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What should we do with this marvelous little post-Easter story here in John 21?

It records the third appearance of the risen Jesus to his disciples, their miraculous catch of fish, the fellowship of an early morning breakfast on the beach. There is nothing quite like it in any of the other gospels, sandwiched as it is, here between the account of the confession in chapter 20 of doubting, or if you prefer, honest Thomas, on the one hand, and, on the other, the restoration of two-faced Peter at the end of John 21 as Jesus three times commissions a rehabilitated Peter to “feed my sheep.”

Scores of translations and commentaries suggest that the entirety of chapter 21 is either an appendage, and thus non-essential to this gospel, or that it is a kind of epilogue added later, by a hand other than John’s. For those of us who went yesterday to the Ink and Blood exhibit in Knoxville, which narrates some of the fascinating aspects of the formation of the Bible, we got just a taste of how exhilaratingly complex can be the history of the selection and preservation of what came to be considered holy writ. One wonders if there was ever any doubt about including a fish story like this one in scripture?

One person I’m sure who had no use for this 21^st chapter of John was the Deist Thomas Jefferson, our third president. One of his end-of-life projects was to go through the New Testament page by page and to cut out anything that seemed irrational or smacked of superstition. He, in fact, wanted to recover the core ethical teachings of the Jesus of history, which he then compiled in his book entitled The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. Excluded, then, in Jefferson’s scaled down version of scripture, were any biblical narratives tinged with suggestions of the miraculous, including what the church has always claimed to be the greatest miracle of them all, Christ’s rising fro the dead. Jefferson used the scissors and paste method and cut Easter right out of the Bible, and as someone has said, the White House has been haunted ever since!

Do we have here, at the end of John’s Gospel, the early church’s version of a fish story that is, when you get right down to it, just too good to be true? Are these post resurrection stories of the appearances of Jesus a convenient fiction of pious longings? The holy hoax of an upstart Jewish sect trying to appear relevant and legitimate, even though their messiah died shamefully as an accused insurrectionist and blasphemer, condemned by both the political and religious powers of that day?

To someone who likes tidy, logical answers, the gospel accounts of the first Easter hardly harmonize into a seamless whole. As one scholar puts it: “The stories of Easter morning in Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20 are notoriously difficult to harmonize. We shall never be sure how many women went in what order to the tomb, at what point two or more male disciples went as well, how many angels they all saw, where or in what order the appearances of Jesus took place.” (N.T. Wright, p.121)

No less so do we have much historical detail about those days between resurrection and ascension, days of great joy but also days of fear and mystery as the risen Jesus suddenly appears and just as suddenly disappears; at times it seems as if he is a ghost, at other times a fully corporeal human being. Anyone who thinks long and hard about these postEaster stories soon realizes how enigmatic and puzzling they can be.

In our text for today, why only seven of the original disciples gathered at the sea of Tiberius? Why should they be surprised at yet another appearance of Jesus? Why didn’t they recognize his voice? And what about this tantalizing little detail of the 153 fish?

According to John’s narrative of the events of Easter, this third and final appearance of the risen Jesus concludes his earthly contact with the disciples.

In order for us now to understand ways this story intersects with the story of our own lives, consider with me, first of all, that this final episode begins in darkness, the darkness of a little night fishing.

The disciples are alone. What do you do in the dark in a cramped little fishing boat? Was the familiar routine of fishing enough to keep conversation going, or did the stillness of the night and the rocking of the boat cause thoughts to turn inward, turning minds toward memories of hillsides and city streets and upper rooms and great crowds of people and memories of Jesus, as he once was . . . as they once were? Did the rocking boat and the empty nets create nightmarish images of guilt, denials, doubts, abandonment?

We, of course, have no way of knowing what that night was like. But we can ask, are there long, dark nights in our own experience when the familiar routine of faith yields no catch? Are there seasons when all or best efforts at casting our nets seem unproductive, or maybe even worse, unappreciated, when whatever Easter path we’ve decided to travel down suddenly seems filled with twists and turns that both alarm or frighten us?

The author Dan Wakefield writes about this kind of experience in his religious autobiography, Returning: a Spiritual Journey. Having grown up a church goer in Illinois, in adulthood, Wakefield became an avowed atheist. He tells the story of his life-changing move toward God at age 48 and his movement away from alcohol, drugs, precarious health and several broken relationships. He has just started attending church again, and he has gone with his girlfriend to visit an aquarium.

We gazed at the astonishingly brilliant colors of some of the small tropical fish – reds and yellows and oranges and blues that seemed to be splashed on by some innovative artistic genius – and watched the amazing lights of the flashlight fish that blinked on like the beacons of some creature of a sci-fi epic. I wondered how anyone could think That all this was the result of some chain of accidental explosions! Yet I realized in frustration that to try to convince me otherwise five years before would have been hopeless. Was this what they called “conversion?” The term bothered me because it suggested being “born again,” and like many of my contemporaries, I had been put off by the melodramatic nature of that label, as well as the current political beliefs that seemed to go along with it. Besides, I didn’t feel “reborn.” No voice came out of the sky nor did a thunderclap strike me . . . I was relieved when our minister explained that the literal translation of “conversion” in both Hebrew and Greek is not “rebirth” but “turning.” That’s what my own experience felt like – as if I’d been walking in one direction and then in response to some inner pull, I turned – not even all the way around, but only at what seemed a slightly different angle.

One wonders if the time the seven disciples spent in a little night fishing was also a time for turning, time to ponder commitments, loyalties, vocation, sense of belonging. Losing a best friend to death can do that to you – perhaps even more so of it is not clear now if the best friend is even dead.

As dawn begins to break on the Sea of Tiberius, will they turn and face, really face, the stranger on the shore?

Secondly, in our text, there is the appearance of Jesus. With daybreak comes to the disciples a voice, a voice muffled by the distance the length of a football field, telling them to make a new casting of the nets, a cast that yields an abundance of fish far surpassing normal hauls in those shallow waters. While John’s report of the exact number of fish caught, 153, has bedeviled interpreters for centuries, leading to various allegorical and mystical interpretations, the fact remains that their night of fishing has not been in vain. Whatever loneliness or fear they have faced, this miraculous catch of fish at daybreak, and that familiar voice, shine a new light on everything.

I have wondered, here at the end of this gospel, if perhaps John intends that this voice rolling across the waters and across the early dawn brackets or frames the poetic words of his prologue? Not just any words, but the Word, the creative logos, the ordering principle of the universe. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” If so, what a nice symmetry it would be, the logos spoken into being across the primordial depths of creation at the beginning; the logos of the new creation of Easter standing now on the shore one last time, but for all time as well, giving instructions to those who will carry his words and the Word into the future. Perhaps, in a way, the original creative act has now repeated itself in the events of Easter, and the Word has been made flesh again.

The exquisite little novel, A River Runs Through it, is the story of two brothers, Paul and Norman, Esau and Jacob-like, one who inherits the promise, the other who does not. The story is built around the passion these brothers and their father have for fly fishing in the pristine beauty of Montana’s rivers and mountains. In a scene near the end of the story, the father, a retired Presbyterian minister, now too old to fly cast, is reading his Greek New Testament as he sits beside the Big Blackfoot River watching his sons fish. Norman, the younger son, sees that his father is reading the prologue to the fourth Gospel. His eyes fall on the word Logos, and they are both reminded that the Word that became flesh is the same Logos that has been present from the beginning, when God spoke and brought everything into being. For the Father, John’s Gospel demonstrates that the creator remains transcendent over the creation and can thus redeem it. “I used to think water was first,” he says, “but if you listen carefully you will hear that the words are underneath the water.” (pp. 95-96) And even when this story ends with the tragic death of the older son, Paul, who has managed to get into one too many barroom fights, somehow, the mysterious redemptive power of the Word remains steadfast and holds this family together.

Disciples heard the words of the risen Word, and responded with Easter faith – making a new cast of the net, coming ashore to greet their Lord.

Third, there is now breakfast on the beach. Like many good stories, this one ends with a meal. In its own way, it is another feeding miracle such as Jesus has performed before. With is eucharistic overtones, it shades over into the commissioning of Peter whom Jesus tells to go forth and “feed my sheep,” to feed God’s people out in the world.

Like any good meal, this one of fish and bread, maybe its real value is in renewed fellowship and friendship. And here at the end, which is really just the beginning, the act of eating together is the foundation for what an Easter faith is really all about. Is fellowship the foundation of faith, or is it the other way around?

I once attended a Presbytery meeting when it was time to hear a report from the Committee on Preparation for Ministry. Their report featured a woman who was a student at one of our denominational seminaries, probably in her early 30s, and was now to be voted on and received as a candidate for the ministry under the care of our presbytery.

As she talked about her ever-circling faith journey, including her rebellion against the trivial nature of her Sunday School faith, her dappling in Eastern religions and non-traditional forms of meditation, her attending a Unitarian-Universalist Church for a time, I could sense the uneasiness among the commissioners at the Presbytery meeting, and in my peripheral vision I felt the conservatives shifting in their pews, ready to wage holy warfare against this one whose seeking seemed to have taken her too far. Her story was not the more common story that we expected to hear of fun-filled church youth groups, life-changing summer camps, and warm and fuzzy congregations.

But, she had finally found a home, after years of searching, a home in one of that presbytery’s churches, and she talked also about her deepened and deepening experience of faith there. And when it came time for questions from the floor, a person almost shouted out, Annette, tell us about the Easter vigil service, and I knew immediately by the tone of his voice, that he had been at that service, too, and just had to hear the story one more time. And so it was, several years earlier, that this church had held its first all night vigil on Easter Eve, and since she had not been previously baptized, she asked to receive the sacrament early Easter morning.

After the baptism, she and her pastor had agreed that she would sing accupella the song “I have Decided to Follow Jesus, no turning back now, no turning back.” And as she sang, she told us that it suddenly hit her, the incredible commitment she had made, and she was so filled with emotion that her tears overwhelmed her and she simply couldn’t go on. She tried to sing, but the words would not come. And then quietly at first, a few in the congregation began softly to sing, and slowly others joined in until finally people were out of their pews approaching the baptismal font, singing and embracing her all at the same time. “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back now, no turning back.”

And maybe that’s what the disciples finally realized at that breakfast on the beach. There was no turning back, now that they had come this far.

For the third and final time, according to John, Jesus has appeared to his disciples.

A little night fishing. A great catch. Breakfast on the beach.

And what about for you and me? Is this post-Easter appearance of Jesus just another fish story, too good to be true? Or is it something else?