Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Galilee. It happened this way: 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.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. 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. (John 21:1-7)
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Do you ever find yourself at a loss for something - anything - to do, because something big has happened in your life, and everything has changed, and you’re just not sure how to proceed? I remember that after the 9/11 attacks in New York City a new phrase entered the English language - “the new normal.” It expressed the belief that people and society had to get back to normal but no one knew what that normal was going to be, and so everyone walked around in a daze for a while afterward; trying to figure out what to do. Some would say that we’ve yet come to grips with the changes in the world since that event. On a more mundane level, I’ve been searching for a new normal recently. For three years my life seems to have been a continual rotation of reading books, writing papers, attending classes in Chicago, etc., etc. with hardly ever a break in the schedule and the last few months especially having been intense in terms of workload. And all of a sudden I’m done. I have no more books to read. I have no more papers to write. I have no more classes to attend. And from time to time my wife has been telling me that I look a bit lost puttering around the house because I’m so used to sitting at the computer writing or sitting in my recliner with a book in front of me that I feel I should be doing that. Sometimes you just feel a little lost, a little disoriented, a little discombobulated, if I might use a word I used to hear a lot. I think that’s a bit like Peter and the disciples in today’s Gospel reading.
Think about it. These men were followers of Jesus. They had been through a lot. They had seen Jesus die; they had seen Jesus alive again; Jesus had appeared to them; He had convinced them that He was still alive. And knowing that, they were convinced that there must be something they were being called to do; some mission that they were being called to undertake. And as I read this passage, here’s where I start to see the restlessness of the resurrection - the restlessness that being convinced that Jesus is alive actually should place within the hearts of believers. You want to do something with this wonderful knowledge, but you’re not sure what it is you should do. So you putter. You pass the time. You wait for a sign. You look for fillers. "'I’m going out to fish,' Simon Peter told them, and they said, 'We’ll go with you.'” In a way - with everything that these men had experienced in just a few days - doesn’t this seem like a strange thing to do? “Yup. Jesus is alive. No doubt about that. It’s great news. The best news ever. It’s unbelievable. So. ... Let’s go fishing.”
Let me ask you. Can you ever been confronted by something that’s so big - so gigantic - so momentous - that you just don’t know what to do? Can you literally be paralyzed by good news so that you don’t know what to do with it? Can something just seem so unbelievably good that it hardly seems worth mentioning because no one will believe it? You know the old saying - “it’s too good to be true.” And so we sit on whatever it is, increasingly restless because we know we should be doing something with whatever it is, but just not sure how to proceed. I wonder if that’s not where the church is right at this moment in history. We have something so good and so beautiful and so life giving that even to us at times it seems impossible, and we’re almost paralyzed by it, and so what do we do? We drift. We try this and we try that. We tinker with how we worship. We do stewardship campaigns and we wonder how to raise money. We know we have something, but we don’t know what to do with it. And so, in a way - like Peter and the disciples - we just decide to “go fishing” because we can’t think of anything better to do. We want to get out there and change the world. We lament what we see going on around us. But we’re a little lost, and so we putter around with the unimportant “church stuff” while we wait for Jesus to give us some sort of direction.
As Peter and the disciples puttered around without accomplishing much of anything, suddenly something happened. Jesus appeared. Fish abounded. Peter cried out “it is the Lord!” and he jumped into the water. Jesus’ appearance reminded them of what they were about - proclaiming to the world that Jesus was alive. That’s still our calling. When you strip away everything else, that’s still what we’re about - proclaiming good news to a world that sometimes seems to get way too fixated on the bad or on the evil. Sometimes we fall into that trap as well. That’s when we get restless. “Come on Jesus. The world’s falling apart. Isn’t there something we should be doing? Isn’t there something you should be doing? So. I don’t know. Let’s talk about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.”
I hope we’re restless. We should be. We should be wanting to get out there and do something with and for the risen Jesus that might make a difference in the lives of those we encounter. Offering hope to those who have no hope or love to those who know no love wouldn’t be a bad way to start!
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