Crows Nest Lutheran parish (W.Logan)
John 21: 1-19
The first people to see Jesus alive on Easter
morning were women. Later that day Jesus appeared to the whole group of
disciples, and again about a week later. Those groups were probably mixed, but
today’s passage tells us about the time he appeared to seven of his disciples,
all men.
Peter said ‘I’m going fishing.’ Men like to do things. Maybe he
said, ‘I’m sick of sitting around doing nothing.’ Lots of men feel like that.
Retirement can be very hard on men… they need something to do. Younger men need
things to do too. Things they can relate to, things that make sense to them.
Practical things.
Fishing is what Peter knew. Men like to feel competent.
You can get results fishing, too. Sometimes. Men like results. We like to see
something for our efforts.
Peter and the others went fishing, but they
caught nothing. As the early light came into the sky they saw the glow of a fire
on the shore. Someone called out, ‘Hey, catch anything?’
‘Na. Not a [blank]
thing,’ they probably replied.
‘Try the right side. You’ll get some there,’
called the fellow on the shore. Sometimes (maybe not often, but sometimes) men
will take directions. Maybe they just shrugged and said, ‘Well why not? Can’t
hurt.’ Suddenly, their net was full, so full they couldn’t pull it back into the
boat.
John said, ‘Mate, it’s Jesus!’ and Peter grabbed his coat and jumped
in the water. He either swam or waded to shore – they were about a hundred yards
out, John tells us. The rest of them brought the boat in, pulling the net full
of fish. 153. Why do we have the number? It’s historical detail. Back then, and
down through the centuries there have been people who don’t want to believe
Jesus came back to life, after he was crucified. ‘Na, you’re making it up,’ the
first disciples probably heard, more than once. So they included details like
this to indicate, this really happened.
Was it really Jesus? Verse 12 sounds
a bit strange ‘none of them dared ask him ‘who are you’ because they knew it was
the Lord.’ Was there something different about how the risen Jesus looked?
Maybe. Or maybe the light was still pretty dim. The point is, they knew. They
knew who he was. It was Jesus. The Lord.
Jesus, who had been crucified. No
one survived Roman crucifixion. Jesus had died. He was buried, and they even put
a guard on his tomb. But he didn’t stay dead. He came back to life, and appeared
to them that first Easter day. And here he was again. Cooking breakfast. How
many ghosts cook breakfast?
‘Come on, dig in.’
Why a meal? Why
breakfast? Firstly they’d been fishing through the night and were probably
hungry. It was practical. Like when Jesus washed their feet: someone had to do
it. So he did. But Jesus liked to put meaning into what he did too. A meal means
friendship.
Friendship? Hmm. For one of the men, that was a sticky subject.
None of them had stood by Jesus when he was arrested -they all took off. But
Peter went one step further: when a few people said they thought he was one of
Jesus’ followers: he vowed and declared he ‘didn’t know Jesus from a bar of
soap.’
Now here was Jesus, hosting a meal for them. A meal that suggested…
friendship.
Peter probably still felt bad about how weak he had been –
especially after boldly proclaiming beforehand that he was ready to die for
Jesus. Despite his bravado, it had only taken a servant girl’s question to
unnerve him.
What now? Jesus knew what he had done. He knows what we have
all done, and what we have failed to do. How each one of us has at one time or
another put our Christian faith under wraps, because we were worried that other
people would think less of us. We didn’t want to feel embarrassed. So we
pretended we didn’t know the greatest friend we’ve ever had – or ever could
have.
So what would Jesus do with Peter?
‘Sack him. Get rid of him.’
That’s what we would do, if someone let us down, especially if it happened when
things were very difficult for us, and we needed their support.
Jesus
didn’t. He talked to him, with kindness and respect. It wasn’t deserved, but
this is what Jesus is like: he always treats people better than we deserve.
Jesus asked Peter, to put it into Australian colloquial form, ‘Mate, you true
blue?’
‘You with me, or what?’
Peter answered, ‘Yeah. I’m with you. You
know that, boss.’
Jesus accepted his response, and gave him a job. ‘Look
after my lambs, Peter.’ ‘Feed my lambs.’ What was Jesus talking about? A lamb is
a young sheep, of course, but Jesus is pointing Peter to young Christians. They
could be children. They could be adults, anyone who has room to grow in their
faith… which could be ‘all of us!’
Jesus asked Peter a second, then a third
time, whether he was genuine (fair dinkum) about being his friend. ‘Look after
my sheep, Peter.’ Protect them. Guide them. Feed them: provide pasture for them.
Three times Jesus asked Peter, where his heart was. Peter got a bit upset.
‘You know everything, Lord. You know I’m with you, all the way.’
Before
Jesus was arrested, Peter thought his loyalty to Jesus was rock-solid. But it
didn’t take much to bring him down.
What does it take to bring us down? How
rock solid is your friendship with him? How solid is mine?
In the end, our
relationship with God isn’t based on how solid our loyalty and devotion is. It’s
based on God’s love.
1 John 4:8-10 says “…God is love. God showed his love
for us by sending his only Son into the world, so that we might have life
through him. This is what love is: it is not that we have loved God, but that he
loved us and sent his Son to be the means by which our sins are forgiven.
…(Verse 19) ‘We love because God first loved us.’
By his great love and
through his sacrificial death on the cross, Jesus forgave Peter, and he also
forgives us. He completely restored Peter and gave him a job. He has jobs for us
all. In the church, and in the whole of our lives. Whatever we do, we can do for
the Lord. Whether he calls us to do something specific, or lets us find for
ourselves something we’re good at, something he’s prepared us for, there are
things each of us can do, as an expression of our friendship with God.
You
never know: there may be some people here, maybe even some men, who, under the
direction of Christ, will decide to go fishing. Under the direction of Christ,
they might find a way of throwing out a net, a net that will catch people -many
people, maybe even 153 (?!) people- people who will come to know Jesus as we do:
as a great friend, a friend who looks after us – with breakfasts, and much more:
he is the risen Lord Jesus, our Saviour and master, now and forever!
Amen.
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