Rev. Catherine Garlid
July 15, 2007
Deuteronomy 10: 17–21
John 21: 1-14
"Saltfish and Ackee, Anyone?"

Following the big April Nor’easter, FEMA set headquarters in Byram. To date they have seen 134 people and paid out 1 million dollars in Fairfield County. I was talking to one of the nurses at Greenwich Hospital who lives on Bible Street in Cos Cob about her visit with them. The only thing they could offer her was a loan because the damage to her house, though extensive, didn’t occur on the first floor or higher. There are people in our community still displaced by this storm.

In the NY Times on Thursday there was a front page picture of Gwendolyn Marie Allen, a proud yet hardened looking African American woman, who cares for a schizophrenic son and a severely retarded brother in Sugar Hill, one of the mobile home parks set up by FEMA after Hurricane Katrina. Very few of the residents have cars and Sugar Hill is 18 miles from the nearest grocery store. The public bus stops there only 4 times a week. In that same article was the story of Cindy Cole who with the hurricane had lost the promise of a good life living in a rented house next to her mother in New Orleans where she had a job at a Jack in the Box and an extended family childcare network. Cindy, too, now lives in Sugar Hill with no job and an unclear path to recovery.

It is easy to take shelter and familiar surroundings for granted, isn’t it? But that sense of being safe, of knowing your way around, and cherishing your dreams of the future, can be gone in a flash through natural disaster, through war or terrorism, through the loss of a job, or through sudden illness or injury. It is even possible to have everything in place and feel lost. There are two interesting books about adult development that describe the experience of being out of step with one’s surroundings, the title of one being, Lost in Familiar Places, the title of the other being In Over Our Heads: the Demands of Modern Life. Very few adults are equipped, the latter book says, to deal flexibly and creatively with the complexities of multicultural and organizational or institutional life. The fact is, all of us have known what it feels like to be lost, to have lost our bearings, to be at sea, to be off kilter, to feel disoriented – we have many ways and expressions for describing the experience.

Consider one more story: Simon had been a working man all his life, making a living through the sweat of his brow and the skill of his hands. Although life had never been easy, he was honest, law abiding, respectful of tradition, and God fearing. An itinerant preacher promised him rich rewards if he would only turn over all he had to the cause. Whatever sorrow he had would be turned to joy. His burdens would be relieved. He would have a new life. Simon took the bait, gave up everything he had known, and went on the road with the preacher. And then this preacher was discovered by the authorities to be a phony, a danger to the state, to the social order and to the religious establishment. The preacher is put to death. Simon Peter and his friends are lost.

This was the state of the disciples at the start of the passage that Enid read for us. We know the disciples were afraid, probably not just for their lives, but afraid also of the unknown. Where do we go from here? What do we do with our lives, given the loss of our dreams? They are hiding, a natural response to disappointment and even shame. How could we have allowed ourselves to get so invested? They had been staying inside with the doors shut, even 8 days after Jesus’ death. Jesus had appeared to them twice greeting them with the words, "Peace to you" and other times as well that John tells us were "not recorded in this book." And finally, undoubtedly tiring of being cooped up indoors and not knowing what else to do, Simon Peter says to six of his friends, six of the disciples, "I am going fishing." When all else fails, go back to the familiar. Go back to what you know from the bottom of your toes. And his friends respond, "We’re coming with you." So they put out, cast their nets and sat and sat and sat and talked and sat all night long and caught nothing. In the morning a stranger yelled to them from the shore, "Try the other side of the boat." They shrug, "What do we have to lose?" and bring the nets to the other side where they catch a lifetime’s worth in one haul.

Well, that was nice. Any of us would be happy for such a miracle but that wasn’t really what it is all about. Jesus was hoping they would be able to recover from their terrible sense of loss, find their bearings, find their footing and reengage with life without the miracle. "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed," or yet have been healed. The rest of the story is really what it is all about. It is about the warmth of a fire on the beach after a long, chilly night in the boat. It is about the sight of fresh bread, and the smell of fish already grilling on the fire. It is about the invitation. It is about simple kindness and human contact. None of us is expected to do it all alone. It is about hospitality, the giving and receiving of simple human kindness, of shelter from the storm, of food for the journey. Most of us in the Christian community do better at the giving than we do at the receiving. Here the disciples are asked to receive. They are the strangers and Jesus is the host. "Come and have breakfast," he says.

