John 21:9-14

Happy Wednesday, everybody.

Thanks for being with us.

Still here in the Gospel of John coming to the end.

And we find ourselves in chapter 21 jumping in at verse nine today.

This is the second part of a story.

Yesterday we saw,

seven of the disciples go fishing.

Jesus shows up.

They don't recognize him, or at least apparently don't recognize him

until he gives them fishing instructions.

At that point, Simon jumps in the water.

Peter jumps in the water and,

we then now pick up the story here in verse nine.

So I'll read two looks like verse 14.

Then we'll come back and talk it through.

When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal

fire there with fish on it and bread.

Jesus said to them, bring some of the fish that you just caught.

So Simon Peter went aboard,

hauled the net ashore full of large fish,

153 of them.

And though there were so many, the net wasn't torn.

Jesus said to them, come and have breakfast.

Now none of the disciples dared ask him, who are you?

Because they knew it was the Lord.

Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them.

And the same with the fish.

This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples

after he was raised from the dead.

Yesterday as we introduced this story, we said that throughout this story,

and I think particularly in the back half of this story,

we have some callbacks to other parts of the gospel.

And the first one that we experience is in some ways the most profound.

When the Bible

gives you specifics, sometimes it is good to pay attention.

So it says here, when the disciples had gone ashore.

Excuse me.

Last year they saw a charcoal fire.

And if you wondered about that description, you would be good to wonder,

because the last time we saw this word and the fact.

The only other time we see this word is in chapter 18, verse 18,

when Peter denies knowing Jesus.

So this is more than there was a fire there.

This is a specific callback to that moment,

that last time Peter

was identified as standing around a charcoal fire.

He denied knowing Jesus.

Now the next thing we see with fish

and bread on it.

The implication here, Michael, seems to be

that Jesus already has fish and bread.

He's going to add the disciples fish to it.

But fish and bread is important.

The last time there were people with nothing to eat who got fish and bread.

It was the feeding of the 5000 and so it's amazing here, just in this first verse,

we tie into two significant stories

that we've already seen in the Gospel of John. And,

there's no way in which that's not intentional.

Right?

So what we have here is the continued story of Jesus's

appearances, his his coming to the disciples post, his resurrection.

As we get to the end of this story here that we're in today.

We're going to even see there's a number attached to that.

There's significance to the number of times

Jesus has had these, these revelations for those disciples.

And here we are sort of seeing how the

themes of this story are intricately

woven together to show us

that this is a place that they were going the whole time.

In other words, I think part of the reason we have this ending as it's told, is

it is showing us that all of the stuff that came before Jesus's

death is now being summed up and resolved something like a symphony right

where you have

all of these themes that have come up throughout the body of the work.

Now you're seeing the the announcement, the resolution to all of these themes.

There's something amazing being done here that we have Peter,

who stands at a charcoal fire denying Jesus three times.

Then you have the same kind of transformation where we're going to see

Jesus is making this repeated revelation to the disciples three times,

and this time Jesus is the one who's waiting

at the charcoal fire that Jesus has gone ahead, that there's already food

been provided, that here Jesus doesn't need

someone's lunch, for a prayer and for all the people to be fed.

Jesus has already set the table.

It's just the disciples

bringing those fish that they've caught their fishers of men.

They're bringing what they have.

But Jesus doesn't particularly need that.

It's just simply they're bringing they're offering to Jesus there.

There's going to be so much implication here for discipleship beyond

just the story of Jesus, Peter, the undoing of things done before.

There's a lot here just to say about the fact

that Jesus is revealed as the one who we come to,

and everything else is just a gift we bring. And,

you know,

again, when we get a random detail 153 fish.

Michael, maybe you know something about that.

I don't know if there is,

an agreed upon significance of this number.

But consistently in the Gospel of John, we've seen abundance, right?

We saw that

the stone jars that held gallons and gallons of water that became wine.

We saw the feeding of the 5000 and the leftover we see.

John likes extravagance.

John likes to emphasize abundance.

And so here we have at this catch

directed by Jesus, 153, which seems like a very specific number,

but but it's a giant number that we're surprised that the nets didn't break.

There's so much for them.

And again, I think that's probably

the intention here.

I'm sure there are guesses at 153.

I doubt that there's consensus, but it's a lot.

Whatever it is.

And John likes to tell us when Jesus does things,

those things are done in a big way.

And so we have here abundance and invitation.

And these are two beautiful themes in the gospel.

The disciples are invited

by Jesus to share in what he offers them.

And he says to them,

come and have breakfast.

And then if we could skip a verse we have here, Jesus

came, took the bread, gave it to them, and did the same with the fish.

