The Opposite of Secret

John 21:1-19

3^rd Sunday of Easter

22 April 2007

 

Want to know a secret?

 

Are there any more powerful, seductive words than those?  It starts on our childhood playgrounds – little girls and little boys whispering secrets.  The sharing of secrets is automatically selective – secrets let us know who is out and who is in.  We feel privileged to know someone’s secret.  We feel excluded when we know that others are privy to information that we are not.

 

That information can be as trivial as the secret ingredient of a recipe.  I once had delicious barbecue chicken at the home of some friends.  I asked what was in the sauce.  “Oh, it’s very simple,” the wife replied, and she rattled off the ingredients.  Then her husband said, “What about the honey?”  The look she shot him said it all – she had meant to keep that ingredient secret!  I have known more than one southern cook who would happily give out a requested recipe, only to leave out the secret ingredient that really made it good.

 

When we have secrets, we usually want to keep them (sometimes to our detriment).  But if someone else has a secret, we want to know it. Want to know a secret?  Oh yes, yes we do.  Any sentence that begins “The secret to….”  or “The secret of…” has our attention.  A George Burns’ quote recently grabbed my attention because it began:  “The secret of a good sermon is…”  Hey, tell me!  According to him, “The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, and then to have the two as close together as possible.”  I’m not making any promises.

 

Perhaps the most powerful secrets are those that promise us some exclusive knowledge that guarantees our lives will get better in some key way.  Those are the secrets we want to know most.  Is there a secret to making money?  A secret to finding romance?  A secret to raising children?  A secret to success?  A secret to a happy life?  These are the things we want most, and if there is some secret to getting them – we want to know it.

 

There is no shortage of people willing to sell you their secret.  The latest effort in this direction has made a remarkable splash, aided by extremely effective marketing.  It came out first on DVD and now as a book, and it is called, brilliantly, The Secret.  Its website calls it “the great secret” of the universe, and promises that it is “the secret to everything - … unlimited joy, health, money, relationships, love, youth: everything you have ever wanted.”[i]   Wow!  Who wouldn’t want that secret?  The website goes on to say that “The Secret has existed throughout the history of humankind.  It has been discovered, coveted, suppressed, hidden, lost and recovered.  It has been hunted down, stolen, and bought for vast sums of money.”[ii]   Some of the greatest people who have ever lived knew this secret: Plato, Leonardo, Galileo, Beethoven, Lincoln, Edison, Einstein.  This secret once belonged only to a few, but now “for the first time in history” it is being revealed to anyone who wants to know it, it is being made available to you and me.  For a fee.

 

But you can save your money, because I’m about to tell you for free what it is they’re trying to sell.  Here is “The Secret” – you create your own reality.  Your thoughts determine your experience. There is a “Law of Attraction” at work in the universe that dictates this fundamental truth – you will attract what you think about.  So if you think positively, good things will happen.  Think negatively, and bad things will happen.  Your mind has the power to attract into your life whatever you want.  If your mental focus is strong enough and your joy in yourself is bursting out of you enough, everything will happen in your life as you want it to.  Health, wealth, happiness – all yours.

 

This is no new “secret.”  It’s the same old health and wealth gospel in new – and very market-savvy – packaging.  The power of positive thinking  - with it, you can supposedly get out of debt, make lots of money, enjoy optimum health, attract a beautiful partner, and even find the best parking spot.  (Because there is no narcissistic impulse too trivial).  The Secret is all about abundance – abundance for me, me, me, and abundance in material form.

 

I do not know how the proponents of the Law of Attraction explain certain realities in our world.  Genocide in Darfur.  The massacre in Virginia .  Children dying every day from preventable hunger, malnutrition, and disease. People with inoperable, incurable cancer.  Surely these people did not bring all these terrible things into their own lives, by not thinking positively enough.

 

Such a suggestion is appalling.  I am equally appalled, though, by the very narrow understanding of what true abundance is.  Money, beauty, health, youth, romance, success – and all for me.

 

This morning’s Gospel story gives us a picture of abundance, and it stands in some contrast to our usual me-centered understandings.  It is some time after Jesus has been raised and appeared to the disciples in Jerusalem .  John doesn’t say how long after, but long enough for the disciples to travel back to Galilee, which was home.  There are seven disciples now, and we are not told what has happened to the others. After the peak moment of your life, what do you do?  Yes, things had ended happily – the resurrection had happened and they thought everything had changed.  But what now?  The world still looked the same, and life ground back into place.  What do you do when your happy ending has ended?

 

These seven disciples went home, to Galilee.  They went back to their livelihood, which was fishing.  Back to their former life, back to the way things had been before Jesus came along.  They are getting on with their lives.

 

Only it’s not working out so well.  They sit out on that lake all night, but all they pull up are empty nets.  Then, as day begins to break, a voice calls from the shore: Throw your nets to the other side, and you will find some fish.  So (without questions) they cast the net, and this time, when they pull up, they are not even able to haul it in because there are so many fish.  And now the beloved disciple knows who’s on the shore.  “It is the Lord!” he calls out.  And at that, Peter puts some clothes on, because he had been fishing naked, and he jumps into the sea.

