The Story isn’t Over
A Sermon About Feeling Stuck, Being Re-Called, and Living Into Your Identity
After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.
Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off.
When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.” John 21:1–19 NRSV
Many of you know that each summer our church sends our youth and children to Passport Camps. What you may not know is that Walker Burroughs, the son of the founders of Passport, was a contestant on the current season of American Idol. Our family watched the show to support Walker, and we kept up with his experiences through his parents’ social media accounts. Even though Walker was hands-down one of the best singers on the show, he was sadly voted off this past Sunday. I guess because I’m a mom, I’ve been thinking a great deal about what he must have been feeling this week.
While the show’s only been airing for about a month or so, the adventure began way back in August for 20 year-old Walker. There’s a great deal to celebrate because he rose to the top 8 out of the thousands of young hopefuls who auditioned, yet we all know that the more excitement increases, so does the depth of disappointment.
How must Walker feel one week after such a public rejection? These past eight months he’s lived experiences that are bound to change him forever. I mean, the kid’s first performance ever was singing a Jason Mraz song at the Passport Kids Camp talent show, and not too long ago, he sang a duet with Jason Mraz on national television! Despite incredible experiences like that, it all still ended before the confetti rained down on him and he scored the title and big record contract.
What does Walker do now? Well, he’s gone home to Birmingham where I’m sure he’ll continue to decompress- and probably be a local celebrity for the summer. After such a huge experience, Walker can’t go back to exactly the way things were before he was in the national spotlight- at least he can’t do that right now. I imagine he also doesn’t really know how to move forward at this moment either. It would make sense for Walker to feel a bit numb and paralyzed right now.
In a radically different way, I felt stuck like this after answering a call for clergy to be present at the Charlottesville riot. While I should have anticipated it, I was shocked that day to see so many of the white supremacists with crosses around their necks or painted on their riot gear. I kept thinking, “How many of these people who are filled with vitriol today will sit in a church pew tomorrow?” Of course, as a pastor, this thought made me panic.
After Charlottesville, I found myself in the same spot where many pastors are right now, as it’s come to light that the California synagogue shooter is a churchgoer and that, in his manifesto, he clearly articulates theology that he learned in church and used that theology to justify his heinous actions.
On the one hand, I knew that I could no longer preach ignorant of the reality that white supremacist ideology is buried within white Christian theology. On the other hand, I also didn’t know how to begin deconstructing my theology and the biblical scholarship that I read so that I could begin to discover what exactly within it lends itself toward white supremacist beliefs. I couldn’t stomach the possibility that I might unwittingly preach or teach anything that could lead someone to believe that white supreamacy is any way in line with the teachings of Jesus or my church. I didn’t know where to start, so I felt stuck- not willing to backwards, but not quite sure how to begin moving forward either.
This is where the disciples find themselves at the Sea of Tiberias, which is the colonized name for the Sea of Galilee. The disciples’ world has been rocked. They thought Jesus’ ministry was leading to an uprising against Rome, but that didn’t happen. Instead Jesus was brutally executed. If that wasn’t enough to turn their world upside down, Jesus’ body somehow resurrected and has appeared to them three times now. They have no idea if or when he will ever show up again. Not only are they now without their rabbi, but they have also been betrayed and abandoned by one of their own, Judas. That also has to be a pretty hard pill for them to swallow.
All of this has weakened and shaken them and left the remaining eleven disciples without a leader or any idea what to do next. They are floundering, and they’re stuck. Since Peter doesn’t know how to move forward, he decides that maybe he should go back and do what he did before this all started. He goes fishing, and six of his friends decide to join him.
When we’ve changed in some way, we can’t go back to exactly the way we were before, can we? Peter and his friends try to fish, but they catch nothing. After all, they are fishers of people now, no longer fishers of fish. They failed that Friday when their leader died, and now they fail at what they did before they ever met him.
As the morning dawns, a stranger appears on the shore. The stranger sympathizes with the fisherman for having caught nothing all night, and he instructs them to cast their net on the other side of the boat. Now Peter should know what’s going on here, since this is the same way Jesus called him in the first place. But the story doesn’t tell us that he gets it quite yet.