This isn't exact language, but this is very close

to what we see in the other gospels as a kind of communion liturgy.

He took bread and he gave it to them.

We don't really get that same language in the Gospel of John,

but there is a sense, I think, in

which that resonates the verse preceding that.

Michael, again, maybe there's something,

John has a way of telling us sometimes things that

we wonder why he would say it this way.

None of the disciples dared ask, who are you?

Because they knew it was the Lord.

A funny phrase, but,

maybe the idea here is that they they're still struggling

to wrap their minds around this, but that they know ultimately who this is.

And it's less about

the recognition than it is about the belief and the understanding.

I'm not sure exactly what John is trying to tell us there.

That's an awkward phrase in some ways.

Yeah, I don't have a clear cut answer here,

but I do have two things to just offer really briefly.

The first thing is the idea

of the resurrected Christ that we've already seen painted by John.

This is a continuation of it, is that it is beyond our ability

to completely comprehend or hold.

We see that in Jesus

being thought to be a gardener right by Mary Magdalene.

And so here I think we continue to have this idea,

whatever a resurrection is, and the biblical authors are way

less interested in giving us all of the, you know,

nitty gritty details of that than what we want as modern people of faith.

I think we would love to have another chapter of the Bible

that kind of gets down to brass tacks.

That's not what they're interested in.

And here John makes it clear, though,

they are aware that this is Jesus Christ, the risen Lord.

There's still a struggle of connecting that in their human mind

so that this is a mystery, safe, demanding kind of encounter,

even though Jesus is literally feeding them breakfast.

So I think that that continues a theme we've seen before.

I think it's important to keep in mind.

I also think that as we look at a text like this, who are you?

Because they knew it was the Lord.

There is still in this encounter with Jesus.

This almost we see it in other gospels where

Jesus says, you know, you didn't visit me when I was sick and in prison.

And the disciples say, you know, when were you sick?

When were you in prison?

And Jesus says, you know,

you didn't go to those who were in these places and positions.

I think this resonates something similar to that.

You have the fish being caught.

You have this, this very vast net that isn't broken.

We have this very, very deeply entrenched history in the early church.

The earliest sign of the faith was a fish.

Right?

It was that the

the way that Christians sort of conceived of their discipleship task.

So make no mistake about it here, when when Jesus yet has the disciples

bringing him fish, this idea of evangelism is under the surface of that.

The idea that when they come to Jesus, they still can't quite, quite get a grasp

on exactly what is happening, how can this person

be Lord and also was dead and also now isn't?

I think what John is doing is preserving the concrete

task of what it means to be a disciple, and pairing it

with the mysterious faith element that exists even to this day.

That even the first disciples who got to see Jesus.

Yes, they got to see him.

Much like with the story of Thomas, we have, right?

Like blessed are those who believe and don't see.

And I think we see that here.

This idea, even those that do see,

it's not completely clear to them exactly what they see.

It's just Jesus.

And Jesus has beaten death, even, unto itself.

Yeah.

And there's,

I think an example of that, though I, I will admit there's a little speculation

in this.

It's interesting when Jesus says bring some fish.

So to connect this with yesterday story,

Peter is so excited when the disciple

Jesus loves, probably John tells him that's Jesus.

He jumps in the water and swims to shore and says beat the boat.

They were not far behind, but he gets there first.

Then we get this reference to charcoal fire, a very specific reference,

and the only other place we see that is when Peter denied knowing Jesus.

And then when Jesus says, go get some of the fish,

it's Simon Peter who went aboard

and hauled the net ashore full of large fish

and it's really interesting here whether John is trying to suggest

that Peter is ashamed or embarrassed, that he's

facing the reality of what he's done, that he

that he feels that he's failed,

some of that speculation is going to be based on

the fact that the next story, the next part of this story,

focuses in exactly on Peter's denial and Peter's failure.

But it it's sort of speculated that maybe John is

giving us a little bit of foreshadowing here.

Why is it that Peter goes back in and gets the fish?

Is that symbolic of him being the chief apostle, bringing

being a fisher of men, bringing people to Jesus?

Is that him excusing himself from the rest of the group, because

this charcoal fire has embarrassed him or reminded him of his failure?

I'm not sure of any of that.

And I want to be very clear.

I'm I am speculating, making some guesses.

That's not really based on scholarship, but I do think it's interesting

that as John tells the story, he makes sure to tell us that it's Simon

Peter who goes to get the fish and whether that means something or not,

I don't know, but I think it's an interesting,

it's an interesting detail to reflect on.

Isn't it fascinating how the gospel writers

use these characters as the revelation lens for who Jesus is?

