled with 153 fish. Hallelujah!