Jesus showed himself again to the disciples. It was by the Sea of Tiberias…Jesus stood on the shore, though the disciples did not realise it was Jesus…As soon as they came ashore, they saw that there was some bread there, and a charcoal fire with some fish cooking on it. Jesus said: “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.”…Jesus said to Simon a third time: “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” John 21: 1-19
While today’s gospel-reading comes from the appendix to John’s Gospel, and so was not written by the Evangelist himself, it was clearly written by someone who was very familiar with the Gospel itself, for it resonates with what the Evangelist had written. Today’s gospel-reading is redolent with symbols and images from John’s writing.
To begin with, we are told how Peter and his six companions, like fishermen the world over, had been out fishing all night. For John, night and darkness represented things like confusion and loss, evil and ignorance and attitudes like refusal and rejection, all of which were the very opposite of blessings from Christ the Light of the World. And the disciples, who had gone off fishing, were stricken with grief and loss, confusion and darkness, so much so that they had ventured back into something that gave them comfort – their former occupation of fishing.
Then there is the symbol of the charcoal fire. It was around such that Peter had denied Jesus. There is also the picture of Jesus offering fish and bread to the disciples as they came ashore. It was fish and bread that the disciples had gathered and given to Jesus when he fed the large crowd that had gathered to listen to him in an out-of-the-way place. That was a reminder to the seven disciples of the spiritual nourishment offered to them in the Eucharist. Moreover, there could not have been a clearer demonstration that Jesus had truly risen, to the disciples and to the community for whom John wrote his Gospel, than the sight of Jesus cooking breakfast over a fire and eating it with the disciples.
All of this was recalled in order to set the scene for Jesus to reconcile with Peter and to show how Jesus created an opportunity to invite the disciples to have another go at accepting his invitation to walk in his footsteps and to continue his mission to the world.
But the climax of this gospel-reading is the account of Jesus inviting Peter to reconcile with him. He did not do it through a process of attributing guilt or eliciting shame. He simply asked Peter three times to testify to his love for him. By asking Peter three times: “Do you love me?”, Jesus was indirectly reminding him of his humanity and vulnerability – both essential qualities for anyone who dares to accept leadership. Through this repeated question, Jesus was assuring Peter that love is not extinguished by human fragility. People who fail and commit sin are still capable of love. Jesus was also affirming that shepherding others could only be done by those whose humanity is genuine not perfect.
Marist priest Chris Skinner has summed this up for us in his hymn entitled Human in which he has written: “There are people in our world…who are movers, believers, healers; they are lovers, they’re fighters, dreamers. And they are human, so very human, and it’s human we’re meant to be.”
We have all at some time or other in our lives committed ourselves to walk in the footsteps of Jesus by living his Gospel through practical outreach to his and our sisters and brothers. And we can probably all recall times when our enthusiasm has waned or been replaced by other less generous action. This gospel-reading embodies for us, too, an invitation from Jesus to recommit ourselves to our unfinished work. Like the seven disciples in today’s gospel-reading, we have sometimes responded to our failures, to our unrealised dreams and unachieved best intentions by choosing to “go back to fishing”. We have opted to return to familiar work rather than to faithful work
The encounter between Jesus and Peter not only underlines the necessity for reconciliation for all disciples but that Jesus needed Peter to build into a community his earliest followers who had been thrown into grief and confusion by his death and had struggled to believe that God had really raised Jesus from the grave.
Can we accept that we are no different from those early disciples? Surely, we have to grasp the truth that the process of conversion, of change of mind and heart is not a one-off event but a life-long process. God’s Spirit is forever inviting us to show up for Jesus Christ and to have another go at the work of love, reconciliation and compassion. Picking ourselves up, dusting ourselves off and beginning again are our agenda for life.