Back to the Boat

John 21:1-19

When Peter hears that the tomb is empty, he takes off running along. They find the tomb empty, see the graveclothes and believe. Then the disciples go home. Later that morning, Mary Magdalene returns to the tomb, bewildered, mourning. A man asks her “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” She assumes he is the gardener and pleads, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” To which he responds, “Mary.” He says her name, and all of a sudden she knows – “Rabboni! My Teacher!” Again, she runs to the disciples to affirm, “I have seen the Lord!”

Later that night, the disciples, all except Thomas, were gathered together. The doors were all locked, the powers that be were still anxious to be sure that there was no uprising. Despite the doors shut and locked, Jesus appeared there in the room with them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you” then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Thomas was going to need to see to believe. Then, eight days later, Monday evening, they were again all together with the doors shut and locked, and Jesus appeared, “Peace be with you.” He showed Thomas the wounds on his hands and side, and Thomas knew – “My Lord and my God!”

Twice Peter and the other disciples had seen Jesus, risen. They were still getting together, behind locked doors. What now? Jesus is alive, but he is different. He isn’t staying with them. They believe, but what does it mean to be sent as the Father sent Jesus? What’s next?

Simon Peter is going fishing. It’s what he knows; it’s who he is; it’s what he does. He needs the routine, to feel the nets, to get active, to feel the undulating sway of the boat and the complimentary bending of his knees,…he needed to get his head clear…he needed to do something productive…no one would complain about having something to eat tomorrow. Six of the other disciples announce they are coming with, and they spent the whole night dropping the nets, drawing them up like a purse string, and hauling in…nothing.

At daybreak, a voice from the shore calls, “Catch anything?” “No.” “Put your net on the other side and you’ll find some.” I wonder whether glances were exchanged as they hauled the nets to the other side of the boat and prepared to drop them, but when the haul was again so massive that the nets were breaking, they knew. “It is the Lord!” one of them said to Peter.

Peter puts back on his street clothes and jumps in the water. I wonder whether he thought he’d be able to walk on the water again. Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense to me that he put on clothes to swim. I wonder if he was afraid Jesus would be gone before they could get the boat in to the shore. Whatever he was thinking, Peter couldn’t wait to get to Jesus.

As he got close to shore, he must have smelled it, the charcoal fire.

The stimuli of the campfire’s scent surely brought with it a flood of emotions and memories. There’s a scientific reason for it. Our sense of smell is processed and brought to our brain by our olfactory bulb that runs from the back of our nasal passages right under and to the parts of our brains called the amygdala and the hippocampus. Both the amygdala and hippocampus help us process our emotions and the hippocampus holds our short-term memories and helps them process into long-term memories…right along with the processing of smells. So, smells have a unique ability to “take us back” to bring back memories with vivid detail and emotional reactions like we were right back in that moment.

There’s Peter, just a few yards off shore when he smells it – charcoal burning. He is right back by the fire in Caiaphas, the high priest’s, courtyard. He is right back to that moment when the rooster crowed and he realized that he had denied Jesus over, and over, and over. The emotions flood back, the shame, the fear! Fight or flight? What was he supposed to do? —He hadn’t done it; he knew that.

The others are getting the boat pulled up on the shore. Jesus already has fish and bread on the fire and invites them to bring some of what they have caught. An aside here – I think it is interesting that Jesus already has what is needed and invites the disciples to participate. I’m still mulling the implications for us as the church and as believers that Jesus is the host of the meal, that Jesus doesn’t need the disciples in order to provide what is needed but invites them to participate. As they ate, I wonder what Peter was thinking, if he was distracted by his dread of having to admit Jesus had been right – he had denied him three times that night. I wonder if Peter was hoping Jesus wouldn’t bring it up or hoping to get it behind them. I just
imagine it was hard to sit there with the others as the fire burned and not think about it.

After breakfast, Jesus addressed him. Three times he asked, “Simon, do you love me more than these?” And three times, Simon Peter answered, “Lord, you know that I love you.”

New Testament scholar N.T. Wright says, “Here is the secret of all Christian ministry, yours and mind, lay and ordained,…..If you are going to do any single solitary thing as a follower of Jesus, this is what it’s built on. Somewhere, deep down inside, there is a love for Jesus, and though (goodness knows) you’ve let him down enough times, he wants to find that love, to give you a chance to express it, to heal the hurts and failures of the past, and give you new work to do. These are not things for you to do to ‘earn’ the forgiveness. Nothing can ever do that. It is grace from start to finish. They are things to do out of the joy and relief that you already are forgiven. Things we are given to do precisely as the sign that we are forgiven. Things that will [require sacrifice], because Jesus’ own work was [ultimately sacrificial].”

Three times, Jesus, the Good Shepherd said, “Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.”

Robert Hoch is a Presbyterian pastor and works in Sheffield, northwest of London. One day Robert and his wife were walking along when they saw a man with jet-black hair, swooped and slicked up, dark sunglasses, white jumpsuit fully bedazzled, a wide belt with gold and turquoise gems, the whole thing…Robert was sure he was an Elvis impersonator.
So, feeling in on the joy, he called out, “Hey Elvis! How’s it going with your hound dog?” thinking he would laugh. Instead, he looked at Robert like he was crazy.
Robert’s wife hissed under her breath, “I don’t think he’s pretending to be Elvis!”

Turns out, Robert’s wife was right. The guy dresses that way all the time, almost as if in a permanent state of Elvis-hood.

I wonder if, when Jesus asked, “Do you love me more than these?” he pointed to the boat and the nets and the water and the fish. “Lord, you know that I love you.” No more going back to the boat.

Jesus is asking Peter, and us, to step into his clothes, to do the work of the Good Shepherd, to take on his role so completely that we could be mistaken for Jesus-impersonators, but we are not to just be impersonators, we are to be in a permanent state of Jesus-hood.