Last week we had a character view of someone in the Upper Room.  And contrary to his brand we decided he could have a new one—Honest Thomas instead of Doubting Thomas.   Today we continue in the Gospel of John and we will be looking at Chapter 21 in the Gospel of John beginning with the first verse.

“After these things, Jesus shows 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.’  And 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, do 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 handle it because there were so many fish. 

That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord!’  When Simon Peter heard 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 held the net ashore full of large fish, a hundred and 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 break 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.”  We’ll stop there for now. 

Well, I’d like to tell you that he is back—no it is not E.T. and it’s not the shark in Jaws—it’s Bob!  Bob is back from his time away and yet this morning we are talking about Peter.  Peter—he wasn’t in the scene last week; it was Thomas.  We assumed that Peter was gathered with the disciples in the Upper Room but his name wasn’t brought out to the front.  It was Thomas.  And it was the second time, so we are assuming here that Peter also has seen the resurrected Lord.  And he had been there and run to the tomb.  He ran there and he had heard the women talk about their encounter with Jesus.  And then to have that reinforced two more times in the Upper Room as they met together. 

And then a few days had gone by.  Simon, like you might, was bewildered.  Life had turned upside down.  It had been an emotional rollercoaster.  The events this week put many in our nation, across the world, on a rollercoaster emotionally.  First there was the tragic loss at Virginia Tech of life, and then those who were wishing that they could have done more and those, then, of the survivors and the thankfulness.  And we, as the nation, went through that with them.  And even I received an email that said, “Just put your name at the bottom of this so that they will know that folks around the world have been praying and embracing them during this time of loss.”  

But Peter—he knew!  He had seen Jesus.  He carried resurrection news and yet he left Jerusalem.  The two places where he had seen Jesus, he left.  And he went back to a place that was familiar to him.  How about you?  When you find yourself tossed around in the life that you lead and have emotions, a whirlwind is what we read in the litany, do you go to places that give you balance, that make you have a sense of stability?  That’s what Peter did.  He went away from the crowds that were in Jerusalem.  Of course, we also remember that though Thomas was spoken to by name in that Upper Room, we have no record that Peter had been spoken to by the Lord.   

And so Peter might have left Jerusalem because he remembered his last words about Jesus.  And Jesus’ last words about him were that he would deny him.  And maybe Peter was going to that place to remember who he was—that he wasn’t a failure, that he had denied the Lord but that he was going to retreat to a place that gave him comfort.  That was the Sea of Galilee.  He had been a fisherman when Jesus first talked with him and told him, “Follow me.”  And so he went back to that familiar place and his home, in that area, his friends, the buddies down at the docks.  And they worked on the boats and the nets again.  Maybe they were reminiscing together.   

Sometimes when we get together with loved ones, we remember who we are.  It’s not just a sense of place that gets us back, it’s the people.  We don’t have to explain ourselves whether we speak or we don’t speak.  They know our feelings.  Peter is there, and there are a few others with him--six in fact.  And just maybe, maybe they are doing what you do in times when you gather with loved ones.  And that is you’re reminiscing, you’re recalling of good events.  The hope is to bring back good memories of someone.  Even after a funeral, we’ll go and we’ll have dinner together; and we break bread together and we reminisce about good memories.  And you even find laughter at what we call “funeral dinners”.    

So here is Peter and the disciples.  Maybe they are reminiscing.  “Remember when he sat in this boat?  He was in the back of my boat right here.  This is where he was when the storm came up.  Do you remember that?  We had to wake him up.  Get us out of this, Jesus!”  Oh, someone else says, “I remember.  Yeah, we weren’t so brave then, were we.  And do you remember when we saw Him coming across the water?  He was walking on the water!  We thought He was a ghost and were scared out of our wits.”  So perhaps those were some of the memories being tossed around. 

But whatever memories were being tossed around, Peter finally said, “I’m going fishing.”  We don’t know if Peter was trying to recreate, maybe, that sense of unity that he had with Jesus by being in the boat at sea again.  We do know that sometimes it’s getting our hands on something tangible, being in a familiar place, being with people that can be therapeutic.  And Peter put his hand to the task.  In fact, maybe like you, like me, let’s get back to work.  In our production-oriented world, sometimes we deal with our grief that way.  If I could just do something, then I’ll get better.  Peter leads the rest of them to the boat and they go fishing.   

Apparently it’s the best time to go fishing, at night.  I’ve tried it once.  You can’t see anything.  You can hear a lot.  The water echoes.  Someone speaking in a low tone doesn’t know that it goes across from the bank to the other bank.  And when I threw my line and it hit the bridge, you could hear it.  And the young man I was with said a few words that probably were heard as well.  And I think that when Peter and the crew came in, their arms were aching.  They had not pitched the nets for a long time.  Just possibly when that person, whom they did not yet know was Jesus, asked or rather told them, “Haven’t caught anything, have you?”, that they said, “No!”  Have you ever been in a situation like that?  Maybe not as a fisherman, although they are not known for taking advice with regard to those who are not fishing. 

But maybe you’ve been at less than your greatest level of performance.  Maybe your sales team isn’t the one at the top of the graph.  Maybe your grades are on the wrong side of the bell curve.  Maybe the cut by the corporate takeover has pushed you aside.  Maybe you just can’t hit that golf ball the way you used to.  Whatever it is, when someone has advice not requested, do you find a trace of irritation in your reply to that person?  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know.”  I suppose we can imagine.  A 24-hour shift they had just pulled maybe.  How tired are you at the end of a 12-hour day?  This is very physical labor.   

