Jesus (62 page)

If it is an early or even the first appearance, it is not surprising that some of the disciples had returned to the sea. Though they had accompanied Jesus through his ministry and seen his wondrous deeds, they were crushed by his public execution. Conceivably, they have resigned themselves to returning to Galilee and have climbed back into their fishing boats. How often this happens to us. Even after a profound experience of God, we often revert to our old ways of doing things—with predictable results. The same could be said about the disciples: They have caught nothing. They cannot accomplish anything without Jesus.

Just as commonly, we doubt that the profound experience even happened. “It was all in my mind,” people often say after an experience of God's presence. I doubt that after seeing so many miracles the disciples thought that their experience of Jesus was “in their heads,” but they may have succumbed to doubt about the future.

At dawn, “just after daybreak,” Jesus appears on the shore near where they are fishing. He calls to them: “Children,” he says, using a form of address (
paidia
) found nowhere else in the Gospel of John, indicating parental concern. Moloney believes the word conveys an “intimate authority.”
⁴
“Children, you have no fish, have you?” The question in Greek is phrased in the negative and might also be rendered, “You haven't caught any fish, have you?” Jesus sounds like a parent sad over a child's failure to accomplish something.

The man on the beach asks them to cast their nets to the right side of the boat. This must have startled the disciples, particularly Peter, whose initial call from Jesus happened just in this way. Maybe they strained to see who was calling to them.
Who is that? Could it be?
Sometimes when we are the most dejected and we feel that God has abandoned us, God simply turns up.

When they follow his orders, their nets are filled to the bursting point. Is this a miracle or simply Jesus's perceptive eye? William Barclay suggests that it's often easier for a person on shore than for those in a boat to see a shoal of fish. Perhaps. Distance gives perspective. Still, it's hard to imagine Peter not knowing where to fish. Either way, the identity of the man on the shore dawns on the Beloved Disciple.

“It is the Lord,” he says. As at the tomb, the Beloved Disciple is always eager to believe.

But it is Peter who joyfully and impetuously leaps into the water. The marvelous Greek word
ebalen
is the same word Jesus used for the action of the men throwing the net: “cast.” Peter casts himself into the water. Peter doesn't have to say that he believes—his actions are a physical profession of faith. Perhaps he bitterly regretted the last time he was asked to profess belief in Jesus with words—during his Passion. Better to
act.

Maybe this is as much a profession of desire as it is of faith. Peter simply may want to be with Jesus. Peter probably missed Jesus's
company
and mourned the loss of simply being around him. The word
company
is rich in meaning for Jesuits: the original phrase used for our order is the
Compañia de Jesus
and connects not only to the company (as an organization) of Jesus, but also to the company (as in companionship) of Jesus. Peter wanted to be in Jesus's company.

The disciples follow Peter, dragging ashore the heavy net filled with fish—153 of them. Why that odd number? Over the centuries, various explanations have been set forth. That was the number of species of fish thought to exist in the known world, so it represents all of creation. Or the number had a mystical significance.
⁵

Or maybe someone actually counted the fish. Remember John's counting of the porticoes at the Pool of Bethesda—five—which turned out to be accurate. Perhaps John's Gospel contains more historical detail than we imagine.

Readers today can just say that there were
a lot
of fish, so many that the net should have been torn, but remained unbroken. Their catch is a symbol of the missionary success the disciples will have—working together—with Jesus's guidance. It is as if Jesus is telling the disciples, “I will give you a net so big that it can catch the world.”

Reaching the shore, they discover that Jesus has prepared a simple breakfast of fish cooked over a charcoal fire (hearkening back to the charcoal fire beside which Peter had betrayed Jesus before the Crucifixion) and some bread.
⁶
He will feed them as he did at the Last Supper and at the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes. Once again Jesus uses everyday foods—bread, fish, wine—to invite the disciples to encounter God. As they sit on the beach, the Gospel tells us that none of the disciples “dared” to ask him who he is. They know.

