sermons
Faith when the Road Isn't Clear
God Is An Asian Mom
Lydia Shiu
May 04, 2025
John 21:1-14 Common English Bible
Jesus appears again to the disciples
21 Later, Jesus himself appeared again to his disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. This is how it happened:
2 Simon Peter, Thomas (called Didymus[a]), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, Zebedee’s sons, and two other disciples were together.
3 Simon Peter told them, “I’m going fishing.” They said, “We’ll go with you.” They set out in a boat, but throughout the night they caught nothing.
4 Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples didn’t realize it was Jesus.
5 Jesus called to them, “Children, have you caught anything to eat?” They answered him, “No.”
6 He said, “Cast your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” So they did, and there were so many fish that they couldn’t haul in the net.
7 Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It’s the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard it was the Lord, he wrapped his coat around himself (for he was naked) and jumped into the water.
8 The other disciples followed in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they weren’t far from shore, only about one hundred yards.
9 When they landed, they saw a fire there, with fish on it, and some bread.
10 Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you’ve just caught.”
11 Simon Peter got up and pulled the net to shore. It was full of large fish, one hundred fifty-three of them. Yet the net hadn’t torn, even with so many fish.
12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples could bring themselves to ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord.
13 Jesus came, took the bread, and gave it to them. He did the same with the fish.
14 This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.
Let me pray for us
Liberating and loving God, we come to You today not with certainty, but with longing. We seek Your presence in a world where many roads lead to confusion and pain. Open our ears to hear Your voice from the shoreline, and our hearts to trust You, even when the way is unclear. Speak through this Word, speak through our ancestors in faith, and speak through our communities that long for wholeness. Amen.
My husband and I recently attended my daughter’s kindergarten parent/teacher conference. Miss Pappo showed us some of the worksheets and drawings Sophia did. One was a math problem, a worksheet with five crayons drawn on it. They are starting to do word math problems. The question said, color two green crayons and three blue crayons to make five crayons. She had done it but also she flipped the paper over and in the back she wrote down the various ways you can come to a 5, 1+1+1+1+1=5 and 5+0=5. Miss Pappo was saying that the problem was just figuring out the green and blue crayons but that she kept going to practice all the ways.
My husband and I talked about this in depth as we walked back. He’s the one who’s been working on math with our Sophia and he pointed out how good it was for her to be figuring out different ways to solve the problem. I wasn’t sure what was the big deal and asked why that’s so good. He said, that’s something that I had to learn, he was a math major, that there are often different ways to get to the answers. In doing math, it’s not as important to get the one right answer but figuring out how to work through the problem in various ways because more often than not, later when the problems get more complicated, the skill to figure out a problem in different ways will help you more. Show your work right? It’s learning how to problem solve, not just get the answer.
This conversation made me think about faith. Because I am not a math person. But I felt the same way about figuring out faith. That there isn’t just one way to do faith and doing faith the right way isn’t the goal. It’s the working out, meandering, faith seeking understanding through, that is the real work of faith.
Post Easter we’re talking about Faith without a roadmap. Jesus appears to the lost and confused disciples, in a moment when they aren’t sure what to do with themselves. Some of them had begun to hear about and have seen Jesus risen. But resurrection doesn’t immediately bring direction. They are not launching a movement yet. They are not preaching to the nations. They are waiting. Disoriented. And in that liminal space, Peter says,
“I’m going fishing.”
Black liberation theologian James Cone in his book “God of the Oppressed,” he talks about how after he’s studied theology and philosophy at depth, studying Barth, Bultmann, and Tillich, and upon having written much about,
“what the scripture has to say about black power and liberation?”
he still felt that something was missing and went back to draw from his faith experiences of the black church community. For Cone, it wasn’t just about thought and theology but a lived experience of the people that shaped and defined faith. He often quotes songs, gospels, everyday lyrics like “this little light of mine” to draw theological conclusions about who God is for the people that are actually experiencing and living with God.
That’s what today’s story looks like for me. Who is this resurrected God? Well it’s in the lived experience of the people. In their workplace, at their spot, their daily ritual, their boat, their water, their table, their meal.
