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Simon Peter said to them, "I am going fishing."
Fishing was something familiar for Peter and the others who decided to come with him. Peter had already seen the risen Lord multiple times and even been commissioned and sent by Jesus just as Jesus himself was sent by the Father. This stop on the Sea of Tiberias seemed to indicate that he hadn't fully integrated this new identity. He had some new facts that he new to be true: that Jesus was alive, and that he had given him a mission. But in practice instead of allowing these facts to define the way he lived henceforth he went instead back to his old, and we might add, still unsatisfying way of life.
So they went out and got into the boat,
but that night they caught nothing.
In Peter and these other disciples we see a challenge faced by all believers. How does the truth about the risen Lord change us? We still need to eat, after all, so do we continue to fish? What happens to us when we find again the same cycles of striving and disappointment that defined our lives before our commitment to Jesus?
When it was already dawn, Jesus was standing on the shore;
but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.
When we live our ordinary lives in the world as Christians they are no longer merely ordinary, even if we don't perceive it right away. For us, Jesus is always present, standing, as it were, on the shore, often without us realizing it. He himself takes the initiative to be present in our lives in surprising ways. By the repetition of patterns of grace we learn to become familiar with his presence in our lives.
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.
Would it have been better for Peter and the others to hit the road immediately and start proclaiming Jesus to all who would listen? Maybe in some sense this fishing expedition was in fact a detour. But it also seemed to allow Jesus to make an important revelation about himself and the way he wanted to be present to them that the other resurrection appearances didn't necessarily convey. The old, ordinary, and routine, was now another place where the risen Lord could be found. Peter may have sought to hide in these familiar realities from the awesome challenge ahead. But now even these realities pointed toward that mission. And so Peter was forced to reckon with the healing of heart and the forgiveness that he needed in order to embrace it.
When they climbed out on shore,
they saw a charcoal fire with fish on it and bread.
Jesus said to them, "Bring some of the fish you just caught."
Even the fish were now ordered to Jesus himself. And the disciples ought not to have been surprised, as Jesus himself had called them to become fishers of men. They had previously understood that call in a more earthly way that the death of Jesus had seemed to render null and void. But now the risen Lord helped them to see what he had intended all along was something more. These nets of the Kingdom were meant to catch fish of all kinds, as Jesus himself had taught. And now, here, by this charcoal fire, Peter was able to see that he himself still had a part to play, and that the shalom brought by Jesus himself did more than merely overlook his past betrayal, it overwhelmed and erased it with forgiveness.
These resurrection experiences gradually helped the disciples to integrate the truth of what had happened to Jesus into their own lived missions for the Kingdom. It was because Jesus knew exactly what their hearts needed to move on and move forward, and because he himself provided exactly that, that the disciples in Acts seem almost entirely transformed.
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.
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