Sermon for Sunday, May 4, 2025 || Easter 3C || John 21:1-19

Let me start like this: I am not going to talk about Star Wars today. I was all prepared to write a sermon chock-full of Star Wars references because today is the unofficial Star Wars holiday, May the 4th, as in “May the Fourth be with you.” (And also with you.) But then I read the Gospel lesson for today, the story of Peter and the others fishing after the resurrection, and a powerful memory from my recent life surfaced. I feel compelled to share this memory with you instead of talking about Star Wars. And if you know me, then you know this compulsion must be pretty strong. So I’m going to spend a good chunk of this sermon sharing the story of my last conversation with a 101-year-old man the day before he died.

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I met Colman Ives about ten years ago at StoneRidge. His daughter Alison is a member here at St. Mark’s, and for the last several years of Colman’s long life so were he and his wife of 76 years, Ethyl. Colman was a man of deep faith and deep thought, one of many compassionate engineers I’ve met since coming to St. Mark’s. Colman had drunk deep of the Holy Scriptures over the course of his life, and in our many conversations, he mixed insight and curiosity in equal measures. I knew that one of his favorite passages of the Bible was today’s Gospel reading, but I didn’t know why until our final conversation.

I visited Colman in Avalon at StoneRidge on January 10, 2019. It was two days before my 36th birthday and one year before the Covid-19 pandemic began lurking in the United States. I walked into the room of this beautiful man who was born a year before the end of World War I. There he lay in the hospital bed, a white sheet and a thin blanket covering his narrow body. The days before death tend to shrink the body, as the body uses up the nutrients stored within it, rather than using new sustenance provided by food. But while Colman’s death-shrunken body lay on its side like a miniature mountain range beneath the bedclothes, his mind was just as sharp as ever.

I sat on a chair by the head of the bed and leaned in close so I could hear his voice, which had shrunk, like his body, to a profound whisper. “Lad,” he said, and the word contained his smile and his laugh and his love in its three letters. Colman always called me “lad.” I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed, and we talked for a long time about many things. At one point in the conversation, our thoughts drifted to the story of today’s Gospel. Colman recounted it for me in his whispered voice, this story of the disciples returning to their old job after the terrible and astonishing events of recent days, of the empty nets and fruitless night of fishing, of the Risen Christ on the beach calling out to them to lower their nets on the right side of the boat, of them obeying and catching a huge number of fish.

Suddenly, Colman’s hand appeared from beneath the blanket, a bony hand with paper thin skin, waxy and cold, but still surprisingly strong. He gripped my hand with his, opened his eyes, and looked straight into mine. It was one of those eternal moments that happens to us once in a great while, when our awareness of God’s presence is concurrent with our being in God’s presence. Colman’s voice rose above the whisper, and he spoke clearly. “Lad,” he said again. “Always remember to cast your net on the other side of the boat.”

Always remember to cast your net on the other side of the boat. This was the wisdom that a dear man full of years gave me hours before he died. I will never forget that moment as long as I live.

I’ve pondered this wisdom many times over the years since Colman imparted it to me on his deathbed. I can’t know for sure exactly what he meant me to learn from it, but I have some thoughts. The first has to do with the all-too-human trait of negligent inertia. Once we hit upon something that works we tend to stop innovating. We continue to do things as they’ve always been done because those things follow the path of least resistance. We fall into ruts and don’t have the energy to step out of them and blaze new trails when the old ways stop working as well as they once did.

But the thing about ruts is that once upon a time they weren’t ruts. Once upon a time, there were untrodden paths, and sets of feet trod upon them for the first time. Every rut began as a blazed trail. Every well-worn thing we’ve always done was innovative at some point in the past. When Colman told me to remember to cast my net on the other side of the boat, he was urging me not to be content with life as usual. He was urging me to get curious about why things are the way they are and to get creative about how things could be. He was urging me never to be content with a mediocre status quo when a glorious new way of being might be just there, down a newly blazed path.

But that invitation to trailblaze was only half of what made Colman’s parting words to me special. Colman also acknowledged the One who invited the disciples to cast the net on the other side. When you start down that newly blazed path, you never walk alone. The Spirit of the Risen Christ goes before us and behind us, above us and below us and within us. The Risen Christ called to the disciples, and they heeded his invitation before they even realized it was him. This tells me that we will meet the Spirit of Christ in others, that their inspired counsel and guidance will change the trajectory of our lives if we listen well. Those Spirit-inspired companions who walk the way with us help to pull us out of the ruts that we find ourselves in. They speak words of truth and grace into our lives. Colman spoke words of truth and grace into mine.

So as you go forth from this place today, I urge you the same way Colman urged me: “Always remember to cast your net on the other side of the boat.” Do not let negligent inertia rob you of the surprise of new and lifegiving ways of being. Listen for the voice of Christ in others inviting you to break free and blaze new trails. And no matter what path you find yourself on, the Risen Christ is there, walking one step before us and beckoning us to follow in his footprints.