Back home and back to routine. My little family’s travelling is over for a while, and we’re feeling a shift of season. We came home to daffodils. There was weeding to do in the garden. We’ve spent to weekend unpacking and stocking up on groceries, walking in the sunshine and trying to remember where we are.
And now it’s Monday morning. Beangirl is back in school, hair-braided, backpack stuffed, belly almost too jittery for granola. She’s been working especially hard on her math homework and has a head full of numbers this morning. The Spouse is off to the university – he’s presenting a seminar this afternoon so my thoughts are there with him, too. As for me and Blue, we’re home together today. He is currently sprawled on the carpet, devising grand playmobile kingdoms, and I’m back to my Monday morning lectionary reading. It’s good to be home.
Lectionary reading is a funny discipline. Sometimes on Monday morning, it feels like it’s all about one verse. The others verses circle to provide context, but one verse demands attention. But today, it’s two whole stories, see-sawing back and forth, and I’m finding the balance in the middle. Saul on the road to Damascus and Peter returned to his nets. They are both familiar stories – some of those foundationally familiar ones – but I don’t think that I’ve read them together before. (Here are the links John 21:1-19 and Acts 9: 1-20 – take and look and see what I mean.)
Post-Easter, Peter has decided to get back to business. Let’s go fishing. He gets the rest of the gang on side and out to sea they go, but they have a hard night of it. Trying to get back into routine, but having no luck at all.
Saul, on the other hand, is headed to Damascus, ready to start the next stage of his ministry (if you can call it that), rounding up Christians to bring them back to the authorities in Jerusalem. You could say that work doesn’t go to well either.
Both are stopped in their tracks by the Risen Christ.
Now here’s the see-saw. Saul asks “Who are you, Lord?” Peter doesn’t – he doesn’t need to, nor do any of the disciples with him that day because, John tells us, they knew it was the Lord. Saul seemed to know something of the matter, too, because he addresses the arresting voice as Lord, and yet he still needs to ask. Maybe this is because it’s his first encounter with Christ. Maybe that’s just the way his heart and mind worked things out – by asking questions and seeking clear answers.
There’s something very personal going on here. Each of these disciples is met in his own context and called into something new, but not alien. Saul the righteous is called to become Paul the preacher – still teaching, still travelling, but now for Christ. Peter the fisherman is called to become Peter the fisher of men, the shepherd of a new flock.
In that flash of light, Paul is reminded that he is already blind, relying on old, dim knowledge when there’s something shining brighter. He needs to open his eyes to Christ. Peter, on the other hand, is reminded that his calling is about loving people. Christ has shown him how to love the crowds with healing and abundant love. But Peter has also seen into the darkness. Maybe it is in the shadow of his own frailty that he returns to the sea. Returning to fish for fish is deliberately turning away from his previous calling to catch people. Without Christ before his eyes, he can’t see a way forward for this kind of love.
(There’s a larger discussion here about love and what Jesus’ repetition of the word might mean. Without the background, Christ does come across as a little pedantic or Peter sounds unsure and maybe a bit dim. Word derivations help. Many commentators have puzzled this through – you can find a good run-through over at workingpreacher.org )
Christ’s love calls these disciples so personally. And love looks like all sorts of personal things. I think that’s important to note. Love can be flashing light or a quiet breakfast on the beach. Just like love can be hard questions and harder callings. Or it can be the peaceful gift of a quiet morning. Love can be ignoring the supper to play with the kids or it can be ignoring the kids to get supper on the table. It can be insisting. It can be giving way. (I think it can be honesty, but sometimes my kids say that’s just yelling. But I love them anyway.)
We are called from where we are, wherever we are. When I was snapping my daffodil photos this morning, I was frustrated that my camera’s focus kept changing and the cracks in the wall were more noticeable than the perfect colour of the daffs. But sometimes, that’s where we are. Too aware of the cracks, watching the flowers grow.
Seasons shift, and we are called forward. I’ve just started my third trimester and this pregnancy is feeling like a brief season to me. Three months ahead to celebrate my little family as it is right now and to prepare for our new small one. Three months to prepare for birth. In this season, I feel that I am called back into gentleness and fierce love– the gentleness of mothering small ones, the fierce love of birthing. These are the obvious ones. I am trying to be aware of the call to gentleness and fierce love in other places of my life. Maybe gentleness with myself in these days of slowness, carefulness, fierce love for my Church in all her vulnerability and differences. Love for community and tending love to serve others. Patience and gentleness in many things in this season of change, new growth and the return of warmth.