It didn't need to be that way.

It could have been a whole chorus of people chosen, right?

It could have been all of these small snippets of stories.

But no, it it's the interwoven story of the whole that they choose.

And here Peter has now gotten

a disproportionate amount of time in this book.

Not in a bad way.

It's just,

you know, he's one of the characters that we see fleshed out in this story,

and I think it is notable that he's the one willing to be in the boat

and first in the water to get to the shore.

But when it is clear that this is breakfast

time, he's the first to get back into the boat to go get fish.

Jesus. Excuse me.

Peter is a go getter.

He's a guy who wants to do the work.

He's brash.

He often says and does things that he shouldn't do.

He's impetuous in that way.

And yet there's a kind of energy and confidence that the church

is going to rely upon Peter to be that driving

voice, the person who's going to carry on the teachings of Jesus after it's

going to turn the gospel John is going to in our study next time,

turn very, very specifically into this conversation with Peter.

I think that is unbelievably important historically.

So we'll have more conversation about that as we move forward.

But I do want to make sure that we don't miss here at the end.

This is the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples

after he was raised from the dead. They make no mistake about it.

There's a revelation for every day that Jesus was dead and buried.

There's a revelation to those who come after him.

There's a undoing of the thing that came

before it, if you had in mind. Right?

No, that is dead.

The point that John's trying to make here is Jesus is not dead.

Now, what you do with that, whether you believe it or whether

you think that that could be better explained another way, that's up to you.

But John wants to make the contention that Jesus, who we discover

at the end of this story, there are doubters who he appears to.

There's people of faith

he appears to who just miss who he is, that there are people who he literally

are bringing a net full of fish that should have broken to him.

And yet, in the midst of all of these encounters, somehow and mysteriously,

we see the Jesus Christ

who lives on the other side of what should have been the end.

And I think John is making sure that we understand in that the story

of Jesus's death is not an accident that is later covered up.

It's actually, as Jesus has been this whole gospel, he's in charge.

He knows what's happening, he knows what's going to happen.

And hear all of those previous stories

are really seeing bookends for each and every thing that happened before.

There aren't a lot of

Post-Resurrection stories

in the aftermath of Easter.

This is I think you could make the case the most elaborate,

but I think in some ways it's also the most interesting.

And and despite all these nuances

and subtleties, in some ways it's also a simple story.

It's an amazing moment that.

In some knowledge

of the resurrection, but seemingly unsure of what it means, some of the disciples

go fishing at night in a commercial fishing boat, perhaps

indicating that there's a consideration of returning to their former life.

And when they catch nothing, a man tells them, try the other side,

which fills their nets, and they recognize Jesus in that.

And the sort of last word of Jesus and his disciples

is, come, have breakfast, come fellowship

with me, I welcome you, I've helped you.

I've guided you.

Bring me your offering and join me on the beach.

As these men eat

breakfast together.

And there's something I don't know, Michael.

There's something fascinating about that.

Profound about that. It's.

It's a very interesting moment, aside from the kind of preaching

that I think John is doing in the story,

there is just this simple moment of the resurrected Christ

serving those who follow him and making room for them

and setting them on the path that ultimately

they will follow as his followers, as disciples.

It is.

This is a very interesting story.

You said this previous.

I just think it's worth noting at this stage of the conversation,

Jesus did this really strange thing in the upper room.

I think we take it for granted, but Jesus takes these elements.

Bread and wine says, you know, this is my body, this is my blood.

This is very strange language to understand.

It is mysterious by his definition.

He claims to have a presence in our life that is unbelievably physical.

Make no mistake about it, Clint.

He wants to have breakfast with the disciples after he died.

This isn't a ghost.

This isn't some kind of phantasm. This is.

This is Jesus Christ on the other side of death,

wanting to have fellowship and a meal with these disciples.

There's bread involved.

I mean, this isn't a Eucharistic or a communion story per se,

but those themes are built into it.

It at least has resonances of it,

and I think all of that comes together perfectly.

It is nuanced.

It has lots of shades.

That's how John tells stories.

That's how John tells Jesus's story.

So we shouldn't be surprised by it.

But I just think the fact it's here, it adds a richness

to the understanding that when Jesus was in that upper room.

So I will be with you forever.

And then we have this story of him being with his disciples.

This is him keeping his promise.

He's there with him, and we still believe that he's with us today.

And he's the host. He he serves them right.

You know, that's characteristic of who he is.

Yeah, a great story.

More to come as he engages with Peter.

I hope you'll join us for that tomorrow.

But glad that you're with us today. Thanks, everybody.