So the disciples go back to doing what they know best, fishing. Sometimes, when the path forward is unclear, we reach backward. We return to the familiar. Not because it’s the best option—but because it’s the only one we know. But their return to the familiar is fruitless. And yet, they show up. It’s at least something to do right?
My mom did this when our family would face a challenge, a phone call from Korea saying someone died when we can’t afford the plane ride back for the funeral, when one of us got really sick when we didn’t have health insurance, she would just pull something out of the freezer, a ball of brick in a plastic bag. I didn’t know what it was. It could’ve been anything. She takes the plastic cover off and microwaves it and bam it’s warm sweet purple potatoes, an instant dessert and a nutrition bomb.
Sure it didn’t fix the problem. But it brought us back to the table, you gotta eat no matter what’s going on in your lives. And that’s why I love this Jesus in this story.
He comes up to them and says,
“Children, have you caught anything to eat?”
Jesus doesn’t shame them. He meets them in their failure. Have you been able to find anything to eat? Jesus’ care is physical. Embodied. Before doctrine, before direction—He checks on their wellbeing.
Again, that’s some of the best ways my mom showed up for me. Not suggesting to fix the problem. But you know, don’t you hate it anyways when you tell someone something that happened, and they give you advice and tips or solutions to try to solve the problem instead of asking how you’re handling it? It’s like, yes honey, I know what I’m supposed to do, but I’m trying to share with you how it’s affected me.
What Jesus offers to us in times of confusion and pain often isn’t a solution or a roadmap but care.
Delores Williams, one of the founders of Womanist theology, a pioneer in thought at the time in a landscape of Black theology from only men and female theologians white, she is the author of Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk which bore from her dissertation that was title, “A Study of the Analogous Relation between African-American Women’s Experience and Hagar’s Experience.”
Williams taught that Jesus’ presence in the world wasn’t just about sacrifice, which is a departure from how his death on the cross is often talked about, a transactional solution to the sin of the world, which in fancy theological terms is called propitiation theology. Williams says that Jesus’s resurrection appearance was about survival, sustenance, and solidarity. Survival, sustenance, and solidarity. Williams draws faith strength not from victory or conquest but
“from watching Black women hold together their families and churches.”
It’s not about conquering death but surviving life. The strength in the resistance of survival, the daily struggles of putting food on the table, speaks closer to me than saving the world.
The Easter story maybe is not just about victory. I don’t want to jump to that. As much as I love me some new life and hope, I’m grieving everything still. I can barely go fishing like I used to and I come up with nothing. I’m tired and I forget to eat. I don’t even have an appetite these days. I’m just trying to get through the day. And sweet Jesus comes along, not with a blueprint for my work that is set before me, but with just a question, how you doin, you catch anything? There’s no admonishment. Just a gentle voice from the shore saying,
“maybe try the otherside?”
After they end up catching a bunch of fish,
“9 When they landed, they saw a fire there, with fish on it, and some bread.”
He’s already cooked up something, he’s already there to offer us, give us, nourish us, to feed us. He doesn’t start with theology. He doesn’t lecture. He feeds them. He says:
“Before you preach about me—come eat with me.”
This breakfast is Eucharist without the ritual. This moment reminds us that ministry begins with care, not control. With presence, not power. The risen Christ is a cook and a host.
I’ve quoted two Black theologians defining faith and finding God in their lived experience and in the lived experiences of their people and their community. I go to Black theologians because they often give me an access point to the unimagined, the unknown. Though the Black experience and my Asian experience differ in so many ways, it gives me a ramp, a starting point for the detour from the “central” narrative, even the “central” point of the gospel being about Jesus who died on the cross to pay for our sins, to the expansive views of Jesus who died in solidarity of the oppressed and resurrected in order, not to defeat death and come back and be like, “told you so, I win!”, but to be present, to be with us again. That was his present! He wanted to check on his friends. Make sure they are doing okay. That they weren’t just lost at sea, mindlessly working with no result. That they weren’t going hungry, skipping meals, lost and naked.
