Forgiven-ness

“Forgiven-ness”

By Rev. Jennifer Lapinskas

For Grace Lutheran Church, Green Bay, Wis.

April 21 & 22, 2007

Forgiveness, strictly from a grammatical sense, is a rather odd word. Usually you don’t add the suffix -ness to a verb. Even with the relatively recent phenomenon of “verb-ing” you still don’t see a lot of “ness-ing” going on. Like, jump-ness or run-ness or fish-ness. Usually one only adds -ness to adjectives so you get words like boldness, goodness, badness, happiness.

So the more proper term would be forgiven-ness, which, of course makes it a rather complicated word to say. That might actually be appropriate since the concept of forgiven-ness or forgiveness or being forgiving and forgiven, can also be rather complicated. Nonetheless, forgiven-ness or even forgiving-ness may more accurately describe the message the word is trying to convey: a state of being as opposed to something you do. A continued way of being rather than something that happens once and is over.

Were Peter and company thinking about forgiveness, forgiven-ness or forgiving-ness that fateful night they caught no fish? They had to have had a lot on their minds. They had seen the risen Lord, alleluia. But they seemed now to be in a bit of a state of “now what”-ness. That’s all well and good, Jesus is risen, risen indeed, so, what’s next?

Well, we go fishing, that’s what’s next.

And right then and there it feels to us as readers and hearers as though we’ve gone all the way back to the beginning of the story. The disciples go back to doing what they had done before Jesus had entered the picture. What they had done before the miracle at Cana with the water turning to wine, before the miraculous feeding of the 5000, before the blind man was healed. They went back to the lives they had led before Jesus had washed their feet and given them a new command to love as they had been loved. They went back to the people they were before they had abandoned their beloved teacher and friend, before they, like Peter, had denied him not once, but three times.

They were starting over, going back to what was familiar.

Only, they couldn’t go back. Those darn fish just wouldn’t cooperate. They toiled all night long, but had nothing to show for it. And so what seemed like the right thing to do at the time, or at least not the wrong thing, just wasn’t panning out for them. While they were trying to go on as though nothing had changed, turns out everything had and there simply was no going back.

For their time with Jesus had changed those disciples, and it kept on changing them, because for heaven’s sake, Jesus just wouldn’t leave them alone. He wouldn’t let them be. He kept on showing up wherever they tried to hide, behind locked doors, out on a lake in the middle of the night. Jesus refused to leave them locked away in their fear and their despair. He refused to leave them entangled in sinfulness and unforgiven-ness.

I wonder how long Jesus was standing there on the shore, watching the disciples. For all they knew, he could have been there all night, unseen, but there, hovering, waiting, watching them struggle and toil. We’ll never know, because the gospel-writer doesn’t tell us. What we do know is that when the first rays of the sun began to peep over the horizon, he called out to his beloved disciples – “Hey kids, catch anything?”

Ugh. Anyone who has ever been fishing knows how much it stings to have to answer that question in the negative. It doesn’t matter if you’re fishing in a holey bucket with a bare hook. To have to admit that you’ve been out there for who knows how long and have nothing to show for it is just no fun at all. Trust me, I’ve been there. What’s worse is when the person who asks throws out unasked-for advice.

“Try the other side of the boat...”

Did the disciples grumble at all when Jesus said this? After all, they didn’t know it was him just yet. Or were they so desperate to catch something, anything, that they’d try anything, any bit of advice because the worst they could do was catch more nothing? Again, we don’t know. What we do know is they follow Jesus’ instruction, toss out the net on the right side of the boat and, voila! Fish-a-palooza!

With all of those fishy scales flashing before their eyes, it is of course the beloved disciple who finally sees the man on the shore for who he is, “Hey look everyone, it’s the Lord!”

And then Peter, good old Peter does what he does best – scrambles around, throws on his clothes so he’ll be properly attired when he greets Jesus on the shore, throws himself overboard, splashes up to the beach and runs up to Jesus dripping wet, seaweed in his hair...oh Peter.

I’ve said it before and will say it again, “Thank God for Peter”. Because once again, it is through Peter that we see so clearly how this forgiveness, this forgiven-ness thing works in our lives.

For Peter, of all of the disciples in the boat, was both most excited to see Jesus, and yet also quite likely, the most afraid. Everyone had run away at Jesus’ hour, but of the remaining disciples, only he, only Peter, had failed Jesus so utterly and so completely. Only he had sworn to go to the death for Jesus only to deny him three times when the going got tough.

Then again, as we find out at the end of today’s reading, Peter, when he told Jesus he’d lay down his life for him, was right, he would. But he had to see what he was and wasn’t made of before that could happen.

He had to recognize, as all of us do at some point in our lives, whether it’s because like Peter we aren’t able to keep a promise we made in good faith and hopeful earnestness, or because we are stricken by illness, or because a loved one is taken from us, that at the last we are utterly and completely helpless, we aren’t in control. In order to be able to give up his life for Jesus, Peter had to sit there by that fire, in Jesus’ presence and realize how much nothing he had to offer – all Peter had, all we have, all anyone has no matter who they are, where they come from or what great things they have done in their lives, all anyone has in the final accounting of things, is sin, denial, betrayal, abandonment, rejection of our Lord.

Peter had to sit there by the fire and realize all of that and realize too that here was Jesus, not condemning, laughing, pointing, making cruel jokes at his expense, but giving him bread and fish. Asking him, “Do you love me?” as many times as Peter had denied him, giving Peter the chance not to atone for his sins, but to hear, to taste, to see, to believe that his sins already had been forgiven. Peter had to realize he had nothing in order to see that he had already been given everything.

In order to hear that Jesus knew Peter loved him and that Jesus wanted Peter to know he was loved in return. He was part of the fold. He was not only part of the fold, but he was also a shepherd, a odd kind of shepherd who would lead by himself being led away to places he otherwise would never have gone, to do things that apart from Christ and his forgiving-ness, he never would have done.

Truly, truly, though, that should come as no surprise. It’s what Jesus does, it’s what Jesus has been doing since the very beginning, starting with all that wine, then all those loaves and all those fish, from the beginning he’s been giving freely, abundantly. It’s the same thing he did when he offered himself up to die, when his hour had come, when he gobbled up our sin and our shame and our unworthiness on the cross, when he took from us death and gave us life in return.

It’s what he does. He finds us wherever we’re hiding, draws us to himself, and fills us with his gracious, merciful love, saturates us with grace so that we find ourselves drowning in forgiven-ness. Drowning in forgiven-ness that is so irresistible that, just like Peter, even though we know deep down in our dull, dark hearts that the Lord must be mightily disappointed in us for the way we have denied and betrayed him, still we throw ourselves into the water and race to shore, hungry, wet and hoping beyond hope.

It is a crazy thing we do, when you think about it, the way we throw ourselves into confession at the start of worship each week. It’s a crazy thing to do unless you have been drawn into forgiven-ness through the water and Word of baptism, washed, wrapped, drowned in promises made by God that God intends to keep.

For God has promised to forgive, to put us into forgiven-ness and he’ll do whatever it takes show us that that promise will be, has been, is kept in Jesus Christ. He’ll show us the promise kept through the agony of the cross, through the echo of the empty tomb, and through the faithful albeit flawed witness of Jesus’ disciples throughout the ages.