by CCW | 19 April 2015 18:00
An odd text for Evensong[1], I suppose, but then time and sense often seem no more when we are dealing with matters of eternity. It is one of the more delightful resurrection appearances of Jesus. It takes place on the seashore, “by the sea of Tiberias.” It is, I suppose, a fish story but one which goes to the heart of the proclamation of the Resurrection. St. John’s breakfast-with-Jesus-on-the-beach story is “the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.”
Two themes present themselves. First, that the Resurrection entails “the resurrection of the understanding” and secondly, that the Resurrection involves “the reconstitution of the human community” into fellowship with God after the disarray and disintegration of our humanity, individually and collectively, in the pageant of our betrayals of God made so heartrendingly visible in Holy Week.
In Luke’s Gospel, too, Jesus appears to the disciples and asks them whether they have any food before opening to them the Scriptures. “They give him a piece of broiled fish, and of an honey-comb.” Here Jesus-on-the-beach has a charcoal fire and bids them “bring some of the fish that you have caught”. “Come and have breakfast” means come and have bread and barbecued fish.
What’s with the fish, broiled or barbecued? Nothing, really, other than the remarkable ordinariness of the extraordinary thing. Nothing, really, except an aspect of the reality of the idea of the Resurrection. That, of course, is everything. The Gospel accounts of the Resurrection, themselves the fons et origo of the Gospels have a simplicity and unadorned directness about them. They compel, I think, by the quality of their quietly restrained narrative that remains remarkably understated.
John O’Malley, in his thought-provoking book, Four Cultures of the West, considers the interplay and difference between what he describes as “the four cultures” of our western heritage: “the prophetic culture,” “the philosophic culture,” “the poetic culture,” and “the artistic culture.” The prophetic culture focuses on proclamation which always marks radical and uncompromising change but then has to come to terms with the philosophic, the poetic and the artistic cultures which undertake to comprehend, elaborate and express the idea that has been so powerfully proclaimed. The connection between these four is, perhaps, most intriguing.
In what ways do we see the intersection of the four cultures in the gospel accounts of the Resurrection? The Resurrection, of course, changes everything. It shatters all our assumptions and expectations. Mary Magdalene coming to the tomb expects one thing only to find another and is transformed to become the first apostle, the first who is sent to make the news of Christ’s Resurrection known to the others, apostle apostolorum, as the Fathers of the early Church so aptly call her. In Mark’s gospel, the women come to “anoint him…very early in the morning the first day of the week at the rising of the sun” and encounter an empty tomb except for the “young man,” an angel? who conveys the unexpected news, “he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him”.
A small group of disciples are, quite literally, running away from Jerusalem, distraught and perplexed, when Jesus, quite literally, runs out after them on the road to Emmaus. In making himself known to them, they immediately return to Jerusalem, to the company of the eleven and the unnumbered and unnamed others who were with them. Into their astonished midst, Jesus appears. He speaks and shows them “his hands and his feet” and eats “some fish”.
On the beach, too, there is astonishment at the unexpected presence of the risen Christ; “none … dared ask him, who are you? They knew it was the Lord” who “came and took the bread and gave it to them and so with the fish”. Behind closed doors, John tells us, the risen Christ makes himself known on “the same day at evening” to the disciples, save Thomas, to whom he later appears, again, behind closed doors. There is an encounter, in the garden amid the tombs, on the beach with the fishermen, along the road to Emmaus, and among the disciples huddled in Jerusalem.
And everything is changed by virtue of the encounter. Immediately what changes is the understanding of the past of sin and sorrow, the past of prophecy and law, the past of human knowing and understanding.
These are all scenes of the resurrection of the understanding, the beginning of the process of dawning awareness about the meaning and truth of the Resurrection. The gospels show us that process of philosophical engagement with the idea of the Resurrection, not by way of formal discourse, of course, but by way of a kind of clarity and chastity of reason.
The Resurrection does not flee either from the past of prophecy, reflection or experience but requires its re-evaluation and re-constitution. Everything is seen in a new light. The Resurrection changes our view of death and the human body, changes how we think and deal with one another, changes our view of our humanity. It is the strongest possible vindication of our individuality, soul and body. The body cannot be left out of the equation of redemption. Somehow, the idea that carries with it its own reality captures our minds.
And our imaginations. “Now from the grave wake poetry again”, Dante the poet sings, one of a long line of poets whose souls are awakened to new heights of glory and love by virtue of the doctrine of the Resurrection and who capture in verse the wonder of it all. “In a flash, at a trumpet crash,/ I am all at once what Christ is, ‘ since he was what I am, and / This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ‘ patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, / Is immortal diamond” as Gerard Manley Hopkins so powerfully and ecstatically puts it.
The artists, too, portray the mystery of the Resurrection, often with the same gospel sensibility of modest restraint, the restraint of great ideas, the restraint of holy doctrine. There is Fra Angelico’s wonderful depiction of Mary in the Garden encountering the risen Christ whom she supposes to be the gardener and there is Rembrandt’s contemplative depiction of the taverna scene on the Road to Emmaus and so on and so on. There is the music of Bach and Mozart, Haydn and Handel, Monteverdi and Gabrielli, to name but a few, whose imaginations and talents have been captured by the power of the Resurrection.
But what about these fish stories? The beach barbecue and the bits of broiled fish? Where do they figure? Well, surely, they belong to the simplicity and the ordinariness of the extraordinary thing as part of the proclamation. They are there, too, as supporting evidence, if you will, of the idea of the risen body, at once more and not less than what we know, in the philosophical reflection upon the Resurrection. They are there, too, in what one might call the poetry of the gospels. But artistically and musically? I know of no fish chant or song, sanctified sea-shanty or holy ode to the fish, no painting or sculpture that celebrates the blessed barbecued or broiled fish of these resurrection stories.
With the one exception, perhaps, that provides a telling illustration of the interplay of the four cultures. One of the earliest artistic expressions of the Christian church, at once a proclamation, a meditation and a poem and captured in early art is the sign of the fish, ?????, an acronym in Greek which proclaims Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. And like the Easter greeting, the sign of the fish served as a sign of welcome and greeting for the early Christian community, gathered together, we might say, around the sign of the fish, at once a symbol of what the gospel proclaims and an image of the community reconstituted in divine fellowship.
The Resurrection recalls us to a more complete and fuller view of our humanity in the divine fellowship. Through the resurrection of the understanding, we are privileged to participate in what we proclaim. The Risen Christ is in our midst. He invites us to “come and have breakfast”. In him, every meal breaks the fast and becomes a feast, a feast of the Resurrection. Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour, have mercy upon us.
Fr. David Curry
Choral Evensong
Easter 2, 2015
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2015/04/19/sermon-for-the-second-sunday-after-easter-400pm-choral-evensong/
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