Back to basics
We cannot walk away from the task of caring for others as ourselves. It was so important, the resurrected Jesus made sure it’s one of the last things he was recorded telling His Disciples.
Scripture: Psalm 30; John 21: 1-19
It was one of the best meals I’ve ever had in my life.
It was in Indonesia, on the island of Nias. If you’ve ever heard me mention Nias before you may remember it as being very remote, sitting at the western end of Indonesia, an archipelago with nearly 18,000 islands. Nias was once a bastion of surfers and countercultural enthusiasts who wanted to get off the grid. Even now, it’d be a great place to go to ground. Nias is about the size of the state of Delaware, with steep volcanic hills stretching into the sky. It is the kind of place where cell service ends when the generators powering the scant few signal towers are turned off at night.
We had been on the island to document programs that helped people to recover following the 2004 tsunami. Programs that helped school children to stay healthy and that helped poor communities to have clean water to drink. We had been lugging video equipment in the jungle for most of the day, and by the time we returned to our lodging there weren’t many places to eat still serving. Our nets looked empty.
Our truck pulled off a bend in the road to park beside a beach, and we found one place still open. There was a short walk to a pressed-tin hut that served as a kitchen. We could hear the waves breaking just beyond it. I slipped out of my shoes to feel the sand between my toes as we were led to one of a few groups of white plastic tables and chairs. Before long a few of us had cold beers in our hands, enjoying a soft breeze on the shore.
I never recall anyone taking my order that night. Maybe that’s because there was no menu. Things were primitive. Only one thing was on offer from the kitchen, a simple meal that everyone who lived and worked on Nias considered a staple: fish in a yellow curry paste, grilled whole over charcoal on the shore.
***
The barbecue nerd in me zeroed in on the mention of charcoal in this morning’s text from John’s Gospel: ἀνθρακιὰν, (anthrakia), which literally means “a heap of hot embers.” It is a primative way to cook a very basic meal. No fancy stove or grand contraption required. It is a basic way to get the job of cooking done for hungry sailors.
Of course, these weren’t just any sailors. Maybe these friends of Jesus still felt the grief of losing their friend. Perhaps their perspective had changed by this point from the piercing shock of loss to that dull ache of sadness that’s so very heavy to carry when we lose someone. And even though they have encountered their friend’s risen glory in the hope and promise of a resurrection, this story in John makes it sound as if they have left everything Jesus inspired behind.
Peter and the others weren’t out and about, doing the work of welcoming and healing and feeding and including. They were right back where they started, fishing on the Sea of Galilee. They went right back to the rut of their daily lives.
Isn’t that easy to do? Once the moment of inspiration passes us by we revert back to the same old ways in which we have always lived life.
I’m not surprised it’s Peter who’s the foil in this story of Jesus and His final recorded encounter with the Disciples. Peter, a noteworthy stand-in for our collective human frailty. He was notorious for speaking before thinking, a gadfly of impulsivity. Imagine what Peter must have been saying out in the boat that day, bearing the weight of grief at losing his friend while he labored to haul in empty nets. I imagine he felt the weight of dashed promises. Half naked and hangry, returning to the surest activity he knows. I earned my keep in college working, in part, as a sailor. It can be back-breaking, tiresome work. On top of that, having lost a friend, having joined and followed a movement of love and peace only to come back home to square one… I bet Peter was a delight to be around as dawn’s light grew in the sky. I bet he could’ve used a snack.
But Jesus doesn’t show up with a Snickers. Jesus brings very practical engagement to these lost former Disciples who’ve returned to their fishing roots:
put your nets in here. Bring the fish to shore. Come and eat.
And having met those basic needs, then Jesus turns squarely to what holds Peter’s heart back from loving fully. Jesus broaches the subject of Peter’s wrongs.
“Simon Peter, do you love me?” Three times Jesus asks, one for each of Peter’s famous denials.
Even though Jesus moves from the material concern of feeding to the emotional concern of forgiveness, all of this encounter with the resurrected Jesus is wrapped up in the practical. I think Jesus knew Peter would never do the work of keeping Jesus’ movement going without Peter forgiving himself, and moving on.
In other words, Peter needed to be set free from all that held him back from being the hands and feet of Jesus in the world. Jesus set Peter and the others free from their anxiety of lacking any caught fish. Jesus set them free from their hunger thanks to a very basic meal. Jesus set Peter free from guilt and self doubt and the fear he insisted on carrying that he was not worthy of Jesus’ love and care.
And in case there was any doubt about what to do next, Jesus provides one more bit of practical guidance that calls Peter, and Thomas and Nathanael and the sons of Zebedee, and the other two unnamed Disciples to task. He gives them specific marching orders to leave fishing behind and to get back into the cosmic ballgame. Jesus commanded them to feed His sheep.