And contrary to how they had always done it before they met Jesus, they had nothing, absolutely nothing for their efforts.  Not even a fish to slap on a piece of bread.  They were exhausted—not just the emotional exhaustion but physical exhaustion.  Where do you turn when all your resources are depleted?  Where do you turn when you just don’t have the energy?  When what you have counted on as a way of life isn’t there anymore?  They saw someone on the shore far away.  Sometimes that may be what you feel, that Jesus is far away.  They didn’t recognize Jesus in that time of struggle, in that time of feeling defeated, in that time of discouragement.  In here, maybe we can become strong.  We have our Scriptures, we have our prayers, we have our music.  But then we talk about going out in the real world, facing the real world after Sunday.  That’s where we get overwhelmed.  Our boat is full of anxiety and fear.  And we might find ourselves just staring empty-spaced looking out trying to find a place to just land. 

I was alone once in a sailboat off the coasts of North Carolina and it was dark.  And all at once, I felt so isolated.  You could not tell where the land, the water –there was no land in site.  The water met the sky somewhere out there.  But it was so dark below us and above us that it all became one.  This vast emptiness.  You might say, you could feel cut off from the world.   I like what Walter Whiggaman says about this narrative.  He says not only does this challenge us to see things differently, but it also reminds us that God’s reply to our questions about grief and violence and pain, that those questions are sometimes God’s replies come in a form not of explanation, God’s replies come in the form of response.  Not explanation, but response.  God does not explain our troubles.  There was no explanation that Jesus gave to the disciples about why, on this side of the net they found nothing for hours and hours and hours, and then with a flick of the wrist to the other side in obedience to Jesus, they pull up the fish.  There is no explanation, but they were assured in that moment and the few that would come after this, that God loved them, that Jesus, it had to be Jesus, the one who had quieted the storm, the maker of the sea.  It had to be Jesus.   

I think, personally, that Jesus allowed the disciples to leave him.  They left Jerusalem; had gone to the sea.  And He allowed them, before He appeared to them this third time, He allowed them to be in their “regular” place.  Not in worship in the Upper Room, not waiting until the door opened again and they could be on that mountaintop.  He allowed them to go back to their every day life.  He allowed them to be around what we call regular people, their place of old employment.  And He did a recall!  He did a recall to them right there.  Not that they were deficient like we think of recalls, but He issues the call again to them.  “Come, come, come let me take care of you. Come let me be the host.  Bring some of those fish.  I already have some here for you.  I know your need is for rest, for a place of welcome.  I know you need sustenance.  Come to me.”  And Jesus, in His lifetime, said, “Come to me.”  

Maybe they heard those words uttered by Jesus when they walked with Him.  “Come to me all ye who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.”  Who knows what it was that grabbed a hold of Peter except the love of God in Christ Jesus that compelled him out of that boat, propelled him to the shore and allowed Jesus to take care of him.  When we are empty spiritually, do we have the humility to allow Jesus to be gracious to us?  Peter did not take his list and say, “I can’t come to Jesus because I have this list of failures.  He who knows me so well knows what I am coming with.”   

There is no evidence that Peter had any second thoughts.  He was going to meet the one who knew him the best and loved him the most.  And we too can do the same.  We don’t need to give explanation about what we have done.  Sometimes, as Joyce Myers said one time, “We go around the mountain and around the mountain and around the mountain.”  And God says that if we confess our sins that He is what?—faithful and just to forgive them.  Not tomorrow, not after we have carried it around in a circle on our back feeling oh so badly for what we have done.  But once our spirit and the spirit of God says, “Yes, it’s exposed”, we are given forgiveness. 

When Peter jumped it was almost as if he was jumping into the waters of baptism perhaps.  And then he comes to Jesus.  The invitation is still there.  Come to Jesus.  We know the other questions that Jesus asked, perhaps, about instruction; but Peter would be one that instructed the sheep, the followers of Jesus.  But this morning, we are left right there, right there on the beach.  There is a new call.  It’s the same old Jesus.   Do you need to be refilled?  Do you need to let go of something?  Do you need a recall?  Recommitment?  This morning, as in every morning, you have that opportunity.  God freely offers this grace every moment.  If you have never confessed Christ as your Savior, I’d like to lead you in a prayer of repentance and give you the opportunity to ask Him to live in your heart, to achieve communion again if you’ve separated yourself.  As God does not move; he welcomes us. 

Let’s pray together:  “Holy God, we know that you know all of our feelings, that you have said that you would examine our hearts.  Lord, we bring our hearts to you, some that are heaped up, some torn apart by the events of the week, by life itself.  Some feel empty and some feel overwhelmed.  Lord, we thank you that you give us a moment to examine our own heart and confess to you that we want you to have our heart, our allegiance, that we too want to respond in ready obedience.  And, Lord, all of us confess that we have not loved our neighbor as ourselves, that we have not demonstrated the fruit of your spirit.  And some of us, Lord, in the very room, have never made you as our Savior, the resurrected Lord who has power over death and sin.  And that we can come to you now with no condemnation simply by saying, “I love you Lord.  Forgive me, accept me, allow me to be your child.”  Lord it is so simple and so profound.  It is amazing grace.  And now Lord we pray that as we go out into this world of what we call the real world, that we might be real witnesses for all the things that we have seen and heard and know by heart—and that is the love of God manifested in Christ Jesus.  We thank you, we praise you, we worship you.  It is in his holy name we pray, Amen.” 

E-mail Comments to: Pastor Nancy Blevins

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