We may be so familiar with this scene that we miss something important. Peter has, not that long ago, denied that he even knew Jesus. What strange behavior he displays. If you were told that the person you had betrayed was waiting for you, would you rush to him joyfully? Many of us would slink away or approach him shamefacedly. Yet Peter grasps that he has already been forgiven—because he knows Jesus. Peter understands that forgiveness is part of who Jesus
is
. So instead of shrinking before his sins, Peter jumps at the opportunity for forgiveness. It is, quite literally, a leap of faith.

Notice how Peter has changed over the course of Jesus's ministry. At the Miraculous Catch of Fish, recognizing his own sinfulness, he shrinks before Jesus. He cannot bear his own limitations. At the Breakfast by the Sea, he does not fail to rush to Jesus, even knowing his sinfulness. It is a transformation that has come from spending time with Jesus.

J
ESUS IS NOT FINISHED
with Peter. He knows that his friend needs something else—a public opportunity to be forgiven. So after the meal, beside the fire, he asks Peter a question.

“Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” he says, pointedly using his friend's original name. “These” may refer to the other disciples. (Do you love me more than you love your friends? Or, likewise, do you love me more than your friends love me?) Or it may refer to his livelihood, as he points to the fish flopping around in the net. (Do you love me more than these fish, more than your old life?) Whatever the case, Peter seems surprised.

“Yes, Lord,” he says, “you know that I love you.” Perhaps his vehemence is not only for Jesus's benefit, but for that of his friends. Peter may have flushed under Jesus's apparent scrutiny, like a boy being scolded in class before his classmates.

But Jesus isn't trying to embarrass Peter. With great compassion he brings up what Gerard O'Collins calls Peter's “buried past,” to help heal old memories.
⁷

“Feed my lambs,” says Jesus. Then he asks a second time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

“Yes, Lord; you know that I love you,” says Peter again.

“Tend my sheep,” says Jesus.

Jesus asks the same question again. At this third mention Peter “felt hurt.” Maybe he wondered:
Doesn't Jesus believe me? Is he trying to make me look like a fool? I know I did a terrible thing in denying him. Why is he rubbing it in?
Or does it dawn on Peter that Jesus is offering him a chance to redeem himself three times, to counterbalance the three denials before the Crucifixion?

Perhaps Peter is hurt because he realizes the depth of his sin. As at the Miraculous Catch of Fish in the Gospel of Luke, Peter comes face-to-face with his own humanity.
⁸
This is an important step in the spiritual life.

“Lord,” Peter says, as if embracing his human frailty and expelling his pride, “you know everything; you know that I love you.”

“Feed my sheep,” Jesus says again.

Jesus tells Peter that in his youth Peter went where he wanted to go. “But when you grow old,” Jesus says, “you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” John adds that this was a prediction of Peter's ultimate crucifixion, which occurred around
AD
64, some forty years before John wrote his Gospel.

Finally, Jesus says, “Follow me.”

At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus performs a miracle on the Sea of Galilee, in Peter's backyard, as it were, with familiar things: fish. Peter saw the miracle and was ashamed; Jesus nonetheless asked him to follow. Now the pattern is repeated. It is as if Jesus is saying, “I asked you to follow at the beginning, when you didn't know me and you hadn't done anything wrong. Now at the end, when you know me well and you have sinned against me and need forgiveness, I ask you to follow me. Again.”

In the original Greek text Jesus uses two different words when he poses the question of love. The first two times he says, “
Agapas me?
” The word
agape
means a universal love or selfless love of all human beings. Peter says yes both times. But in the last instance Jesus uses
philein
, a brotherly love or the love between friends.
“Phileis me?”
Most scholars believe that the Gospel writer is simply varying the words, and in any event, Jesus and Peter were not speaking in Greek, but Aramaic.
⁹
(If I were writing about visiting Capernaum I wouldn't use “amazing” three times on one page, even if it was amazing.)

