Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.”
Sometimes it is natural to seek comfort in the familiar. Peter and the other disciples had just had their hopes apparently shattered by the crucifixion and then partially renewed by resurrection appearances they did not yet fully understand. This strategy, return to the familiar, was arguably better than trusting their emotions or trying to reason out the details of what had happened. It wasn't going to solve anything, but they knew that in advance. At that point it seemed that they would settle for clearing their heads.
So they went out and got into the boat,
but that night they caught nothing.
However, the disciples discovered that even this was no escape from their present concern. There was now nothing in their lives untouched by their connection to the Lord, nothing to which they could return that wasn't forever colored by their time together with him. At first this seemed like it might lead them back into despair. If they were going to end another night with no catch it would almost be like moving back to life without Jesus.
Jesus said to them, “Children, have you caught anything to eat?”
They answered him, “No.”
The strategy of the disciples to lose themselves in this familiar work was a better one than they guessed. Or perhaps they intuited that they might discover more than mere fish in this expedition. Jesus had shown them where to find fish in the past. Maybe they dared to hope that he would do so again. After all, wouldn't it be too painful to go back to the old way of fishing? What we see in their decision to fish was a subtle, maybe unconscious, reliving of a past grace for which they were thankful, in a way that opened them up to present hope.
So he said to them, “Cast the net over the right side of the boat
and you will find something.”
In fewer words, they tested the possibility that if Jesus was faithful before he would be faithful again. And he was.
So they cast it, and were not able to pull it in
because of the number of fish.
Though at one level what the disciples were doing was quite ordinary, at another level it prepared them to finally recognize Jesus. Continuing to live our own lives, even in the mundane and ordinary, faithful from day to day, can help us to recognize Jesus as well. This is because Jesus has entered into our lives in the past in times just like these with faithfulness and blessings for us. Our willingness to keep engaging in the parts of our lives where Jesus has been faithful before, even when for the moment we see no results, helps us to hope in what he might do in the future. Not only that, it helps us recognize the new things he wants to do, since there is a sort of symmetry or typology in what he has already done.
Jesus came over and took the bread and gave it to them,
and in like manner the fish.
It might seem like fishing was merely a distraction from the matter at hand. And it was true that Jesus had more in store for them than fishing. But they could not now even fish in the ordinary sense without reference to Jesus. And even the offering of the physical fish was not wasted, even the mundane was taken up into the meal Jesus prepared for them.
This was now the third time Jesus was revealed to his disciples
after being raised from the dead.
Peter and the others eventually became very clear about Jesus and all that happened to him. These resurrection appearances where so effective because they took so much of the lives and identities of Peter and the others and transformed them and gave them a new and final direction. Jesus did not simply start fresh with them when he met them, after they repented, or after the resurrection. Rather he took fishermen and turned them into fishers of men. He did not simply love some new being with no history. He loved them all along. This conviction, among others, is what gave Peter the clarity we see recorded in Acts.
If we are being examined today
about a good deed done to a cripple,
namely, by what means he was saved,
then all of you and all the people of Israel should know
that it was in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean
whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead;
in his name this man stands before you healed.
He is the stone rejected by you, the builders,
which has become the cornerstone.
There is no salvation through anyone else,
nor is there any other name under heaven
given to the human race by which we are to be saved.”
May be faithful day to day, willing to meet the Lord in our own lives, and come to such clarity ourselves.
This is the day the LORD has made;
let us be glad and rejoice in it.
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