Seeing Jesus, not as a conqueror of death, but a caretaker has completely transformed my relationship with God. Look, God-talk, theology are all metaphors. And if that metaphor works for you, great. But if it doesn’t, how can we create new metaphors that bring new revelation and new insights to try to get at a God that is so big and wide, that no one can “own” the final word on God. This has been for me, a journey of decolonizing faith, sorry I won’t just take your word, for me, because you are bigger than me, I know me and I know my God. That has been the journey in which I have been trying to pave a way through faith when all the roadmaps I’ve been given feel like it’s written in a different language.
Theologian Kwok Pui-lan, a pioneering Asian feminist theologian, has paved the way for me to realize that I am allowed to find my own faith. Kwok Pui-lan, in her Introducing Asian Feminist Theology, helps me explain the insecurity of doing my own theology by naming my context and history, saying,
“There is still the colonial legacy of looking toward the West for guidance and tutoring. This is especially evident in the liturgy, organization and life of Christian churches in Asia. For a long time theologians read Barth, Brunner, and Tillich,” (this is like exactly what James Cone was saying!) “trying to solve theological puzzles for other contexts with no relevance for Asia.”
I don’t think I mention this too much, or maybe I do, kind of a big deal in my life, about eight years ago I accidentally founded a thing called Progressive Asian American Christians, PAAC for short. It started as a Facebook group. It’s actually how I found this job at Reservoir, Steve posted on it. And over the years I’ve found people like Kowk Pui-lan on it, and others who are on the journey.
When you don’t have a roadmap, you gotta find others on the journey. The disciples didn’t have a map. But they showed up in a boat together, even if one of them was getting naked and jumping into the water.. They fished together and they came up with nothing together. That’s where faith begins: in community, even when the nets come up empty.
These days it feels like that alot. Even with some of the social justice work and efforts, it feels like the nets come up empty. We did a series on Radical Hospitality a few months ago and gathered many of you to volunteer your home or time to support immigrants. Since then, we haven’t housed anyone and honestly sometimes the work feels fruitless. But it wasn’t and shouldn’t be about how much we produce. But it’s brought some of us together. It’s not a lot of us but we’ve been able to share some groceries with someone in need, just start having conversations with someone who’s in pain. It doesn’t feel like there’s “something to show for” with this “initiative.”
In seminary I wrote a paper about how women’s work is not counted in the GDP. And in height of the 2000’s and 2010’s tech boom in the bay area, I remember sitting around with a bunch of girlfriends at a bar in SF, laughing, how hilarious it was that all the up and coming new companies, AirBnB, Uber, Doordash and so on were all roles that your mom used to do. Home, rides, meals. And how thankless the work was for the women that’ve been doing it all these years. And now, it is SO expensive to get groceries or food delivered! Because it was always “expensive” for your mom’s back! You just never knew.
So here’s an attempt at faith without a roadmap. After reading this scripture text, thinking about my own experiences, and reading black theology – God is an Asian Mom. God will roll up her sleeve, pick the bones off your fish, grill it, and make bread and have it all ready when you get back home from school/work. God carefully peels the fruit and puts it on the table listening to you talk about your day. God doesn’t force the next step on your problems with fixes but gently suggests, honey have you tried talking to them? God, when you’re going through stuff will ask you,
Have You Eaten?
Which is the theme of the upcoming PAAC conference that’s happening in Seattle, July 11-13th, “Have you Eaten? Rest from the Rage.” If you are Asian or have any Asian Christian friends that would enjoy affirming Asian space, please let them know about it. There’s not many of us. But we really need to be together.
Because we really need to be together. In the midst of the confusion, in the midst of the pain. In our suffering, we might not even have the solutions or the answers. But we need to come together for one another, nets empty, but belly full. I pray that we will encounter that Jesus who throws us an impromptu beach BBQ, right when we need it the most.
Let me pray for us.
God my bread baker, a BBQ pitmaster, one who holds me close when I’m hurt and crying like my mother did, we thank you that you show up to us in unexpected ways. That even when we thought you were dead, far, distant, unrelatable, you find your way and show up and speak to us in our mother tongue. Please keep doing that. Please keep showing up for we need you. Feed us and show us your way, that we may know your love and go out into the world, not to just solve big problems, but just simply be like you, being present, caring, loving the world like you did. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.