WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:11.160 There we go. Just cooking my breakfast. That's what I'm having. Sardines. Oh yes. Do you know, 00:00:11.599 --> 00:00:18.320 I love sardines and I'm the only member of our household that will go anywhere near them. 00:00:19.059 --> 00:00:23.539 Come to think of it, my family won't come anywhere near me after I've been eating them. 00:00:23.539 --> 00:00:29.199 I'm told it does something to my breath. Apparently it seems Tamara doesn't particularly 00:00:29.199 --> 00:00:36.320 fancy being kissed by a seal. Well, I suppose it's a surefire way of maintaining social distancing, 00:00:36.640 --> 00:00:41.799 but you know what? I don't care what they say because I know I'm in good company. 00:00:42.920 --> 00:00:49.039 According to our Bible reading today, Jesus himself was partial to a bit of the old broiled fish. 00:00:49.659 --> 00:00:55.439 And I think there's something not insignificant about that. Here's what I think is important 00:00:55.439 --> 00:01:02.519 about it because whether you like fish or not, in the gospel narratives, there's something about 00:01:02.519 --> 00:01:12.799 eating fish that simply represents, well, normality. Think about it. We find references to fish coming 00:01:12.799 --> 00:01:20.359 up all over the gospels. Remember that right up until he went off to Jerusalem, Jesus's life and 00:01:20.359 --> 00:01:26.379 ministry was lived out in and around Lake Galilee, basically where everyday life was sustained by 00:01:26.379 --> 00:01:33.859 fishing. Some of the first people whose lives Jesus got involved with were fishermen. Jesus's 00:01:33.859 --> 00:01:42.439 teaching on occasion took place by the water's edge. It was from a fishing boat that they saw Jesus walking 00:01:42.439 --> 00:01:50.259 on the water. And it was with just a handful of fish and a bit of bread to go with it that he fed the 00:01:50.259 --> 00:01:58.140 multitudes. Now, the list goes on. I guess there were inevitably people in and around Galilee who weren't 00:01:58.140 --> 00:02:04.939 massive fans of fish, although I reckon that they would have been few and far between. But that's not really my 00:02:04.939 --> 00:02:12.439 point. My point is, is that if you were a first century Galilean, fish wasn't just something you ate. 00:02:12.859 --> 00:02:18.620 It was more than that. It was something of a representation of ordinary daily life and work. 00:02:19.539 --> 00:02:27.599 So let's go back to the story in Luke 24. We've got a group of ordinary people in an ordinary place 00:02:27.599 --> 00:02:34.900 doing an ordinary thing, cooking, cooking fish. And it's right there in the ordinary that the 00:02:34.900 --> 00:02:41.360 resurrected Jesus appears. It's a scene that captures something of the essence of what the 00:02:41.360 --> 00:02:46.960 gospel is. You see, you've got the ordinary and then you've got the, well, let's call it what it is. 00:02:47.259 --> 00:02:52.860 We've got the strange because let's be honest, the gospel and its claims are rather strange. 00:02:53.379 --> 00:03:00.120 The resurrection of Jesus is strange. It's not part of our everyday experience that someone is raised 00:03:00.120 --> 00:03:07.539 from the dead. But that's what lies at the very heart and soul of Christian belief. The claim that 00:03:07.539 --> 00:03:14.840 God has done something very strange. Right in the midst of our ordinary daily experience, 00:03:15.080 --> 00:03:24.460 in which we've got used to brokenness, fear, pain, worry, grief, suffering, in that ordinary stuff 00:03:24.460 --> 00:03:32.659 with which we've become all too familiar, God does something very strange. And he tells us 00:03:32.659 --> 00:03:39.000 that life won't always be like this. So in this scene, we've got precisely this juxtaposition 00:03:39.000 --> 00:03:45.800 of the ordinary and the strange. We've got a group of friends cooking together. That's ordinary. 00:03:45.800 --> 00:03:53.760 The risen Jesus appears among them. That's strange. He asks if they've got anything to eat. Now that 00:03:53.760 --> 00:03:59.760 would be ordinary, but under the circumstances, it's pretty strange. They give him some fish, 00:03:59.860 --> 00:04:04.820 which he then eats. That's ordinary. But then he goes on to tell them that he's just changed the 00:04:04.820 --> 00:04:10.300 course of history through his death and resurrection, and that they are now going to form the movement, 00:04:10.300 --> 00:04:18.100 a.k.a. the church. That movement that will continue to see through that change. That's strange. 00:04:19.180 --> 00:04:24.740 Of course, we might write off the Christian message because of its strange nature. But, 00:04:24.800 --> 00:04:31.180 you know, I think that's too easy and too simplistic. Personally, I find the claims of the Christian 00:04:31.180 --> 00:04:37.519 gospel so compelling precisely because of its strangeness. I mean, come on, who would ever make 00:04:37.519 --> 00:04:43.740 that stuff up? And why would you ever make that up and then go on to die for the sake of telling 00:04:43.740 --> 00:04:50.819 others about it, which was precisely what the first disciples did? C.S. Lewis said this, 00:04:51.939 --> 00:05:00.240 Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe 00:05:00.240 --> 00:05:07.879 in Christianity. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we 00:05:07.879 --> 00:05:15.860 were making it up. But in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It just has that 00:05:15.860 --> 00:05:20.100 queer twist about it that real things have. 00:05:20.100 --> 00:05:30.800 In Christ, we have the strange and we have the ordinary. In his resurrection, the strangeness of hope 00:05:30.800 --> 00:05:39.640 and new life and peace that is way beyond our ordinary understanding bursts into our ordinariness. 00:05:40.939 --> 00:05:47.120 My prayer for you right now is that whatever the reality of your ordinariness is, 00:05:47.120 --> 00:05:55.199 that you will find that strange but real resurrection hope right there in that very place.