Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.”
Peter and the others tend to get a bad rap for this decision to return to something as apparently ordinary and unimportant as fishing. We imagine that after having encountered the risen Lord more than once they should have known better, their lives should have been forever different, that there was some new work that they should be about. But what would that have been exactly? It certainly wasn't clear to them. They did know for sure that the way they used to follow Jesus before his resurrection didn't work anymore. It wasn't a matter of walking with Jesus from one town to another. He hadn't given them command to go out two by two to proclaim the Kingdom or any other such command after his resurrection.
They said to him, “We also will come with you.”
This conundrum of what how to integrate an experience of the resurrection into daily life is one we all face. If we have a new experience of the glory of Jesus from, say, a retreat, or a Life in the Spirit seminar, once we return from a mountaintop experience we still have to find a way to return to our daily lives. We sense that the resurrection is meant to change everything, us and the whole world. But we still have to dust, do dishes, buy groceries, work for a living, and so on. Have all things been made new? Or are they still they same as always?
So they went out and got into the boat,
but that night they caught nothing.
Peter was not merely returning to his trade, nor merely filling time with a familiar occupation. These motivations certainly played a part. But it was only because he didn't understand what ought to come next that he may have desired distraction. The first time Peter had encountered the Lord Jesus was in a similar situation, fishing all night with no catch. At that time Peter had asked, "Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man" (see Luke 5:8). Now, after having betrayed Jesus, Peter knew even more deeply the truth of that statement. Had he rendered himself useless in the Lord's service? Had the Lord finally taken his advice and departed? In any event, in addition to his confusion about Jesus after the resurrection, Peter was no longer so sure of himself, no longer so bold, not ready to charge ahead to whatever came next. But it seems that he came back to the familiar sea shore to fish not merely as a return to what came before his life with Jesus but as a test or an experiment to see if the initial call on his life was still valid. It was as if he thought that he might return to this place where he first found the Lord's call on his life to discover it again, and what it meant now for his life after all that had happened.
So he said to them, “Cast the net over the right side of the boat
and you will find something.”
So they cast it, and were not able to pull it in
because of the number of fish.
The risen Lord, it seemed, would still need and make use of those willing to become fishers of men. Although he came and went unpredictably, appeared and disappeared in ways that seemed to defy the laws of physics, although he was difficult to recognize and found only when he wished to be found, yet he still desired shepherds to draw sheep to himself, fishers to put out in the deep for a catch. His apparent elusiveness did not mean that he was hiding or that he did not wish to be found, nor that he was an ethereal spirit only partially part of this world, and seemingly fading with each moment. The supernatural aspects of the resurrection might have worried the disciples and made them suspect that he was done with this world that had failed to recognize him and now only cared for the life of heaven. But Jesus revealed that this was not the case, that nothing could be further from the truth. But what was Jesus about now, or how were the disciples to follow him in this new reality of his resurrection? The secret was the same as it had been during Peter's first encounter with Jesus while fishing. It remained true, and was in fact more true than ever, that apart from Jesus the disciples could do nothing. This was a fact that Peter had now seen both in his discipleship and his fishing ability.
When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord,
he tucked in his garment, for he was lightly clad,
and jumped into the sea.
Peter had not invalidated his vocation by his betrayal. That Jesus was here on the shore at all was proof to Peter that Jesus was not finished with him, that his original vocation still had some kind of meaning for him. He clearly had not abandoned hope that Jesus would still use him, would still love him. For had he been in doubt or despair he would not have rushed headlong toward Jesus. That he did was proof that the main reason he was fishing at all was because he held this hope.
So Simon Peter went over and dragged the net ashore
full of one hundred fifty-three large fish.
As Peter became confident in his own ongoing role in the story of Jesus he found himself filled with strength, with supernatural gifting suited to the task. A net with which the other disciples struggled was pulled by Peter alone and untorn onto the shore of the sea.
Jesus said to them, “Come, have breakfast.”
And none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?”
because they realized it was the Lord.
Jesus seemed constantly to be making this point that he was not yet done with earth, with creation, with physical reality. He had wounds, could be touched, could be held, and delighted to restore his disciples to full table fellowship with him. Yes, the mode of his existence had changed. Yes, it took a new kind of faith to recognize him and follow him after the resurrection. But it was fundamentally still him, still the same friend they had known before. He was indeed leading them to a mission the greater part of which would now be spiritual and unseen. But it was still Jesus himself who would lead them. And this was true in spite of their own failures.
“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”
Jesus called him not Peter, but Simon as he recreated the scene around the charcoal fire where he had been anything but rock solid. Peter had previously boasted, "I will lay down my life for you" (see John 13:37), suggesting that even if all of the other disciples betrayed Jesus Peter would remain faithful. Jesus seemed to ask, 'Was it so?' but without malice or resentment. What Jesus desired was not to berate Peter, nor even to make him dwell in the failures of his past, but to elevate him through this passage of self knowledge to a new confidence that could be built only on the mercy of Jesus himself.
Peter was distressed that Jesus had said to him a third time,
“Do you love me?” and he said to him,
“Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.
The threefold affirmation undid the threefold denial and restored Peter fully to the Lord and to the mission. To be clear, it was Peter himself who needed this most of all. It was not a punishment, but a path, and a restoration of what Peter was able to believe about himself, so that he could move forward. We should remember that Confession is always meant to be thus for ourselves as well.
Peter's boast that he would die for the Lord would indeed come to pass, but only in the light of this new and mature discipleship, that grew from a new self-knowledge viewed in the light of the resurrection and of the mercy of Jesus himself. As proof of this we can see how he and the other disciples of the early Church came to see that suffering did not mean failure or that they were abandoned by God. Jesus was making his own resurrected life present through disciples who suffered for his name.
So they left the presence of the Sanhedrin,
rejoicing that they had been found worthy
to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name.
We see that the blessings due to God himself in heaven were now also shared with the Lamb seated on the throne. Whereas we tend to think of failure and suffering as signs that things have gone wrong, the disciples learned that suffering out of love for God and neighbor was not now something that ever need be wasted. We too can learn to move forward, not needing to be strong in ourselves, not needing to be without wounds or scars, because of our confidence in Jesus, and the fact that his resurrection really is at work restoring all things, precisely as we choose to let him love the world through us. Integrating this truth into our daily lives does not necessarily imply anything dramatically different, such as setting off for distant mission fields (though we should be open even to that if the Lord desires). This sharing of the mission of the Lord to make of all things new by the power of the resurrection is something we can begin even in the minutia of our lives. Indeed this is the only place we can begin. The more we understand the unshakable nature of the love of Jesus himself in spite of our imperfections, the more we receive ourselves the hope and confidence to which Peter was restored, the more we will find ourselves ready to feed the sheep of his that are in our sphere.
To the one who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be blessing and honor, glory and might,
forever and ever.
No comments:
Post a Comment