I believe that’s how Simon Peter and the disciples must have felt right after Jesus’ crucifixion—as if their lives with Jesus had never existed, as if they were back where they started, cut off from God, cut off from their calling as disciples, as if both realities couldn’t exist at the same time. In our Gospel reading, the disciples have moved suddenly from their world with Jesus back into the world of their former lives—they have gone fishing in Galilee. Their memories of their time with Jesus probably seem unreal. After all, their messiah has been crucified, defeated by the Roman powers. The systems of meaning that they built while listening to Jesus’ teaching have suddenly come toppling down under the shadow of the cross. Even the glimpses of resurrection have been vague and shadowy: A wild story from Mary Magdalene about a gardener? Strange appearances in the upper room? Were these things that they could hang on to?
To top it off, Simon Peter not only drifts aimlessly on the waters where he once found purpose and livelihood; he is especially ravaged by shame. Whenever he thinks of Jesus--his friend, his Lord--he must also remember his own betrayal of Jesus. How the red heat of shame, of his own failure and worthlessness, must burn within him! We all know the feeling, the way our minds replay our failures again and again. Over and over in his mind, he hears the crowing of the rooster. He smells the acrid charcoal fire in the courtyard where fear led him to deny being a follower of Jesus-- not once, but three times.
Now, in today’s Gospel, Peter comes face to face with that dreaded charcoal fire once again. Out of the shame-filled shadows of “before,” arise both Jesus and the smoke of a campfire. Yet, who is Peter now? He’s no longer “Simon Peter,” the Rock on whom Jesus will build his church. Jesus calls him, “Simon son of John.” Once again, he’s the unknown, insignificant fisherman whom Jesus met at the beginning of his ministry. Jesus may be raised from the dead, but Simon Peter still wanders in that empty space in between our everyday world and our “world with God,” a space filled with regrets and failures.
But look at what Jesus does: He doesn’t leave Simon in shame and failure. He invites Simon to join him in his reality—in his new Easter reality. Resurrection isn’t only a raising of Jesus’ past identity. It’s also a raising of the past identities of those who have been with him.[1] The Good News for us--we who live lives of trying and failing and trying again--is that Jesus, the victim who loves instead of condemning, raises us up with him. He invites us into a new world of meaning and forgiveness. Being raised with him, being brought into his new reality, we are no longer forced to choose between distant and opposite shores.
OK, so how exactly does this work? The first step is to recognize Jesus. How do the disciples recognize him? In God’s miraculous abundance. There’s suddenly a huge catch of fish, yet their nets don’t break under the load. We, too, are invited to grasp the abundance of the risen Christ in fleeting yet powerful, singular moments: in a satisfying abundance of love that washes over us-- hugs and kisses, cards full of well-wishes, the company of friends. Or we grasp God’s presence in a sudden abundance of grace that carries us through a trial—forgiveness that we don’t deserve, meals brought to us when we are sick, debts forgiven. We even grasp it in the breath-taking abundance of beauty in nature—a sunset, a field of spring flowers, a soaring mountain view. God is always present in glorious abundance. “God’s love” in general is hard to grasp, but we can’t deny the momentary weight of it in our hands, like a net full of fish.
Secondly, like Simon Peter, we need to jump in and swim to Jesus. Commentators scratch their heads in this passage over Simon Peter being naked and then getting dressed to jump into the sea. But the Greek phrase used here for “putting on clothes” can mean that Simon Peter just belted up his fisherman’s smock so that it wouldn’t impede his swimming as he rushed to get to Jesus.[2] What we can gather from this strange verse is that Simon Peter jumps headlong into the gap between himself and Jesus. He leaves the nets full of fish; he leaves the boats—all he wants is to get back to Jesus’ world. When we see the risen Christ, we too are compelled to tie up whatever gets in our way, and leap. Yes, I’m afraid that there is always going to be leaping involved. And unfortunately, we aren’t usually able to push some kind of magic pause button while we ponder the risks.
Third, Peter and the disciples eat with this Jesus who appears to them. They allow him to feed them breakfast, just as he fed them before his death, all those many times. The meal on the beach represents the Eucharist, of course, the same meal that Jesus prepares for us today. Each time we share in the Eucharist, we, like Simon Peter, dare to put one foot into the flat, shadowy world of shame and inadequacy, for we partake of the body and blood of the God we condemned. Yet at the same time, we are restored by the forgiveness of the One whom we have condemned. The Easter community is both guilty and restored as it gathers in the name of the one who is both crucified and raised. The Eucharist is an activity that opens up the space between our world and the Easter world. It holds them both together. As we share the bread and the cup, we enter a place in which that strange disjunction between two worlds is bridged, a place in which the old comes together with the new, in which the world that killed Jesus meets the world filled with Jesus.
Finally, once we have been fed, Jesus asks us, as he asks Simon Peter, to feed his sheep, to tend the people of God. They are not our sheep to do with as we would like; they are not somebody else’s sheep for us to ignore, but they are God’s sheep. Our purpose, our meaning in this post-Easter world, is to care for them. Our new identity is to follow Jesus—to follow him in love and friendship for others, no matter where it leads. Scholars wonder why John alternates two words for “love” in this text. Jesus asks if Peter loves him using the Greek word “agape,” self-giving love, the love that Jesus showed us on the Cross. Peter, though, answers that he loves Jesus with “phileo,” the love of deep friendship. Finally, Jesus comes to meet Peter where he is, asking him if he has friendship for him. For me, this puzzle shows us the importance that God places on friendship, on relationship. Jesus asks us not just to love with a vague, abstract devotion. Jesus asks us to actively love him and others: To reach out with the love we show for our friends. As psychologist BrenĂ© Brown puts it, in recovering from the shame of failure, “we [must] move what we’re learning from our heads to our hearts through our hands.”[3]
- Recognize and live into abundance
- Take risky leaps
- Be fed by the mystery of the Eucharist
- Prioritize relationships
In so doing, our ordinary lives are made holy. We are made whole to follow Christ wherever he may lead us. Europe will exist across the Atlantic, whether I am feeling disconnected from it or whether it has been momentarily made present by a phone call from an old friend. In the same way, our new life and wholeness in Christ exist beneath our doubts and lapses, reemerging as we feed and are fed.
[1]Rowan Williams, Resurrection (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2002), 35.
[2] Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John, XIII-XXI, (The Anchor Yale Bible; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 1072.
[3] Brené Brown, Rising Strong: How the Ability to Reset Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead (New York: Random House, 2015), 7.
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