Colour Supplement

Articles by Christians around the world

Sunday 29 April 2007

 

The unknown Jesus

a sermon preached by Tricia Anderson - Reader at St. Andrew's, on Sunday 22 April 2007

 

 

The disciples did not know that it was Jesus.

Pardon?

What was that?

These men had spent about 3 years with Jesus.

They had walked and talked, ate and drank with the man.

Yet they did not know it was him?

 

Yet throughout the resurrection stories we meet this same theme.

They did not know it was Jesus.

Well, they didn’t expect Jesus, if he really had risen, to appear in such ordinary circumstances.

What about flashes of lightning?

Or a fanfare of trumpets?

Where’s the drum roll and the crash of cymbals?

 

That first Easter morning, while it was still dark, the women went to the tomb to find it empty.

Mary stayed weeping.

Her special friend was not only dead, but his body had been stolen.

She was grief-stricken.

Then she saw a man standing in the garden with her.

She did not know that it was Jesus.

She thought he was the gardener - not unreasonably.

Dawn was only just breaking; Mary probably hadn’t had much sleep; and she didn’t expect the corpse to have come back to life.

But when he spoke, and called her by name, she recognised him.

The risen body might look different, so that his friends had difficulty  recognising him, but the voice was unmistakable.

 

Then the couple on the road to Emmaus.

If Luke’s Cleopas is the same person as John’s Clopas, then the couple were Jesus’ aunt and uncle - but that’s just conjecture on my part.

I have found nothing to support it.

However, they had obviously known him quite well.

Yet they  did not know that it was Jesus.

As far as they were concerned he was a fellow traveller, yet one who seemed not to know what had happened in Jerusalem during the past week.

He talked to them in great depth about the Messiah starting from Moses  and the prophets, and still they did not know him.

It was only when he broke the bread in the old familiar fashion that they knew.

 

And so to today’s gospel story.

The disciples obeyed Jesus’ instruction to go  to Galilee.

While they were waiting, they decided to go out and fish.

After all, at least 4 of them were fishermen.

So there were 7 of them were in the boat after a fruitless night’s fishing, when they saw Jesus on the shore.

But they did not know that it was Jesus.

Even when he called out ‘Have you any fish?’ they still didn’t recognise him.

Maybe they thought he was someone hoping to buy some fish.

When he told them to cast their net on the other side of the boat and they made an astonishing haul, they still weren’t sure.

 

The risen Jesus had lit a fire to grill fish for their breakfast, and had brought some bread, too, but they still wanted to ask ‘Who are you?’                       

Why didn’t they know that it was Jesus?

Because they didn’t expect Jesus, if he were risen, to appear in such commonplace circumstances.

It was much easier to think that he was the gardener, a fellow dusty traveller, someone looking to buy fish.

 

And we today, are we any different?

Do we tend to shut God up in musty churches and cathedrals, and forget him as we go about  our lives day by day, just as the Pharisees made sure that Jesus’ body was shut away in the tomb?

Perhaps we might prefer it that way, because God has an annoying habit of demanding our attention wherever we may be, no matter how inconvenient it is.

 

Remember, God created the world for us to enjoy, for us to enjoy in his company.

Think of him walking and talking in the garden with Adam and Eve just after he’d finished creating all things; right at the beginning when everything was GOOD.

He pops into our lives from day to day in quite ordinary circumstances.

 

So how do we recognise him?

We can’t go by looks, because he is not physically here.

Yet we, like the disciples, know he is with us.

 

We may meet him in a neighbour or the road-sweeper; the shop assistant or the waiter; the person next to you in the dentist’s waiting room; or the beggar on the footbridge.

 

We see him in other people who care for us; in the challenge to ‘throw out our nets on the other side’, and suddenly our lives are transformed.

 

The disciples took a while to grasp this at first, but when they did everything was changed for them.

The world was a different place and people found they were different, transformed by their experience of the risen Christ.

 

 

Tricia Anderson

 

Tricia is a Reader at St. Andrew's Church. This sermon was preached on Sunday 22 April 2007.

 

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