John 21:1-19
What do you do when your world has been turned upside down?
This is a pressing question whether your life has been overturned by the positive and joyous or by the painful and difficult.
At the outset of today’s gospel lesson, John 21:1-19, we meet seven of the apostles sometime after they had all seen the risen Jesus.
By now, they know that Jesus is the promised Messiah.
They know that Jesus has risen physically from the dead.
They know that the prophecies have been fulfilled.
They know that God has conquered sin, death, and the devil.
They know that the old order of the old creation has been overturned by Jesus, God the Son.
But that still leaves the apostles with a question: What do they do now?
Peter decides that he’s going to return to his old job of fishing. When your world is turned upside down, the comfortable old ways of life can be alluring.
Take a look at our lesson, starting at verse 2: “Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. ‘I’m going out to fish,’ Simon Peter told them, and they said, ‘We’ll go with you.’” Their world is so upside down that even the non-fishermen, knocked off their pins by what it meant to live in the light of Easter, decide to go fishing with Peter!
Look, starting in the middle of verse 3: “So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.”
Here’s the deal: When your world has been turned upside down, it’s no good trying to do the same old thing. In every instance of radical change in our lives, there is a call from God to live differently. And when you follow Jesus, everyday is a call to radical change: our decisions, our priorities, our way of life.
The disciples caught nothing through a night of casting their nets. It’s a vivid demonstration that after Easter, nothing would be the same for them.
Verse 4: “Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. He called out to them, ‘Friends, haven’t you any fish?’ ‘No,’ they answered. He said, ‘Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.’ When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish. Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord!’ As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, ‘It is the Lord,’ he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) and jumped into the water. The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards. When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread. Jesus said to them, ‘Bring some of the fish you have just caught.’ So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn.”
Coming back from their night of futility, the disciples see a stranger on the shore. When the stranger tells them to cast their net off to the right side of the boat, they bring in a haul so enormous that, together, the whole lot of them can’t bring in the net.
John later says there are 153 fish. Divisible by three, that’s a perfect catch; the haul was always divided by three: one for the boat, one for the individual fishermen on board, one for the person who provides the net.
John understands this miraculous event is a sign performed by Jesus. He pronounces that the stranger on the shore is Jesus, the risen One.
Peter, stripped down for work, is overwhelmed with excitement. He puts on his clothes to jump into the water, although the boat is just a football field’s length from the shore.
The others sensibly stay on board as the boat drifts to the beach. Once they all get there, Jesus asks them to bring some of the fish they’ve just snared.
In his enthusiasm, Peter reaches into the boat and drags the full net to Jesus, even though just a few moments before, seven grown men had struggled to haul the same netful of fish onto the boat.
The word enthusiasm is a word we’ve taken over from the Greek language and it literally means to be in God, to be so full of God that God enables us to do things we cannot do on our own. Here, Peter is so filled with the Spirit of Jesus that he’s empowered to bring an offering--a net full of fish--to Jesus that he never could have brought in his own power.
Jesus had spoken with the disciples not long before about this power He gives believers in Him to do more than we can do on our own. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing... If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” (John 15:5, 7-8)
Some Christians are so obsessed by the things they can’t do--like offering to pray for a friend, getting involved with a mission ministry, telling someone the good news of new life through Jesus, spending quiet time in God’s Word and prayer each day--that they forget what the God we know in Jesus can do through those who are willing to offer themselves to Him.
As we'll see in the next section of our lesson, it’s not that Jesus needs our offerings of time, prayer, devotion, or money. Jesus is the omnipotent, omniscient, self-sufficient God the Son, the conqueror of sin, death, and Satan. Jesus doesn’t need us or our offerings. But when we empty ourselves of ourselves, letting go of our desire to be in control, to have everything figured out, Jesus can fill us with life, forgiveness, and peace.
This is why the apostle Paul could say, “...for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10)
Jesus wants us to empty ourselves of ourselves so that He can fill us up with Himself! So, even when we are weak, we are filled with His strength, His power, His peace, His love, His courage.
Verse 12: “Jesus said to them, ‘Come and have breakfast.’ None of the disciples dared ask him, ‘Who are you?’ They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish.”
Jesus already has fish cooking on the charcoal fire He’s started! And this, along with the bread Jesus also has prepared on the fire, may be why all the disciples now see that this stranger is Jesus.
- Ancient Jewish teaching said that when the Messiah established His kingdom, the leviathan, the dreaded sea monsters who, in some parts of the Old Testament, gave their name to the devil himself, would be on the menu of the great heavenly feast. Fear, sin, and death would be conquered by the Messiah and served up to believers who had once lived in sin, fear, and foreboding.
- The bread that Jesus offers the disciples is like the manna from heaven with which God once fed His ancient people.
But there was more to this meal than a foretaste of the eternal feast to come. To be restored and reassured, the disciple who had denied Jesus three times while warming himself over a charcoal fire in the outer court of the high priest’s home on the night of Jesus’ arrest had to be confronted over this charcoal fire with his sin and granted forgiveness for his repentance.
In three different ways--echoing Peter’s three denials--Jesus asks Peter if he truly loves Him.
It’s the same question we’re called to answer every time we come into God’s presence and know the need to confess our sins: Do we love Jesus more than we love our sins? Is the risen Jesus what and Who we love the most?
Cut to the heart, Peter says with simple desperation, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you” (John 21:19). If that’s true, Jesus tells Peter, “Feed my lambs,” “Take care of my sheep,” “Feed my sheep.” “If you love me,” Jesus tells Peter--and us--”take care of others, love others, even [as Jesus puts it elsewhere] ‘other sheep that are not of this sheep pen,’ those not yet part of His Church.” (John 10:16)
After assuring Peter of His forgiveness and giving the disciple his mission, Jesus reminds Peter that, Peter’s life no longer belongs to Peter.
And if we are disciples of Jesus Christ, the same is true of us. “You are not your own” the apostle Paul tells Christians, “you were bought at a price.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)
Jesus paid the ransom for us, offering His sinless life on the cross to set us eternally free from our slavery to sin. And believers are called to share both in Jesus' Good Friday and His Easter Sunday.
Jesus tells Peter, “...when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” (John 21:18) When we follow Jesus, He may take us anywhere in this fallen world. But as we live for His will and not our own, there is nowhere we go that He won’t be with us: in joy and in grief, in successes and failures, in moments of clarity and seasons of bewilderment. Always, Jesus will be with us.
What do you when your world is turned upside down?
You turn away from sin and you turn to Jesus each day.
You run to Him when He calls you.
You offer your whole self, all you are and all you own, to Jesus because, while He doesn’t need us or our gifts, when we yield ourselves to Him, He can reconstruct us in His image.
You confess your sins to Jesus so that their power to send you to hell is erased by God’s grace given only in Jesus.
You turn to Jesus so that He can give you, people who no longer belong to yourself, your missions.
When our worlds are turned upside down, we turn to Jesus: He sets us right with God. He makes us new.
Even in uncertainty, Jesus empowers us to live in the certainty that only comes from belonging to Him forever. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
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