It is important for us not to forget that the gospels tell us that the risen Lord made appearances to the disciples for 40 days before after the resurrection before he was ascended to heaven. During those ultimate days on earth Jesus gave his final instructions to his disciples.
In the 21st chapter of the gospel of John, the evangelist brings us back to that beautiful meal and conversation on the beach between Jesus and some of his first disciples around morning’s first light. As someone who was born and raised in the tropics I have had many opportunities to be on the seashore at dawn. The way John narrates this story brings back some very clear images in my mind and heart as he uses this scenery as the background for the climax of a great story.
Some of you who have been on the beach before the break of dawn would know that just before dawn breaks, that brief moment between darkness and light, it is still difficult to make out the shape of objects and people’s faces unless you really are close enough. But the landscape changes instantaneously as soon as the first burst of sunlight breaks. The way God has arranged it is that the first sunbeam does not burst in like a blinding flash of light, like one that comes from a camera flash bulb. Rather, the sun slowly lays its first sunbeam on the face of everything with a gentle, soft light.
This perhaps is the reason that the disciples in the boat did not recognize at first the figure of Jesus standing on the shore. They did not recognize him, the text says, until Jesus asked them to do something familiar. They heard a familiar voice saying familiar words: “cast your nets on the right side of the boat.”
The picture that the gospels paint about the disciples during the arrest and execution of Jesus was a picture of despair and defeat. Their messiah was humiliated and killed. The gospels report that the disciples were scattered like sheep without a shepherd, disillusioned and lost. And so the story of our text today is a story that needs to be told again and again. It plays a pivotal role in the restoration of Jesus’ community of disciples, and clarifies the mission of the church. Let us try to reenter the world of our scripture text, and open ourselves to what God may be saying to us – and for us – for this day and time.
It begins the same way that Peter’s and the first disciple’s relationship with Jesus began many months before – the disciples were in their boat; they were out all night fishing and got nothing, Jesus tells them to lower their net one more time, and then they catch so much fish the net becomes too heavy to pull back in. The story tells us that it was because of this that the disciples recognized Jesus. Peter’s response was quick and characteristic of his strong and aggressive personality. He puts on his clothes out of respect for Jesus, jumps into the water fully clothed and moves towards the figure on the beach he now knew was Jesus. The others were of course left dragging the net full of fish. When they all got to shore, they saw that Jesus had already prepared a barbecue on the beach – the fire was lit, and fish and bread were cooking.
The story goes on to indicate that there was not much conversation going on, just Jesus sharing and eating the bread and fish with them just as he did on that hilltop a while back during the miracles of the loaves and the fish. The disciples, it seems, were quite uncomfortable in the presence of the risen Lord. There was something so very familiar having a meal with him by the lakeside, but at the same time something so surreal as to be in the company of someone you knew just returned from the dead! They knew him but they also were keenly aware that he was no longer of this world, one who belonged to another existence. But the bread and the fish, the harvest of the earth and the sea, the breakfast he had prepared for them, reminded them of the intimate fellowship that they had shared all this time. It must have been a wonderful, deeply tender communion on that beach!
It was a dawn similar to that, when roosters usually crow, which reminded Peter of his fear during the passion of Jesus when he denied knowing him three times. We can only surmise that the crowing of the rooster was still echoing in the ears of Peter’s soul, sounding off his three denials as he and Jesus talked along the shore. In verse 15, we can surmise that Jesus took Peter on a walk and spoke to him privately. Jesus asked Peter three times, “Do you love me?” With each affirmative answer of Peter, each of his previous denials was forgiven and each time he was restored and recommissioned with the words, “Tend my sheep!”
Jesus’ call is a call to an active journey and participation in the Spirit’s work of love that remains unfinished in the world. Not in another world; this world; the world which in John 3:16 the gospel says God so loved that he gave an only son for it. It is the love that makes no fear to great to overcome, makes no sin too great to be forgiven, love that indeed conquers all! It is the love and hope that gives voice to the Psalmist to accept the sorrows of life and at the same time affirm the faithfulness and power of God over those sorrows: “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”
The risen Jesus came to the defeated disciples and gave them peace, but peace that was identified with his wounds, “Peace be with you!” The risen Jesus recommissioned Peter, but recommissioned him for the world and not to be apart from the world, “Tend my sheep!” The gift of peace and commission of the risen Lord gives us power to participate in the Spirit’s work of building the kingdom in the name of the resurrected Christ.
By appearing to the disciples in his physical body after his resurrection and commissioning them for a continuing mission in the world, Jesus reminds us that we do not have to wait for our physical deaths to know and experience the power of resurrection. The gift of resurrection faith is freedom from the fear of death.
From a spiritual point of view, death is not only physical death. There are many forms of death. Whenever we are consumed by bitterness and anger, and prefer alienation over reconciliation, a part of us is in death; whenever we are paralyzed by prejudice and fear, a part of us is in a state of death; whenever we remain silent in the face of grave injustice, we enter a state of death; whenever we choose violence to respond to conflict, we enter a form of death; whenever we despoil and destroy God’s earth and creation for self-gain, we enter a form of death.
Jesus’ resurrection has destroyed death’s grip and delivers us from our many private deaths. His rising from the dead has not eliminated sorrow and suffering and brokenness in life. But his resurrection has liberated us from the chains of a hopeless and loveless life, and enables us to praise God with the Psalmist: “Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing, thou has loosened my sackcloth (of sorrow) and girded me with gladness!”
The resurrection of Jesus is not a singular eruption of eternity into time that now gives us a full view of heaven, like a “big bang” for all time. In the words of St. Paul, the world is still groaning, yearning for completion. The resurrection of Jesus, and his fresh and new commission to service that came with that, reminds us that the life of discipleship is instead a series of appearances of Jesus in our lives – flashes of resurrection, and glimpses of heaven.
The life of discipleship is a journey with God in God’s continuing work of shaping and perfecting the world.
From the recommissioning of Peter we learn that responsible Christians are required to reflect upon the teachings of Jesus, especially as to how these teachings speak to the poor and the marginalized among us. Following Jesus means striving to follow the way he worked, the way he acted, the way he loved. We will not measure up some of the time, perhaps a lot of times. But strive we must. The gentle scene that the gospel of John portrays at the beach with Jesus and the first disciples reenacts the severity and the costliness of love. It helps us to understand that there is a difference between “liking” Jesus, and “loving” Jesus.
In one of the great teachings of Jesus about the kingdom, Jesus described to the disciples the righteous ones who were to inherit the kingdom. He described the criteria of who those were and will be in clear, concrete behavioral terms: “for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” Then the righteous asked when it was that they did this for him. Jesus answered, “As you did it to one of the least of these…you did it to me.”
Each time we strive to participate in acts of Jesus, each time we strive to respond like Jesus, each time we strive to love like Jesus, each time we will see a flash of resurrection and a glimpse of heaven. We live in the resurrected life in participation with God’s continuing work of love in the world through the risen Lord. We live the resurrected life when we resist the forces of death and brokenness that hold people captive.
Jesus invites us to the radically new and resurrected life in the here and now. He calls us to cast our nets into the waters of the world with him, reaping the new life that we have in him. Do our feet show the marks of the journey? We have seen resurrection, and glimpsed heaven. Let us go and serve.
Elmo Familiaran 