I like to think I grew up at the beach. As a boy, there was nothing better in life than standing at the shoreline, waves washing up around my legs, the feeling of the sand washing back out in the receding surf as the ocean gave a hiss and another wave crashed and brought more wet sand to circle around my legs. In time I learned to venture out beyond the breaking surf, no feet touching the bottom, swimming with the rolling tides in the ocean—ever so much better than the measured and chlorinated waters of the public swimming pools where I also swam.

I always hated to go home from the beach. Once I heard that if I held a shell up to my ear, I would hear the ocean in it. I tried collecting shells and holding them up to my ear, hoping, but to no avail—no ocean in any of them.

We are a viscerally impulsive bunch, we humans, you and me. After years of study, we think we’ve figured God out. But the call is not to figure out.

Jesus says “Lazarus, come forth.” We stumble up from the dead of sleep, emerge from the tomb-like cave of self-assured faithfulness. Emerging from the best sleep in a long time, stepping out into the sun, wondering, “What are these graveclothes wrapped around me? I’m starving; I haven’t eaten in days.”

Wait. Where am I? When life goes crazy wonky, God confounds.

When he was feeding thousands, everyone loved Jesus. Imagine the Jesus they thought they might be getting: a political and governmental takeover followed by miracle feedings that would eliminate famines; much less food would be needed when it can be multiplied so easily and free for all.

We think we can grasp it, make it our size, like a child holding the lion-shaped stuffy. When he tried to explain that his bread is something that is without end, people said, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

We think we know what we want, but Christ confounds and, in the confounding, comes blessing and truth.

Then comes a storm. And when he came to his terrified disciples, walking on the sea, his followers did not rejoice. They did not worship or praise. They were petrified. And when he stepped into the boat, they immediately arrived at their destination.

Wait. What just happened?

He then answered a question with the assertion that there is no eternal life for people unless they eat his flesh and drink his blood.

Eating from the multiplied fish and loaves donated by a young man is one thing; eating the flesh and blood of a person you think is the messiah, eating at his instruction, that is something altogether different, some might say horrifying.

Wait. What’s going on?

So, “when many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’”

Earthbound ears cannot hear the song of the rolling tide to heaven. This is not a path for us to trod. It is for one person only. If we could have walked that road, if we had been able to swim that channel, there would have been no need for him to come at all.

But we could not and we cannot come; he did. And he bids us follow.

People commodify and package, or try to, handling it expeditiously, quickly, and then we’re on to the next. But, blessedly, Christ confounds.

Though he became flesh, our flesh is no help at all in grasping this. The flesh and blood of Christ revealed by the Spirit is the only way to grasp it and then to do so with open hands.

Wait. What did he just say? What did he do?

Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, do you have any fish?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” (John 21:6a)

But, by grace, I do think I hear it in you, dear brothers and sisters, like holding a shell up to my ear and hearing the sea for real, a man in the Midwest, dreaming of someone or somewhere far away, in Hawaii or the Caribbean or Cornwall, Coronado or Carmel, of some other sandy ocean place, our church.

So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, because of the quantity of fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and threw himself into the sea. The other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, but about a hundred yards off. (John 21:6b-8)

I hear the sounds of surging surf; I hear it in you, a word, the Word that gives hope and life, that is truth as natural as the sound of the ocean in a shell, not a philosophical or theological argument, something instead as simple as a crackling fire on the beach, morning sun shimmering on the foaming waves, breakfast on the grill—the Word come to life in and through us but not us. The Lord’s Table this Sunday.

When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place, with fish laid out on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” (John 21:9-10)

Tides and times confound, the shifting sands around my feet swirl, this church, the people, he knew and knows and makes known.

I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them. (John 17:26)