I chose this text to preach at another church earlier this spring. As many of you know, I supervise clergy, seminarians and lay people at Greenwich Hospital as they develop their skills in pastoral care ministry. This past year one of my students, Desmond, was the pastor of Bethel Tabernacle Church in Stamford, a Pentecostal church of the Apostolic tradition. Desmond and most of his congregation are of Jamaican heritage. He and I and his congregation are racially, culturally and theologically worlds apart. Of course Desmond is accustomed to transcending these differences regularly in order to adapt to mainstream culture, not that it was exactly easy for him to be ministering to so many white, liberal Protestants and Roman Catholics of Irish and Italian heritage at Greenwich Hospital. As the course was ending, Desmond invited his classmates and me to a special Sunday celebration at his church. Once a month they serve breakfast before their service, encouraging church members to bring along the folks they usually leave at home or a neighbor or friend. "Come and have breakfast." And he invited me to preach. (Gulp).

First, I have to tell you, the breakfast was incredible – all home cooked Jamaican foods, including fish dishes, plenty of fresh tropical fruit, freshly baked breads, and good, good coffee. Amazing hospitality. And then we went upstairs to worship. Desmond had asked me to dress according to the custom of his congregation: no slacks, to wear a dress and no jewelry. I felt positively naked without my earrings. And, I thought to myself, I suppose this means no sermon manuscript. To say I was nervous was an understatement. I was definitely the stranger. I began by telling them (somewhat tongue in cheek) that I had looked up Pentecostal on Wikipedia and this is what it said:

"Pentecostalism teaches that a person needs to repent and be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and then receive the Holy Spirit (to which they shouted, "Yes, Lord!") Receiving the Holy Spirit is necessary for salvation and includes speaking in tongues. One of the defining marks in some Pentecostal groups is emotionalism in worship and prayer (to which they shouted, "Thank you Jesus!"). They are known for raising their hands while singing and praying. They tend to be very vocal and expressive in their prayers, with cries of "Yes, Lord!," "Thank you, Jesus!", "Hallelujah!" and other spontaneous expressions of praise." And we were off and running. I told them how different it would be if I were preaching here…not only the difference in style and expression, but also without the words in front of me as a security blanket. My nervousness turned to energy and excitement. I was filled with the Holy Spirit and God only knows what I said! When it came to the fish on the beach, I know I said, come and have saltfish and ackee, one of the dishes we had shared downstairs before worship. (Ackee, by the way, is a kind of tropical fruit). I felt welcomed. I felt received and accepted. I felt even a little bit transformed by the experience. And they want me to come back!

This was hospitality in its truest form. It involved risk – on Desmond’s part for sure. How would his people respond to this white female preacher? On my part – could I really do it? Would they like me? Would they accept me? I have learned recently that not only does the word hospitality have its roots in the word guest and shelter (as in the word hospital or hospice) for the stranger or wayfarer, but its root is related also to the word "hostility." True hospitality runs the risk of rejection or even attack. Jesus’ most radical gesture of hospitality was the gesture of open arms, the same posture he bore on the cross. We take risks in giving. And we take risks in receiving. The implications are enormous – in our own neighborhoods, as we move into new neighborhoods, as we reach out to persons different from us, as we engage in diplomacy throughout the world. Sometimes we are the guest and sometimes the host.

In closing I would like to point us to two more pieces of scripture, the first being the Old Testament lesson from Deuteronomy, which reminds us of the longstanding mandate in Jewish tradition to care for the orphan and the widow and to feed and clothe the stranger. "Therefore love the stranger," it says, "for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." You know what it feels like. We all know what it feels like, don’t we…

The other scripture is the passage in John that immediately follows "breakfast on the beach." Jesus looks to Simon Peter and asks him, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me more than these, (your fishing buddies)?" And Simon Peter answers, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." And Jesus asks him the same question two more times, perhaps to help Simon Peter and the others who are listening in, really experience the extent of that love that had left them feeling so bereft. And once they had held and tasted that precious love, he said to them "Feed my sheep." You have been the stranger. You have been the guest. You have held, you have tasted, you have been fed. Now go forth and be the host.

Amen