By the third appearance the disciples have gone back to what
they know. “I’m going fishing,” is what you do when your world has been turned
upside down and inside out and even though you've come through without a
scratch you retreat to the security and comfort of the familiar. The rhythm of
casting out and hauling in, casting out and hauling in, casting out and hauling
in, even if you don’t catch anything, is simple and satisfying and safe. But
Jesus just can’t leave them alone and appearing again turns the catch into an
object lesson. Cast on the other side even though you've been fishing all night
with nothing to show for it. Recognition comes with the catch. John wants us to
know there were 153 large fish but the more important detail is that the net
isn’t torn which is just another sign that what you should expect in the new
reality is the unexpected. After breakfast it’s Jesus who goes fishing for the
answer that is really a confession. “You know I love you” three times on the
beach reverses the three “I do not know the man” in the courtyard and the
curses Peter called down upon himself are lifted with the charge to feed and
tend and feed . His fishing days are over and what will become familiar in
following Jesus will be suffering and death. God still interrupts the familiar
of our everyday with the extraordinary chance encounters that after the fact are
encounters clearly not by chance. In
all this we are invited along with Peter to stretch out our hands and be bound
to something beyond our own doing and in that even the familiar is always
something new.
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