Jesus Wants To Ruin Your Life

This morning, with the help of the apostle Peter, I want to try and explain why it’s Jesus’ intention to ruin your life for you and why, in the long run, that’s actually a very good thing.

The passage we read together this morning is strange for a whole host of reasons, some of which we’ll dip into later. But the strangest aspect of this passage is why it’s there at all.

Last week we read the story of doubting Thomas in John chapter 20, and if we’d read right on to the end of the chapter, we’d have heard these words:

“In his disciples' presence Jesus performed many other miracles which are not written down in this book. But these have been written in order that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through your faith in him you may have life.”

Now could that sound any more like a conclusion? John is surely winding things up, here, isn’t he? I’ve told you about some of the things that happened through Jesus, I could have told you lots more, but I’ve put these down so that you yourselves can believe in him.

A perfectly good way to end a gospel. But it’s not the end. It’s the gospel equivalent of a false summit, because after chapter 20 comes chapter 21.

And there are some strange discontinuities between chapters 20 and 21 which have puzzled careful readers for hundreds of years.

Why does John end his gospel, only to keep going?

How come the disciples are suddenly in Galilee when in the previous chapter they were in Jerusalem?

How come they don’t recognise Jesus if he’d already appeared to them twice in the upper room?

But the most pressing question is why, if they’ve already seen him, been convinced of his resurrection, been empowered by his Spirit and commissioned to continue Jesus’ work in the world, why are they heading back to their boats and their nets?

Well there are plenty of hypotheses, but no one definitive answer to that particular puzzle, and for that reason alone we probably shouldn’t lose too much sleep over it.

What’s fascinating, though, is that John, or someone from his religious circle, thought fit to add what amounts to a PS to the entire gospel. Someone came to the conclusion that the material recorded in John 21 was just too important to leave out.

So let’s reflect on why that might have been.

“After this”, John tells us, “Jesus appeared once more to his disciples at Lake Tiberias” which is just another name for the Sea of Galilee.

Seven disciples were there – five named and two unnamed. Peter, James, John and Nathanael were all locals in Galilee, and it’s possible that the other three were as well, although we can’t be sure.

After three years on the road, these men were coming home, but it’s a strange kind of homecoming. They’d risked everything to go off after this itinerant preacher, and everyone knew what had happened to him, though there were whispers that he’d come back to life somehow.

And my guess is that the returning disciples had a muted kind of reception.

Mothers would embrace them and look into their eyes with concern.

Long-suffering wives would sigh and shake their heads; pounding the dough just a little bit harder.

Children would smile but keep their distance, trying to gauge if these men they once knew were still the same.

Neighbours would look them up and down, and long to know more, but respect, or fear, meant few dared to ask anything of them.

Everywhere they went, eyes would follow.

I wonder how many days it took of feeling like a square peg in the round hole you used to call home before Peter decided he had to go fishing.

We all do it, don’t we?

When life’s uncertain and we don’t know how things are going to pan out, we always seek out the comfort of what we know best.

We can do it positively – we ring or visit people we trust; we throw ourselves into work or leisure that preoccupies us for a while.

Or we can do it negatively by hiding in our addictions.

But when the going gets tough – we all head for that place where we can forget the world for a while and lose ourselves in something.

For Peter, it was the freedom of pushing away from the shore and leaving behind everyone and everything but the task in hand. The slap of water against the sides of the boat; the weight of the nets in his hands; the wriggling silver treasure stolen from the depths. This was what he knew. He was a fisherman. He needed to be back on the water.

And so that’s where he went; and the others followed him.

What would you give for a conversation with Peter at this point in his life?

What was he thinking?

Had the pressures of the last three years, and most especially the last few weeks brought him to the place where he just wanted to hide for a while?

Did his heart surge when he saw Jesus alive again after the resurrection, and crash almost immediately when he remembered how he’d betrayed him?

Should we think of his going fishing as a kop-out, or as a long deep breath that might allow him to find his bearings?

Did he think he could just return to his old life and pick up the pieces again?

He certainly tried. But as luck would have it, they spent the whole night fishing and caught nothing.

And we know how that feels too., don’t we? When the places we run to for solace don’t deliver on their promises.

“Have you caught anything lads?” a voice calls from the shoreline.

“No” they bark – tired and frustrated.

“Try casting your nets on the right side of the boat” says the voice. And because, as commentators will tell you, it’s sometimes easier to spot a shoal of fish from the shore than on the sea itself, they do what he says. And the nets instantly fill.

“It’s the Lord” says John. And in that moment, something snaps within Peter. He jumps over the side and starts swimming to shore, and there they find Jesus barbecuing some fish and baking some bread for them. Not the acts of a ghost or an hallucination, and this, perhaps is part of the reason John wanted to include this story.

