John 21:1-19 page 1

I got my first experiences of preaching and leading worship in a Youth Preaching Team that took services in Methodist churches in my native north London. One year we had to take a service on the Sunday after Easter, and the experienced preacher who oversaw our services told us it was traditionally called 'Low Sunday'.

Why Low Sunday, we asked? She explained that it was as if - after all the joy and celebration of Easter - you had to come down to earth again.

Oh, we said - Hangover Sunday.

It was on another Hangover Sunday - or Low Sunday - in the 1980s that I was sitting in a congregation, listening to a preacher called Chris West preach on this very passage. He compared the work of Jesus in this story to that of one who is a master restorer of paintings. His sermon had a huge impact on me. It was the morning I first realised that God was calling me beyond the job I was doing and into something else.

Today isn't Hangover Sunday - that was last week. But with that powerful personal experience of this passage in my own life, I thought I ought to declare it openly at the beginning of this sermon. It means that I have to do a lot of work to see fresh significance in this story. I have preached on the story several times, and I also have to get beyond those sermons so that I don't just repeat them.

I think what I've found for this morning is something that combines both some of the old and the new. I want us to think about a couple of the ways in which the risen Jesus brings hope into our brokenness - the brokenness of our work, and the brokenness of our Christian witness. Both our work and our witness are areas where we often struggle with futility and failure. But in John 21 Jesus transforms both. Let's explore how.

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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration.