Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter – 1May 2022: Acts 9, 1-6; Rev 5, 11-14; John 21, 1-19.
Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens
[The next circulated sermon from me will be for Sunday 22nd May]
Today is May 1st – Χρονιά Πολλά και Καλή Προτομαγιά – many years and happy 1st May. Traditionally of course May Day is the day when we welcome the Spring; in the Orthodox calendar it is the Feast of St. Thomas, and icons show Our Lord displaying to Thomas the wounds on his hands and side; in the Catholic Church since 1955 the 1st May is associated with St. Joseph, earthly father of Jesus, but whose profession was to work as a carpenter in Nazareth. It is appropriate that the 1st of May is marked internationally to celebrate workers. There is a lot going on today, and a lot going on in our gospel reading for today. The reading is one of the Resurrection Narratives, a phrase we introduced to you last week.
So what is all the activity that we hear about? First of all, seven of the disciples – all named, including Thomas who was invited to put his fingers into the crucifixion wounds – go fishing. It was the occupation of a number of the disciples. They can go fishing because they are no longer in Jerusalem, which is land-locked, so not much opportunity there for fishermen. Instead they have re-located to familiar territory, Galilee. The gospel writer tells us they are by the Sea of Tiberias. It is also called the Sea of Galilee.
After a hard night’s work their fishing expedition has been fruitless. They caught nothing. It is just after daybreak when they return towards land. The risen Jesus is waiting for them, but despite his earlier two appearances to them in the locked room, he may as well have been a stranger to them. This stranger gives some advice – cast the net to the other side of the boat and you will have a catch. They follow the advice and have a bumper haul. Something is going on here. We would think that as fishermen they would have known all the right skills and signs to make that decision. So this is no ordinary situation – but a miracle, a revelation of the divine. It is almost a parallel to the situation with the wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. A transformation is happening. In the contrast of the empty net, with net full to bursting, we are being shown a sign about what life is like with Christ, just as the plain water is transformed into the foaming and overflowing firkins of wine at the wedding feast. Christ transforms life.
At this point Peter realizes who this stranger is who is standing on the beach, just as Mary of Magdala in the Garden of Gethsemane is blind then sees, is ignorant then realizes, is in the dark and then in the light; and just as the two disciples who have supper with a stranger at Emmaus (Luke 24) and whose eyes are opened to the risen Christ’s presence in the breaking of bread.
Impetuous Peter abandons the boat and jumps into the sea. The others, rather wisely I would suggest, as canny fishermen bring the boat ashore with a net not just full of fish, but of the source of their livelihood.
Jesus has also been busy on the seashore. He has built a fire, and already is cooking some fish and toasting some bread on it. I like this detail, and I’ll explain why. One of the first ‘big’ Greek words we learnt when we came to Athens was ανθρακούχο (anthrakoucho) which is the word for ‘carbonated’ as in ‘carbonated water’. It is this word ανθρακιά that is used to describe the type of fire that Jesus has lit on the beach – a charcoal fire. It occurs in only one other place in the New Testament. Can you think where? It is the evening that Jesus is arrested and taken to the home of the High Priest, and in the courtyard a charcoal fire is lit. By the light cast from this fire other people ask Peter three times if knows the man, or if he is one of the followers. ‘I am not’, ‘I am not’, and the third time by someone who saw him in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter still denies it – and the cock crowed.
This beach breakfast was the third time Jesus had appeared to the disciples, and they had come to realize who he was, but none of them dared to double check by asking him.
After they had eaten breakfast beside the charcoal fire – so redolent of Peter’s denials in the courtyard of the High Priest, it is the turn of the risen Jesus to ask the questions. Is this to counterbalance the three denials? It could be. I think it is more complex than that, but maybe that’s an exploration for another sermon. It is enough to say that the precision of Jesus’s questions is not answered so clearly by Peter – but it is enough. The care of Christ’s flock is handed to Peter – the least likely perhaps of all the disciples to take on this charge. His track record is well enough known to us from our reading of the gospels – his frailty, his misunderstandings, his impetuosity, his fears, his lack of courage and shortage of faith, in fact everything that we can detect in ourselves.
In many ways, St. John, the gospel writer, has come full circle. Yes, he begins by proclaiming the Word of God made flesh in Jesus and ends with Thomas declaring Jesus as his ‘Lord and God’. But there is another way he has competed the circle.
Jesus begins his sacred ministry among us by calling together those we will come to know as the 12 Disciples, or Apostles. After his baptism in the River Jordan he encounters them, each in their own very human circumstances, or place of work, and he says ‘Follow me’.
So it is that after this Resurrection Appearance on the beach, and the scrutiny or questioning of Peter, Jesus says ‘Follow me’. Despite everything – ‘Follow me’. The Risen Jesus is saying it to me and you
No Comments