Easter 3 (NL4) John B. Valentine
John 21:1-14 May 1, 2022

“THE GREAT RESIGNATION”

“The Great Resignation”. Do you know that thing???

Now ... those of you who say “Oh yeah” are going to have to be a little bit patient ... because some of the folks in this room aren’t as tuned in to current events as you hipsters ... but give me a moment or two to get them up to speed.

“The Great Resignation” is this social phenomenon we seem to be witnessing right now wherein people are walking away from their jobs ...... just walking away.

It started early last year ... in like January of 2021 ... about nine months into the pandemic ... people started just walking away from their jobs ... and the trend apparently hasn’t abated all that much.

But why???

Now ....

• Some of the so-called experts think that it is due to all the stress brought on by the pandemic ...

• Some think it’s due to the fact that people don’t think that they’re getting paid what they’re worth ...

• And some think it’s just a culmination peoples’ desire to create a better work-life balance ...

But ... in any event ... there’s a whole bunch of people in the past year-and-a-half who have just walked away from their jobs ... and aren’t coming back.

Folks that are just sick-and-tired of their jobs and don’t seem to think that work is worth it any more.

Now ... lest you think that I’m making this up ...

• “The Great Resignation” is why they put signs on the doors of some of our local Starbucks earlier this winter which read ‘Temporarily Closed Due to Staffing Issues’. They just didn’t have enough staff to staff anything but the drive-thru windows.

• “The Great Resignation” is why OSH in Moraga recently changed it operating hours ... because they don’t have enough workers to maintain a fuller schedule.

• “The Great Resignation” is why ... even though there’s been a general easing of county health restrictions ... a number of our local banks have signs up inviting you to ‘visit one of their other branches’.

It’s this weird phenomenon wherein there’s an abundance of available jobs ... relatively few people looking for work ... and lots of people just disinterested in working.

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But sociologists have begun to put two and two together in recent days and are telling us that the Great Resignation is not just a problem for employers.

People aren’t just quitting jobs.

• They’re quitting relationships ...
• They’re quitting institutions ...
• They’re quitting community organizations and churches ...
• They’re quitting commitments more generally ...
• They’re quitting anything and everything that is deemed ‘exhausting’ or ‘life-draining’ or ‘too demanding’.

Truth be told ... folks ... the pandemic may have been the immediate cause for the Great Resignation ... but the root causes of it run FAR deeper ...

It’s like there’s this cry coming up from countless corners of this country that people are just exhausted ... physically, emotionally, even spiritually ...

• That people need to be recharged ...
• That people need to be rest ...
• That people need to be renewed and refilled and restored.

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You know ... I can’t help but think that the disciples whom we heard about in this morning’s Gospel lesson could relate to this so-called ‘Great Resignation’ thing that we’re in.

After all ... these disciples had just witnessed what had to be the most traumatic, frightening, spiritually and emotionally exhausting week of their lives.

Jesus ... their teacher ... their leader ... their friend ... the one who had been at the center of their lives for the past three years or so ... had died.

Not just ‘died’ ... but had been hauled in on trumped up charges to a kangaroo court ... and sentenced to death by means of the most reprehensible form of execution possible ... death by crucifixion.

They’d not only witnessed all the horror that went down ...

They now had to live with the consequences of all this horror that went down ... and their complicity in it ...

All their actions of failure and their failures to act.

And furthermore ... they had a couple of weird encounters ... a week apart ... that had left them scratching their heads and believing the unbelievable ... that Jesus was actually alive and somehow in their midst ....

Which was somehow both amazingly encouraging AND incredibly disconcerting.

They’d couldn’t NOT have been emotionally and physically and spiritually exhausted by it all.

And so ... in a certain way ... it only makes sense that they decided to go back home and go fishing.

After all ... Peter and at least two or three of the others of Jesus’ first friends and followers had LEFT their family fishing businesses to follow Jesus in the first place ...

But now that Jesus was gone ... it only made sense that they would go back to their roots ... back to the homes ... back to what they knew ... ‘back to start’ as it were.