 

It is a marvelous moment, almost cartoonish in its portrayal of his enthusiasm.  They are not far from shore – only 100 yards out – and still Peter cannot wait for them to dock.  He throws on his clothes and dives on in.  In those days, greeting someone was considered a religious act, which meant it was to be done with respect, and fully-clothed.  So Peter, caught between propriety and urgency, chooses both.  And in a matter of moments, he moves from mostly naked, to fully clothed, to sopping wet and flailing through the water towards Jesus.  Having ruined his opportunity to claim Jesus once, when it counted most, he will not miss an opportunity again to make his love and fidelity known.

 

He gets to shore, and the others too, and there stands Jesus in the morning light, charcoal fire glowing on the beach, fish and bread sizzling over it.  And Jesus tells them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.”  And when Peter goes to drag the net out of the boat, we see just how big the haul really is – it is full of large fish, John tells us, 153 of them, and even though there were so many, the net was not torn.

 

And so for John, Jesus’ earthly ministry ends with the same kind of miracle it started with – a miracle of abundance.  At Cana, Jesus’ inaugural act of ministry was to turn water into wine.  A gorgeous sign of abundance and life.  And now, post-resurrection, something new is inaugurated with another unexpected, unprecedented, outrageous sign of abundance and life. The first time what was inaugurated was Jesus’ ministry; this time, it is ours, the ministry of the church in the post-resurrection age.  The first time was at a wedding, a once-in-a-lifetime kind of event.  This time it is while people are going about their work, an ordinary everyday kind of moment.  When Peter brings the catch in, John uses the word “haul” which, in Greek, is the same verb he used much earlier in chapter 6 to describe those who come to Jesus from God – “No one can come to me unless drawn [hauled!] by the Father who sent me” (6:44).  And again in chapter 12 to describe the salvation that would come through Jesus’ death – “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw (haul!) all people to myself” (12:32).[iii]   Now it is Peter doing the hauling.  Now it is not only God and Jesus who will draw people in, it is the disciples (and us), too.

 

These miracles – first the wine, now the fish – these are signs pointing to the true abundance – the gift of Jesus’ life in love.  Unexpected, unprecedented, outrageous gift, out of the fullness of God’s grace and love.  Here is the truth – you do not create your own reality with the power of your thinking.  A new reality has been put into place by God’s self-giving love in Christ – the world is made new, you and I are made new, not to get for ourselves but to be drawn to God and to draw others in to that same abundant love.  A love that sets free and set right what we could not free and could not right ourselves.

 

And that abundance comes with an invitation.  The first invitation comes as soon as all those glistening fish are hauled to shore.  “Come and have breakfast,” he says.  It is the invitation to be fed by him.  The invitation to recognize him whenever we share a meal with another.  And it is the invitation, too, to a new beginning.  The last meal they had shared with him had been at nighttime, we call it the last supper.  But this is breakfast, it is a new day.  We could call it to the “first breakfast.”[iv]   Here is a new beginning for us and for any who would join him – not a beginning that we create out of our own will, but one that is given to us by the One who wants to feed us.

 

The next invitation comes as soon as they’d finished breakfast.  Jesus turns to Simon Peter, and asks, “Do you love me?” and Peter responds, “Yes, Lord, you know that I do.”  Three times Jesus asks.  Three times Peter affirms.  Some might say that his three affirmations make up for his three denials on the night of Jesus’ arrest.  But Peter knows that it is not his answers that set things right – it is Jesus’ grace.  It is not that three denials plus three affirmations equals a clean slate.  That is not how it works at all.  With the gift of his life, Jesus has completely changed the equation.  He has made all things new.  He has wiped the slate.  He has set Peter – and us – free.

 

And it is in that freedom and in the power of that grace that Jesus gives Peter a new invitation – “Feed my sheep,” he tells him.  What Peter and the others have been given – new life, new love, new beginning, and hope – he now tells Peter to turn and give others.  On his last night with them, Jesus had told them, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (13:34-35).  Where once Peter denied he belonged to Jesus, now he has the chance to turn his love for Jesus into practice, into the visible sign that he belongs to him.  He pledges not just his love, but his life.[v]   His life will no longer be oriented around himself – his old fears, his old guilt, his old desires – his life now is oriented around love for Jesus, and care for Jesus’ sheep.

 

We live in a hungry, broken, suffering world.  Certain things will never change.  There will always be senseless violence.  There will always be war.  There will always be people hurting other people.  There will always be tragedy, heartbreak, grief, and sin.  But there can also be this: people shining like daybreak; people pledging their love and their lives to the One who came bringing only goodness and grace; people strengthened by his feeding turning to share that food – spiritual and physical – with a hungry world.  

 

It is the opposite of secret.  It is the opposite of getting everything we can for me, me, me.  It is abundance that is meant to be shared – abundance of love, life, hope, faith.  It is not meant only for a select few who are lucky enough or smart enough or work hard enough or think positively enough to get good things.  It is meant for everyone.  And you and I are charged not with keeping a good thing to ourselves but with broadcasting good news to all.  The gifts Jesus means to give are for everyone.

 

So the invitation isn’t, “Want to know a secret?”  It is this: “Come, eat what I offer.  And then go, feed my sheep.”