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The Third Sunday Of Easter
O God, whose blessed Son did manifest himself to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open, we pray thee, the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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The Third Sunday Of Easter
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Scripture citation(s): John 21:1-14
A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
on
John 21:1-14
✛
The Right Side of the Boat
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So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them; and although there were so many, the net was not torn.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
For 2000 years, commentators have wondered about the possible symbolism of those 153 large fish. St. Jerome, for example, said that the Greek zoologists specified 153 species of fish in the world; thus the number symbolized a universal catch.¹ If there is any numerical symbolism involved – and Saint John does not say there is – it must have some relation to the subject matter. The statement that the net was not broken, unlike an earlier incident in Luke when Jesus first called Peter and the others, is the clue. The Gospel net will never break, no matter how many people it catches; and there is no limit to the number and to the sorts of people caught.
But perhaps there is no symbolism, and 153 is simply the count noted by an amazed eyewitness to this post-Resurrection miracle and sign. In either case, today’s Gospel is an appearance by the risen Lord at the Sea of Galilee to Peter and six other apostles, a revelation which speaks to the conditions under which the work of Jesus’ disciples is effective. Those disciples include not only Peter, John and the other five disciples in today’s Gospel, but us here and now.
According to Saint John, all seven of the apostles in today’s story (including himself) have already seen Jesus after his Resurrection in the upper room on Easter Day and the Sunday following, when Thomas finally also saw Jesus and exclaimed, My Lord and my God! Yet they have not quite become engaged in apostolic ministry. The only change from the days before they met Jesus is that they are a company united by the fact of their discipleship. Their wheels are spinning; the clutch has not engaged the gears on the church bus. “I am going fishing,” says Peter, meaning the regular kind that was his livelihood before Jesus called him; and the other six join him.
Archbishop William Temple, a great scholar of John’s Gospel, notes: “The word [Peter] uses is that which we have often translated ‘go his way.’ It expresses a completely voluntary and self chosen action; it may be a willful choice or the fulfillment of a destiny, but it suggests that the ‘going’ [fishing] is an individual act; I am going off to fish. The others at once decide to join: We too are coming with thee. So they go on their self-chosen occupation – innocent, but self-chosen. Night was the best time for fishing; but in that night they caught nothing. The work which we do at the impulse of our own wills is futile.” ²
But at day-break they see a figure standing on the beach. They do not at first recognize Jesus. “Children, have you any fish?” he calls to them. [A jarring but accurate paraphrase would be, “Boys, you haven’t caught anything, have you?”]³ No, they answer. “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some,” the Lord says. We know what follows.
This beautiful story, after all the alarm and excitement of the chapters before it, reads like a soothing pastoral, takes those seven disciples back to scenes and experiences with Jesus from pre-Passion times, back to the beginning of their discipleship. By the Sea of Galilee he had called them. To Peter, Andrew, James and John he had said he would change them into fishers of men. They had crossed the sea with him to the other side, where he had fed 5000 with two small fish and five loaves of bread and where the crowd had tried to seize Jesus and make him king; but he had sent his disciples back across the lake. He had come to them in the middle of the night, walking on the water. Now, here he was, on the other side of his death, calling them by the same lakeside.
When they hauled in the net, full yet not torn by 153 large fish, there he was with a charcoal fire, some fish and bread, waiting for them. “Come and have breakfast.” They didn’t ask who he was; they knew. But they were silent. They ate with him by the sea. There would be more he would say to them, but that is further on, just beyond today’s passage. For now, Jesus had shown them what they could do when they worked at his bidding, for him, with him; when they were about his business running his errands.
Did you know that, by a conservative estimate, 300,000 people walk up the stairs of Saint Thomas Church of their own free will in between services every year? They swim in here, some to wander around, some to look, some to seek. Some of them feed, some of them stay. But aside from opening the doors, we do not go fishing for these people. Even when we do fish, which I suppose is during services like this one, we still have plenty of seats available most Sundays. Saint Thomas’ net is not full.
I wonder: What if we really went fishing? Would the nave overflow (the word, nave, means boat)? Would the ministry be overwhelmed; would the net break? I think: We’re so busy here already! What would we do with such numbers? What would happen if this church really undertook the mission that founded it in the first place? Some of us heave a sigh of relief on Low Sunday (Saint Thomas Sunday!) after the Easter mobs are gone, and we get our church back (note the possessive pronoun). But today Jesus tells us not to fear. If we set aside our willfulness and our anxieties and follow his lead, we will catch the exact number of fish he has chosen for us. The net will not break, the boat will not sink. And we will have peace and repose, joy and happiness, in the work he has given us to do. The Lord has been giving me some leads recently. Shall we cast our net on the right side of the boat?
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
_____________
¹ F.F. Bruce, The Gospel and Epistles of John (Eerdmans: 1983), pp. 401-402; Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Vol IVb, John 11-21, pp. 377-378. Others noticed that 153 is the triangular number of 17 – the sum of all the whole numbers from 1 to 17 inclusive; and 17 is the sum of 10, which stands for the law, and 7, which stands for grace. But perhaps this numerology is too mystical, fanciful.
²William Temple, Readings in St. John’s Gospel ( Macmillan: 1952), p. 397-399.
³Temple, Op.Cit., p. 400.