Amid their exhaustion ... they sought familiarity and certainty and stability ... and so they drifted back to what they knew ... fishing.

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Now ... I can’t but imagine what the emotions were like on that boat that early morning.

After all ... it wasn’t too too long after you called me here to be one of your pastors that I got invited on a fishing trip ...

By Pastor Jack Davies and Will Tissue and Frank Burroughs and some of our other saints of blessed memory.

And so it came to pass that I got to:

• wake up at some ungodly hour ...
• and head down to the Berkeley Marina ...
• and meet up with the other folks who were a part of our motley crew ...
• and motor all the way out to like four miles or five off Half Moon Bay ...

Only to get skunked ... while everybody else on the boat limited out.

It was ... honestly ... among the most depressing ... discouraging ... disheartening ... days of my life.

And if you were to take the despair that Peter and his buddies felt at the beginning of thier fishing trip that day two millennia ago ...

And pile on top of it something of the discouragement that I felt by getting skunked that early morning two decades ago or so ...

You have a recipe for misery of the first order.

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But here’s where things get weird.

• Jesus shows up ... gives them a fishing tip ... and the boat promptly limits out!

• Then one of the disciples recognizes that it was Jesus himself who was there by the lakeshore ...

• And Peter throws on some clothes and jumps into the lake ...

• And in no short order ... they’re having breakfast on the beach with the very one whom they assumed they would never ever be seeing again.

And their resignation ... their GREAT resignation ...

• Their resignation from a miserable night of fishing ...
• AND their resignation from a miserable last couple of weeks ...
• AND their resignation from a promising career path that turned into a dead end street ...

Is all ... in but a moment ... is transformed into something like awestruck amazement and joy.

Jesus meets them IN their resignation ... but doesn’t leave them there.

And ... truth be told ... Jesus meets us in our resignation ... but isn’t willing to leave us there either.

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Let’s be honest folks ...

This whole pandemic thing has left many of us exhausted ... and in varying stages of grief or depression or trauma or maybe all of these things combined.

• We may well NEED some time for rest ...
• We may well NEED some time for renewal ...
• We may well NEED some time to recover and be restored ...
• We may well NEED to resign from some of the commitments in our lives that leave us feeling drained.

But while it may be okay to resign from some commitments ... it isn’t okay ... Jesus seems to be saying ... to let that become an excuse to just be resigned ... to just give up.

You see ... when Jesus shows up ... while Jesus certainly DOES bring rest and restoration and healing ... it isn’t JUST that.

It’s rest, restoration, and healing SO THAT .....

• So that they can be his witnesses ....
• So that they can feed his lambs ...
• So that they can tend his flock ...
• So that they can go into all the world ...
• So that they can love one another ... even as Jesus has loved them.
• So that we can be his witnesses ....
• So that we can feed his lambs ...
• So that we tend his flock ...
• So that we can go into all the world ...
• So that we can love one another ... even as Jesus has loved us.

By adding those two simple words .... “So that” ... we come to realize that God’s gifts of healing and hope are never simply for our own sake ... but for the sake of the world that Jesus died to redeem.

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Remember how ... once upon a time ... we did that Stewardship Campaign about a box of crayons?

And how we discovered that each of us is like one of the crayons in that box ... gifted to do certain things ... and limited from doing other things ... and how we need ALL the crayons in the box to color in the Kingdom???

I don’t know if you perchance remember this ... but I told you ... in the context of that Stewardship Campaign ... that there was ... there is ... one kind of crayon that was sadder than all the rest.

The sad ones are NOT the ones that are worn down from too much coloring ...

The sad ones are NOT the ones that have had their paper labels torn off by eager little fingers ...

The sad one are NOT to ones that have been broken in two because they got shared between to siblings ...

No ... the sad ones are the perfect ones that have never been out of the box ... that have never discovered their purpose ... that have never been utilized for what they were created for in the first place .... that have never experienced their SO THAT.

May the Risen One bring us restoration amid our resignation .... to be certain ...

But may that same Risen One also allow us to know and to own our “so thats”!