But it's possible that Jesus tailored his question to the needs of his friend. He probably knew that Peter, limited as he was, couldn't
agape
him. For Peter responds to Jesus's
agapas
with
philō
. Okay, says Jesus, can you
phileis
me? Can you love me like a brother? Even in his questioning Jesus may be showing his compassion for his friend.

Or as a Jesuit friend once said in a homily, given the spirit of reconciliation in this passage, it cannot be that Jesus ever intended to hurt Peter's feelings. Then why did Jesus repeatedly question Peter? Like a person hearing someone profess affection for the first time, perhaps Peter's first confession of love was such music to Jesus's ears on the beach that day, that he simply delighted in hearing it a second time, and then a third.
¹⁰

J
ESUS GIVES
P
ETER THE
opportunity to set things right without asking for an apology. He doesn't say, “Are you sorry?” much less, “Grovel before me.” Christian reconciliation is motivated by love and shuns revenge. Moreover, Jesus calls on Peter to validate his affirmation of love by feeding his sheep, the community at large. Peter is “cast” by Christ into the sea of ministry and into the role of shepherd, a role linked to service and a willingness to lay down his life.

Notice that Jesus knows exactly who he is asking to lead his community: a sinner. As all Christian leaders have been, are, and will be, Peter is imperfect. And as all good Christian leaders are, Peter is well aware of his imperfections. The disciples too know who they are getting as their leader. They will not need—or be tempted—to elevate Peter into some semi-divine figure; they have seen him at his worst.

Jesus forgives Peter because he loves him, because he knows that his friend needs forgiveness to be free, and because he knows that the leader of his church will need to forgive others many times. And Jesus forgives totally, going beyond what would be expected—going so far as to establish Peter as head of the church.
¹¹
It would have made more earthly sense for Jesus to appoint another, non-betraying apostle to head his church. Why give the one who denied him this important leadership role? Why elevate the manifestly sinful one over the rest? One reason may be to show the others what forgiveness is.

In this way Jesus embodies the Father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, who not only forgives the son, but also, to use a fishing metaphor, goes overboard. Jesus goes beyond forgiving and setting things right. A contemporary equivalent would be a tenured professor stealing money from a university, apologizing, being forgiven by the board of trustees, and then being hired as the school's president. People would find this extraordinary—and it is.

In response, Peter will ultimately offer his willingness to lay down his life for Christ. But on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he can't know the future. He can't understand fully what he is agreeing to.
Feed your sheep? Which sheep? The Twelve? The disciples? The whole world?
This is often the case for us too. Even if we accept the call we can be confused about where God is leading us. When reporters used to ask the former Jesuit superior general Pedro Arrupe where the Jesuit Order was going, he would say, “I don't know!” Father Arrupe was willing to follow, even if he didn't know precisely what God had in mind. Peter says yes to the unknowable, because the question comes from Jesus.

Both Christ's forgiveness and Peter's response show us love. God's love is limitless, unconditional, radical. And when we have experienced that love, we can share it.

The ability to forgive and to accept forgiveness is an absolute requirement of the Christian life. Conversely, the refusal to forgive leads ineluctably to spiritual death. You may know families in which vindictiveness acts like a cancer, slowly eating away at love. You may know people whose marriages have been destroyed by a refusal to forgive. One of my friends described a couple he knew as “two scorpions in a jar,” both eagerly waiting to sting the other with barbs and hateful comments. We see the communal version of this in countries torn by sectarian violence, where a climate of mutual recrimination and mistrust leads only to increasing levels of pain.

The Breakfast by the Sea shows that Jesus lived the forgiveness he preached. Jesus knew that forgiveness is a life-giving force that reconciles, unites, and empowers. The Gospel by the Sea is a gospel of forgiveness, one of the central Christian virtues. It is the radical stance of Jesus, who, when faced with the one who denied him, forgave him and appointed him head of the church, and the man who, in agony on the Cross, forgave his executioners. Forgiveness is a gift to the one who forgives, because it frees from resentment; and to the one who needs forgiveness, because it frees from guilt.