First, he and his friends do what the stranger says. When they do, their net becomes so loaded with fish that they can’t physically haul them all in. It is with this miraculous act that the disciples finally realize that the stranger on the shore is Jesus.
With this knowledge, impulsive Peter jumps in the lake in order to get to Jesus as quickly as he can. By the time all of the disciples make their way to the beach, Jesus has a campfire going and is ready to cook his weary friends some breakfast. He starts cooking a few of the ginormous batch of fish the story tells us they caught, and then Jesus breaks bread with the disciples. The first thing he does with them now is one of the last things he did with them before he died. Perhaps this is a subtle reminder of his instruction to remember him every time they break bread and share it.
After breakfast, Jesus pulls Peter off to the side so that they can have a conversation alone. Three times Jesus asks Peter if he loves him. Each time Peter responds by saying, “Yes, Lord. You know that I love you.” Three times Jesus instructs Peter to feed or tend his sheep. He concludes their private conversation by telling Peter to follow him.
We tend to think of this conversation as paralleling Peter’s three denials of Jesus just before Jesus was crucified. We imagine this as Jesus forgiving Peter for denying him.
It’s interesting, though, that John’s story of Peter’s denials is different from the other three gospels, the ones we call the Synoptics. Listen closely to the questions Peter is asked in John’s telling.
“You are not also one of this man’s disciples, are you?” Peter responds, “I am not.” Again, “You are not also one of this man’s disciples, are you?” Peter again responds, “I am not.” Lastly, “Did I not see you in the garden with him?” Then Peter denied having been there.
Notice anything? In John’s gospel, Peter doesn’t deny Jesus. He denies himself. He denies his role, or his identity, as one of Jesus’ disciples. I’m not so sure that Peter is being forgiven here as much as Jesus is inviting Peter to forgive himself. I’m not so sure that Peter is being reinstated into the community as he is being re-called, or challenged to live into the person that God created him to be and the identity that Jesus has called him to embody.
When Jesus asks, “Peter, do you love me” and then instructs Peter to tend his sheep, I believe Jesus is saying, “If you love me, fish for people, not tilapia.” He is reminding Peter that he called him to be a disciple, and, if Peter goes back to life as it was before he encountered Jesus or if he remains stuck and does nothing, then he’s not living into his identity as a disciple. Jesus prepared Peter, and now is the time for the disciple to put all he has learned into practice. By feeding people. Caring for people. Healing people. And by loving people.
As Rachel Held Evans, a gifted writer and fierce advocate for the marginalized who died yesterday at the young age of 37, wrote, “Christianity isn’t meant to simply be believed; it’s meant to be lived, shared, eaten, spoken, and enacted in the presence of other people.” In this story, Jesus is telling Peter, “Now is the time. I need you. I need you to live like the disciple I taught you to be. That may not be the revolution you expected, but it’s the one I’ve been preparing you for all along.”
All of those fish that the disciples caught (the story tells us it was 153) are a sign from Jesus. They are not a sign that the men should stick with fishing, though. They are a sign that Jesus will give them far more than they need. They are a sign that when the disciples feel exhausted or afraid, when they think they are failures or doubt that they can do any good for anybody, Jesus will give them an abundance of what they need most.
You see, in the gospel’s beautiful prologue, John writes, “From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace.” Then he spends the rest of the gospel showing us what grace upon grace looks like. It looks like an exorbitant amount of the finest wine when all hope is gone that there will be any. It looks like healing for those who have been written off and cast away. It looks like life after death. And it looks like a ridiculously excessive amount of fish after a night of catching nothing. As Jesus reminds his disciples that he will lavish them with absurd amounts of grace, he re-calls them to share grace with others. In his absence, it is their time to be his presence.
This remains the call for disciples today.
I love the last sentence of John’s gospel as much as I love its prologue. The very last line in John is this: “But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”
Jesus has done more in the world than the world can possibly contain if it were all written down. That is because even after his death and resurrection, Jesus continued to do good in the world through people courageous enough to live into their identity as his disciples. Jesus’ grace in the world continues today through all who are willing to live into who God created them to be and who Jesus calls them to be. The story isn’t over. If we’ll trust the grace upon grace and share it with others, then the entire cosmos won’t be able to contain the stories that will be written. May it be so.
