John 21:1-14

12/26/10

John 21:1-14

Hudson UMC

It is an interesting thing to jump from the very beginning of the story of the earthly live of Jesus to the very end of it, just after the resurrection and just before the ascension.  We have a chance to see something that we might not have noticed if we had only gone through the book and didn’t look back to see where we had been.  What we notice is that while we could just sit back and watch the events in the first few chapters of John without necessarily putting ourselves into the action, as it were, we really can’t do that with the last passages in the gospel.  Indeed, each of the gospels gets more challenging and more uncomfortable the closer we get to the end of them, but nowhere is this more true than in John.

As a brief recap, let’s take a moment and recall what has just been happening.  Jesus was betrayed by Judas and crucified by the authorities.  On the third day, he rose again from the dead and he appeared to various people.  First to Mary Magdalene, then to all the disciples but Thomas, then to all the disciples including Thomas.  There have been several encounters with the risen Christ and it is important to remember this when we look at this text today.

The passage begins with the words, “After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias.”  If John’s point was only to say that Jesus actually met with the disciples again, he could have stopped here, but the story is very important so he goes on.  “Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other of his disciples.”  All of these people are people who have seen the risen Lord, even Thomas, who did not see Christ until later, had seen Christ.  “Simon Peter said to them, ‘I am going fishing.’  They said to him, ‘We will go with you.’”

This doesn’t seem like it is that significant.  After all, what’s wrong with going fishing?  People go fishing all the time, Jesus supported the fishing trade, even using it as his model to talk about reaching out to people, saying that his disciples would fish for people.  On top of all this, we know that at least Peter, his brother Andrew, James and John were all fishermen before Christ called them.  Ah.  That is the point.  When Peter says to the other disciples, “I am going fishing,” it does not simply mean that he is going to get into a boat and try to get something to eat.  It means that he going back to his life before he ever met Christ, as if Christ made no difference to him.  There is something going on in Peter’s head that pushes him to go back to the life that he had left behind.  By saying, “We will go with you,” the others show that they share this desire.

Why would these people, who had seen the Lord, whose lives had been forever changed by the ministry of Jesus, turn their backs on all that had happened in the last three years and go back to how things were before?  It really isn’t all that hard of a question, because we can see that human beings are simply wired this way.  Jesus had called the disciples into a life that they had never known before, a life of sacrifice and service, a life dedicated to others that was so far from earning their thanks that it earned their scorn.  If they went back to fishing, it would mean that they no longer had to live their lives as people who were associated with Jesus, they could look back on those years as an interesting experience, but one that they are glad to leave in the past and not to repeat it.

To go back to fishing is to prefer the old to the new, the way things have always been over this radical and new lifestyle presented by Jesus.  The whole change reminds me of a moment early in the Lord of the Rings where the hobbit, Frodo Baggins tells the wizard, Gandalf that, before he came along, the Bagginses were very well thought of…never had any adventures or did anything unexpected.  It seems that in spite of all the time that the disciples invested in this new life, in spite of the experiences they had and in spite of the fact that the one they followed was shown to be victorious even over death, they decided they wanted the quiet life, the life without the unexpected and without the adventures.  Fishing was something that they knew, something they could count on, something stable in their lives.

That makes a certain amount of sense, but what do we read?  “They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.”  It was easy for the disciples to think of their old lives as simple and predictable when compared to the radical uncertainty that marked some moments in their life with Jesus.  However, the moment they went back to their old ways, they had no choice but to come face-to-face with the fact that those old ways were not necessarily any more stable than the one they turned their back on.  After all, no amount of experience can ensure that you will catch fish just like it cannot guarantee that your farm will produce a good crop or that your business will turn a profit.  Even if you do everything right, something can still come out of left field and mess everything up, like the events that brought about this recession.

And yet, in spite of the fact that the disciples turned their back on their life with Christ, Jesus comes to meet with them nonetheless.  But how does Jesus come to them, people who by their actions if not by their words, have said, “Even though we have seen you risen from the dead, we would rather live like we did before, we would rather not have to live with the uncertainty you offer?”  He just stood on the beach so that they did not even know it was him, and he “said to them, ‘Children, you have no fish, have you?’  They answered him, ‘No.’”  You see, he already knew that they had not caught anything.  He is the Lord of the universe, the one who created the fish that the disciples were not catching.

