Year C

John 21:1-19

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

Fishing With New Eyes

As a whole we humans are not very good with endings. We are much better with beginnings. I mean most of us hate saying good bye and are better at saying hello. Many prefer mornings, like myself. I hate it when I have to be up late or wake up during the night unable to sleep. We prefer to baptize babies and celebrate new life in Christ than celebrate the end of life. But let’s face it, when it comes to anything that really matters in our lives there is a usually a beginning and an ending. So we can’t really blame the disciples today for deciding to leave Jerusalem for Galilee to return to their home and vocation after that first Easter. Jesus their leader and dear friend, the source of all their hopes was dead. It felt like an ending and even though he had just appeared to them in his risen form it didn’t seem to have made a difference in them.

Perhaps this is because they hadn’t really been able to grasp all that had happened and see the new beginning yet. Life over the last week of Jesus’ life had been overwhelming and confusing. Surly they needed some time to process what they had experienced and decide what the next steps would be. It’s hard to be certain just what was going through their minds but the disciples decided, like many of us might have, that when in doubt the best thing to do is to go back to what you know best and get on with your life.  We hear Peter today abruptly announce to the group, “I am going fishing,” and they all quickly followed his lead. Going back to the familiar would be a comfort in this time and it would have certainly reminded them of the beginning of their time together with Jesus when he called them on that same shore to lay down their nets and follow him.

Yet, even though they could and did run away, what they could not do was hide from God. They had been called by God and once you have been called by God to be about the business of telling the story of Jesus and his love, it’s hard to go back. To those who believe and are baptized, God gives the power through God’s Spirit to become fishers of people who are called out of darkness by the waters of baptism into the glorious light to seek and serve God and all who need to see and follow Jesus.  Jesus used the disciples return to the Sea of Galilee to call them to a more profound task of being fishermen. He had shown them for about three years how to fish for people. He showed them how to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him. They must return to this calling because nothing else will work.

Look what happened to the disciples. They went back to what they knew best but it wasn’t working. They caught nothing. Then along came Jesus and even though they could not yet quite see the new beginning, he taught those accomplished fishermen how to fish again. He then demonstrated God’s love and forgiveness by feeding them, fish and bread, a sort of Eucharist. Much like he feed them at the Last Supper their last meal together before he died. To let them know that he still believed in them. They will be the future leaders of the church whose mission it will be to show their love for Christ by feeding others. After the resurrection, when Jesus met them hiding in the Upper Room out of fear, he told them “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” He breathed on them his spirit to give them peace and strength, but for now, they have returned to what they know best and he went to them again with open arms, as he does to every one of us when we return to the familiar, for he is faithful and just and will forgive us and call us again and again to follow.

As Disciples of Christ, we are called to go to, not to wait for those children of God, who may also have gone back to business as usual. In Luke’s book of Acts, we see what happens when the disciples braved the waters, left their hiding place and went public. They will continue to discover and become aware of what Jesus’ resurrection means of which we will read about during this time between Easter and Pentecost, to help us discover a faith inspired by Easter.

God wants everyone to grow in faith but the Easter joy we experience needs strength to follow the risen Christ in our world so Christ continues to invite his disciples to breakfast and feeds them each week in the Eucharist. And even if we go back to the familiar, like the disciples did before Pentecost, he never gives up on us even if we don’t catch a thing. What’s important is that we are fishing. If we love him he says, then we will feed and tend his sheep, and this call to mission, well, just look at Saul or Paul’s story today. Saul of Tarsus, a dedicated defender of Judaism and persecutor of Christians, experiences a world-altering vision of the resurrected Jesus as leader and Lord of the community he once hated.

His life and the cause of Christianity are forever changed because he allowed Jesus to feed him and open his eyes to a new beginning as one who would bring others into the light of God’s love. We may not all have the same experience as Paul, I’m sure not, but God will take who and what we are and reorient it when we say yes to God, to serve and glorify God. Paul’s transformation experience not only gave him the ability to see God’s purposes, it gave him a strong understanding of the church as the Body of Christ.

This is the same body that Hughes will be baptized into in a few minutes with the myriads of myriads and thousands and thousands of those baptized who have gone on before us now before the throne of God worshiping the Lamb, the risen Jesus and the new beginning that he brought into being by his life, death and resurrection. If we ever needed a more beautiful reassuring picture of what heaven looks like, John certainly gives us this in his vision of the court of heaven. John writes his revelation to embolden Christians to stand fast in the faith under pressure and persecution, and it promises that for those who are faithful to the end, they will sing with full voice the love song to Christ who is worthy of our love.

Jesus asks Peter three times, “Simon do you love me? And three times he says “yes Lord.” And each time his eyes are opened a bit wider and his understanding grows to the new beginning he was being called to. There is much more to this story of Peter. More to tell as Peter follows Jesus with love, and faith and courage, and in a curious way, his story along with Paul’s, are the stories of our own lives.  For these days after Easter, they are the right time for our own new beginnings. By living in great expectation and refusing to believe that our nets will stay empty we will hear the Lamb who is worthy “to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing” saying to us, “Come, have breakfast.” And hopefully we will say “Yes, Lord….”