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First it’s “feed my lambs.” Then, it’s “feed my sheep,” - twice. Some scholars have offered as an explanation that John’s recount of this story aimed to reference the need to feed both those new to the Christian faith, like a lamb in its infancy, and those “sheep” who are more grounded in their spiritual journey. Lambs were valuable for their tender meat and their supple leather. Sheep, of course, are more mature and can provide wool and milk. Both are valuable. Both make up the flock, but feeding them will require different approaches.
Regardless of what those different needs may be, lambs and sheep alike need to be fed. And Jesus expected that band of rowdy fishermen to put down the nets they had returned to because it’s what they knew, and to take up the new job of feeding the flock, which they had seen firsthand how to do. It was the job to which Jesus had called them in the first place.
Even though this is a band of down-on-their-luck fishermen, I think Jesus knew they’d figure out that shepherds care for their flocks in varying ways. And by this point in their journey with Jesus they were probably well tuned to the metaphor as Jesus prescribed it - the flock of humanity, belonging to God in Christ Jesus.
This isn’t a story that can stand independent from Easter. Whether we’re expecting others to take up the burden of caring for the flock, or if we’re just hanging on to our insecurities reflected by the wrongs we’ve done, or if we just don’t know from where the fish will come, we can’t just keep this journey of Jesus and the understanding that love can triumph even over death to ourselves. Sure, we could reduce our faith to something like a book we can put up or pull off the shelf whenever we wish.
But just like shepherds cannot walk away from their flocks, we cannot walk away from the task of caring for others as ourselves. It was so important, the resurrected Jesus made sure it’s one of the last things he was recorded telling His Disciples.
Jesus uses this last point of engagement to make very sure the Disciples who would carry His ministry forward understood the assignment. This last recorded moment encountering a risen Christ is focused on the most basic of tasks, meeting the most primative of needs.
Put the nets here.
Bring the fish to shore.
The charcoal’s hot. Let’s eat.
I know you love me, and it’s all good.
Now that you’ve been fed, go and care for others.
Ordinarily, this episode would make a nice little cherry on top of a liturgical Jesus sundae. A nice story about fishing and faith and ensuring we’re caring for one another. But in this moment, as we continue to bask in the glow of Easter against the backdrop of a world that feels like it grows crazier by the second, my hope is we can remember the fundamentals.
The Disciples experienced scarcity and, in Jesus, they moved to abundance.
The Disciples were hungry in body and in spirit and, in Jesus, they were fed.
Peter was bound by guilt, and Jesus set him free.
And, having been fed, Jesus then calls the Disciples to task: feed my sheep.
Just like the Disciples could not return to the trade they knew, we cannot return to the old ways of living once we proclaim that Christ has Risen. As living, breathing reflections of the resurrection we must move forward in following Jesus. And to follow Jesus, we don’t need fanciful expressions or religious bonafides. We don’t need the blessings of a government or the token nod of a figurehead. The fundamentals aren’t found in proclamations from the powerful in gilded spaces.
The fundamentals of following Jesus, of feeding His sheep, are simple:
Help others move from scarcity to abundance
Feed all who are hungry, in all the varying ways human beings are hungry for something
Set others free from the weight of their guilt or anything else that compels them to turn away
Encourage those we feed to feed others in need
That meal I enjoyed in Indonesia was so close to the shore that we had to pick up our tables and chairs in a hurry. We were so close to the ocean we feared we’d be swallowed up by the tide rising on the beach as salty froth kissed our toes. But not even the threat of being pulled into the sea ruined the night, as stars twinkled and the Southern Cross hung in the sky above. I like to think that maybe the same twinkling starry sky I enjoyed in a plastic chair on the beach in Nias may have been a similar sky to that early day on the Sea of Galilee. And I remember how bound we are to the story and experience of Jesus.
The Empire still existed and Pilate still reigned this morning when Peter and his buds fished. They may have encountered a resurrected Jesus but they were still here, pointed backwards, living under Pilate and Herod and hunger that made them fish in the middle of the night. But Pilate and Herod and their cronies would not win.
Jesus came back to make double sure His friends knew the power they held in loving one another. In forgiving one another. In setting one another free from all that binds them up. In reaching for acts of compassion and grace and mercy and justice. And in remembering the fundamentals of the task at hand: moving all God’s children from scarcity to abundance, feeding all who are hungry, forgiving all who wrong us, and showing one another that we are loved by God.
Wouldn’t that make for a much better world? It’s a lesson that may be as plain as a plastic table and chairs on a beach. But boy, the meal sure is memorable.