So Jesus does something amazing.  “He said to them, ‘Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.’”  Now, I am not a fisherman, but it seems to me that this is extremely specific advice.  When I think about fishing advice I have heard people give to one another, it is usually pretty general, “Go to this place,” “Use this kind of lure,” and things like that.  To say to someone, “You who are an experienced fisherman, who have tried all night but have caught nothing, don’t move, just cast your net on the other side of the boat, and you will find some,” seems preposterous, and yet this is exactly what Jesus does.

This command might seem somewhat familiar to you.  The reason is because there is an event that is recorded by Luke, though not by John, where Jesus, when he called Simon Peter in the first place, tells him to cast his nets into the deep water.  Peter’s response was, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.  Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”  Immediately, the nets were full and they needed extra help to bring in the fish.  However, Peter was so overwhelmed by this that he fell down at Jesus’ feet and said, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”  However, as we all know, Jesus did not go away from Peter, but called him to join him in ministry.

This is so similar to our story here.  We read, “So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish.”  All of a sudden, it seems that the disciples were overcome with a sense of déjà vu.  The disciple whom Jesus loved, who was probably John, the narrator of this book, who was a witness to the other miracle, said to Peter, “It is the Lord!”  What Jesus had done is so distinctive that the disciples realized that nobody but he could have done it.

What does Peter do here?  He does not cry for Jesus to get away from him, but does something that might seem to be even more foolish.  Peter goes and puts clothes on, for he was naked, and swam to Jesus.  When the boat with the fish came up, he single-handedly dragged the net with one hundred and fifty-three large fish across the beach to Jesus.  Jesus, after meeting with his disciples, invites them to breakfast and joins them in their meal of fish and bread.

What I love is that, after Jesus invites them to come and eat, we read that, “none of the disciples dared to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ because they knew it was the Lord.”  Remember, this is the same Jesus that they did not recognize, even when he was speaking to them.  The resurrected Jesus is a mystery because he does not seem to fit into our ordinary way of understanding things.  There is a sense in which he does not look like he used to, because we read in the gospels that people repeatedly do not know him when he comes to them.  And yet, he still has wounds in his hands and side for Thomas to touch.  He has remarkable access to locked rooms, as if he were able to walk though walls, and yet here we have him eating fish and bread.

The point is that Jesus is not always recognizable to the eyes.  Sometimes, Jesus can be standing right in front of us and we can completely miss him.  Sometimes, even, we can be like the disciples and be in a position where we might not want to see him, either because it would be inconvenient, or because we have made up our minds ahead of time what Jesus will look like and be about and we don’t want who Jesus really is to challenge that.  Sometimes, we just aren’t looking for God and yet he shows up anyway.

What can we take from this?  First, we can see that even people who have been so very close to Jesus can turn their backs on him.  It doesn’t seem to make any sense and we can make no rational account of it.  Somehow, in spite of the magnificent grace and mercy that God has shown people in Christ and through the Holy Spirit, we still have this desire to do things our own way, to go back and do what we did before, when we could control what we did and how we did it and didn’t have to always be listening for the voice of the Lord to speak into our situation.

However, we learn more than this.  We also learn that, in spite of our tendency to turn our back on God, it is not as if God just as quickly turns his back on us.  On the contrary, God meets us where we are, even when we haven’t been looking for him, even when we may not want to see him at all, and presents himself to us in such a way that we can know he is present, even if we have turned a blind eye to him.  Jesus does not respond with harshness to the disciples who have returned to their old ways but blesses them abundantly and calls them again like he did in the first place.

What we also learn from this passage is that, when Jesus reunites with his disciples, when they get together in reconciliation, what do they do?  They share a meal together.  Now, we are not joining together in Holy Communion today, but we will be next week.  We will also be participating in a covenant renewal service that comes down to us from John Wesley and the early Methodists.  Sometimes, when we get to times where we are given the opportunity to renew our covenant with God, we get nervous.  We remember quite vividly that we have not upheld all the parts of the covenant and that we aren’t sure that we will be able to do it in the future.  It is because the Bible contains passages like this one that I encourage you to come and participate anyway, sealing that covenant with the Lord’s Supper.

The Bible has a tendency to expose humanity’s greatest weaknesses at the exact same time as it reveals the greatness of the grace, compassion and mercy of God in spite of that weakness.  This is exactly what we see here.  We see Christ meeting with people who seem to have forgotten about him and gone the other way, still holding out his hands, still calling for them to come.  When we remember, in this Christmas season, that God came among us, not when we got our act together, but when we were in the height of sin, and that God came to us individually in the same way, let us cling to that God who has loved us more than we have loved ourselves, for he is the one that can be trusted and who will stop at nothing for us.  Let us pray.

AMEN