Wow. I really love this Gospel lesson assigned
for Easter 3 in Year C (John 21:1-19) There’s a boatload (pun intended) of possible
meanings and ideas here. It’s also a story full of sensory images—a bunch of
naked dudes fishing on a lake in the middle of the night, 153 fish in a net and
guys straining to haul it in, a charcoal fire and a toast-and-fish breakfast by
the lake shore, an emotional interaction between Jesus and Peter, and the sad foreshadowing
of Peter’s eventual martyrdom. Yup. Lots of stuff here.
Let’s start with Peter and the other guys
going fishing. It makes perfect sense. After all, they were fisherman before they met Jesus. Now, however, Jesus
has died and is resurrected but doesn’t seem to want to hang with them like he
did before. He only shows up sporadically—mysteriously appearing in locked
rooms. So what do they do? I guess Peter just hits the default switch in his
brain and goes back to his home town and the life he knew. The trouble is, it
isn’t like it was before. This also makes perfect sense. Can any of us ever
have an experience like the disciples had with Jesus and then just go back to
the same ol’ same ol’?
The boys in the boat aren’t catching squat
until Jesus shows up to direct them. Jesus gets them to do the old thing in a
new way, and suddenly they get an abundance of blessing. Personally, being a
kind of nostalgic guy myself, I love that they go back home to Galilee. It
always seems healthy to me to look back from time to time and see where we’ve
come from and where God has led us. I love this quote from T.S. Eliot:
Having Jesus in our lives gives us a lens
through which we can see ourselves and make sense of who we are. We might view
our life and family and achievements through some other lens like career
advancement or wealth or interpersonal relationships, but we’ll only get a
distorted picture. Seeing ourselves through our relationship with Jesus will
put everything into perspective.
The comic aspect of this Gospel pericope
is Peter’s little swim in verse 7. The Bible says that he was naked—probably stripped
down to his Fruit of the Looms to do hard work on this sultry night—and yet he
puts his clothes on to jump in the
water. You’d think the guy would have enough sense to either wait until the boat
reached the shore (and it was only a few oar strokes away) or jump overboard as
he was and leave dry clothes to change into later. But no. Good ol’
rambunctious, impulsive Peter gets dressed and then leaps fully clothed into
the sea to swim to Jesus. I don’t know what the Gospel writer intended to show
by this verse, but I can only interpret it as zealous, silly, unselfconscious
joy in the Lord.
Another odd thing about this story is the
fact that Jesus is not immediately recognizable. It’s not until the miraculous
catch of fish in verse 7 that the Beloved Disciple figures out that the guy on
the shore to whom they have been speaking is Jesus. Even when the guys get to
shore with their huge catch in verse 12, there is some question as to who their
breakfast host might be. What’s up with this? Are they still doubting the
resurrection? Does Jesus not look like Jesus? There’s similar confusion for
Mary Magdalene in chapter 20 and for the disciples of Emmaus in Luke 24:13-35.
Maybe we don’t always immediately know when we’re encountering Jesus. You
think?
The really cool aspect of this story for
me is Jesus’ conversation with Peter while they’re enjoying their breakfast by
the lake. My pal Pastor Ben Krey reminds me that, in the Greek, there are two
different words used for love in this passage. Jesus asks Peter in verses 15
and 16, “…do you love me?” The phrase in Greek is “agapas
me?”
This is translated in my Greek-English
interlinear as “lovest thou me?” Jesus uses the word agape
for “love.”
This word means the highest form of love: sacrificial, unconditional love. It
is, essentially, God’s kind of love. Peter, however, responds with “filw
se,”
which
the interlinear translates as “I have affection for thee.” The Greek word Peter
is using is filia, which can also be translated as “brotherly love.” If
we were to make the distinction, the dialogue in John 21:15-17 might read
something like this:
Jesus: Simon Johnson, do you love me divinely—even more than these other
guys?
Peter: Yes, Boss. You know that I love you
like my own brother.
Jesus: But do you love me divinely? Like God loves?
Peter: You know I do. I love you like a
brother.
Jesus: Okay. Simon Johnson—since you put
it that way—do you really love me like a brother?
Peter: Boss..! You know everything. How
can you ask me that..? You know I love
you like a brother!
Maybe Peter just doesn’t get that divine
love thing at first (do any of us?), so Jesus puts it in Peter’s terms.
Regardless of the word we use or the concept we have, the message is the same:
feed the sheep. If we truly love Jesus, that love must manifest itself in care
for our brothers and sisters.
Finally, I love the warning Jesus gives
Peter in verse 18. When we’re young, we gird our loins and go where we please. Not
so when we’re old. Verse 19 explains that this refers explicitly to Peter’s
eventual martyrdom in Rome.
I always remember the first time I was
called upon to preach on this passage. It was at the now-defunct Lutheran
Deaconess Mother House. Many Lutherans don’t even know about these wonderful
women who once wore habits, lived in community, and addressed one another as “Sister.”
There aren’t many around these days as we’ve been ordaining women to Word and
Sacrament ministry since 1970. Why be a nun when you can be a priest? But I digress.
When I preached to the elderly sisters at
the Mother House, many were confined to their rooms and listened to the service
over an intercom system. I thought of elderly folks in nursing homes, places
much less comfortable than the home were the Deaconesses would spend their
final days. Who would voluntarily want to give up home and independence and
dignity just to be warehoused? For some of us, we will stretch forth our hands
one day and someone will take us where we do not wish to go. It will be solace
if we know we have done our share of “sheep feeding” while we still could.
God bless. Thanks for stopping by this
week.
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