But go back to that moment in the boat where Peter hurls himself into the lake and starts swimming for the shore.

To my mind, that’s the moment when Peter realises that Jesus has, in the nicest possible way, ruined his life for him.

Ruined how?

Ruined in the same way my tolerance of instant coffee was ruined the first time I tasted a cup made with freshly ground coffee. Having experienced the real thing, I could never willingly go back.

Ruined in the same way Hugh Grant was ruined in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Having fallen in love with the enigmatic American played by Andi McDowell, no other woman would ever be good enough; not even the woman he was standing beside at the front of the church and mistakenly about to marry….

Ruined in the same way I was ruined when I first heard the Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel, who is, in my humble estimation, the greatest acoustic guitar player in the world. Ruined because having heard him play I long to be as good as him, but I know fine well I could practice from now ‘til Kingdom come and never come close. But for all that, part of me still wants to try.

Jesus, in the nicest possible way, has ruined Peter’s life for him because having spent time with Jesus, the things Peter loved which gave him his identity, good though they were, could never have the same allure again. The ground of his being had shifted. His centre of gravity had shifted irrevocably toward Jesus.

Knowing what he knows; seeing what he’s seen, he can’t go back to his old life even if he tries. And the moment he realises that, he leaps out of the boat like a salmon and swims to shore, because if his old life’s ruined, he wants his new life to begin as soon as possible.

I am glad to be able to stand here today and say to you that - in that sense - Jesus has ruined my life and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

This collar counts for very little; it’s certainly not a guarantee of holiness. I stumble my way through the days like everyone else and most of the time I don’t think I do an especially good job of being a Christian. But the little I’ve got to know Jesus by keeping company with him over the years has convinced me that I can’t build my life on any other foundation.

In that respect, I’m ruined, thank God.

Like Peter, there are times when I want to run away, to put distance between myself and God, to retreat into the comfort of what I know for certain and can manage. But as I sit there, like Peter, bobbing up and down on the water, I know in my heart of hearts that I won’t find what I’m looking for anywhere else other than in the company of God. I always end up swimming back to shore.

Let me tell you a secret. I feel like an alien and a stranger in this community quite a lot of the time. There is such conspicuous consumption. I sit in my car at the school some days and watch these enormous shiny automobiles roll up, many of them costing more than our first flat did.

So many people seem to live for these things; it’s like their identity is bound up not in who they are, but in what they own. And I feel neither envy nor admiration as I watch them climbing down out of these fantastic wagons. It’s more like a kind of sadness I feel.

In that world, I’m a dead loss and I know it. I don’t really care what I drive as long as it gets from A to B reasonably fast and reasonably economically. I don’t really care what kind of shoes my 4 year old wears as long as they keep her feet warm and dry. I don’t really care where we go on holiday, as long as we’re together and we have a good time.

Jesus has ruined my chances of ever feeling at home in the world of competitive consumerism – thank God

I’m reminded of an old spiritual we used to sing in Sunday School when I was a child:

“Turn your eyes upon Jesus – look full in his wonderful face.
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace”.

The things of earth will grow strangely dim – that’s a good way of putting it, I think.

One way of living has been ruined for me; and a new life, a different kind of life, is slowly emerging from the rubble.

I wish I could tell you it was all plain sailing and wonderful, but that would be a lie. I have days when it feels like it’s coming together and days when it feels like it’s falling apart. But in the middle of it all I’ve become convinced in the core of my being that the secret to the kind of life I want to lead is found in this man cooking fish and baking bread on the shoreline.

I’ve come to see that life is not about what I can make of myself, but what God, in his generous hospitality, can make of me.

He’s woken something up inside me. A longing to live well. And I know that even if I practiced from now ‘til Kingdom come, I’d never get to where he wants me to be. But for all that, part of me still wants to try. The ground of my being has shifted.

How about you?

Have you tasted enough of Jesus, have you been with him enough for him to begin ruining your life a little? Messing with your priorities and your plans? Rocking your boat?

Has the tantalising scent of baking bread and barbecued fish reached you across the water, sometimes? Giving you a sense of the possibilities that lie elsewhere if you dare to leave behind the security of what you know.

Has your knowledge of Jesus inflamed any desire in you for a different way of living?

It seems to me that today, Peter in the most vivid way possible is showing us the heart of the existential decision we all must make. To keep a tight grip on the lives we have with all their comforting familiarity, or to plunge into whatever the Galilean might have in store for us, and put our lives into his hands.

“Whoever wants to save his life will lose it” says Jesus “But whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.”

The good news today is that Jesus wants to ruin this thing you call your life. But only so he can draw you into a better one.

Thanks be to God for the promise and the challenge of his word.