153 fish: a resurrection narrative
A sermon for the third Sunday in Eastertide (Domestic Violence Sunday) from Fr Michael Bowie
A sermon for the third week of Eastertide
It is a feature of the resurrection stories that Jesus is frequently not recognised. A central theme of all four gospels has been that discipleship begins with recognising Jesus for who he truly is. People who have known him for years now don't know who they're meeting until some word or familiar gesture makes him known: most notably, of course, what we are doing here this morning, the breaking of the bread, in which the two disciples on the Emmaus road recognise him. Only now, for most of them, does discipleship truly begin, with the risen Christ. The resurrection is pivotal to their faith.
And in today's gospel Jesus is recognised as a result of his instructions about fishing: an obvious enough parable of mission, gathering people into the church, the ship which carries us to heaven.
There are a couple of details in this story which always bother me when I hear it, so I hope you will forgive me for disposing of those first. There's that number, one hundred and fifty three fish. Many explanations have been offered, and none is satisfactory. You will probably have heard that 153 represents all the known species of fish at the time. This is a nice idea but sadly without foundation.
It is probably best to receive this as (in capital letters) A Really Big Number, suggesting, together with the untorn net, the completeness and unity of those drawn in by the disciples' mission. Or the number may have been introduced for verisimilitude, a 'real' number as observed by one present. But I have a horrible suspicion that if we get to meet the Evangelist John in heaven, he'll tell us that, like me, he couldn't count.
Then there's the business of Peter's swimming costume. We heard Verse 7 translated like this:
That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his clothes, for he was naked, and sprang into the sea.
This is a bad translation. The verb we heard translated 'put on' [διαζώννυμι], as in ‘put on his clothes’, is the verb used by John of Jesus girding himself with a towel to wash the disciples' feet, and that is what it means: this is about 'tucking in' a garment. The word translated 'naked' also means 'stripped for work' [γυμνός] and is often also used of people lightly clad, (it might suggest that he was wearing no loincloth under his tunic). So, Peter didn't 'put on his clothes' to go swimming but sensibly tucked his work-tunic into his belt (and notice the reference to a belt at the end of this passage) in order to swim unimpeded. I hope you’re still with me: I promise there will be no more finicky commentary in this sermon.
The breakfast which follows this large catch of fish provides a Eucharistic echo (like the breaking of the bread on the road to Emmaus) in which Jesus is recognised. The repeated need for (and process of) recognition in these stories suggests that the resurrection is not just a return to earthly life. It is not just going on as we were before: Jesus has risen to new life beyond death. He is not as he was, but he is still who he was.
That, presumably, is the best clue we're going to be given as to what new life beyond death means for those who follow him. And following is the point: the command 'Follow me' is all that Jesus feels the need to say to any of us; it is no accident that 'follow me' are his last recorded words in John's gospel.
The concluding conversation with Peter ('Do you love me? Feed my lambs') should encourage us in our following. The triple question and answer allows Peter the opportunity to come back from his earlier triple denial of Jesus with three professions of love. Even denying the Lord can be forgiven; all our fallings-short and backslidings are reparable and the welcome is warm.
And Jesus adds something else (and here’s the belt again):
Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’ (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.)
We reminded here (and this is difficult for affluent and self-sufficient western Christians) that there are times, for every one of us when we cannot be self-sufficient, even if only in extreme old age. I certainly find it profitable to remember that I am never wholly self-sufficient, and that I should not seek to be.
For all of us it is our death, our final vulnerability, that gives meaning to our lives: all that we do is done on a trajectory from birth to death and the more aware we are of that the better we shall be at living now. If we believe that there is something else besides that death, then the final command to 'follow' Jesus is all the more inviting, because it suggests the enlargement and generosity of life which God offers.
In the light of that focus, it is good to think about how we are not sufficient to ourselves. We are children of God and brothers and sisters one to another. None of us is, as Donne observed, 'an island'.
I want to emphasise that mutual dependence, in which we are called to rejoice and grow, in connection with the attention we’ve been asked to give to Domestic Violence by our national Church this Sunday. Naomi Johnson has written eloquently about that in this week’s reflection, and I only want to add one thing. I have been struck in conversations with others who, like me, have no direct experience of this terrible and abhorrent phenomenon, that talking about DV as occurring to people like us, not just to people who are other than us, is very important. More than once I have had it suggested to me in conversation that this is surely a problem found only in cultural or demographic backgrounds different from ours. When I have explained that a member of our congregation from a white, educated, middle class background was subjected to this violence by a man from the same white, educated, middle class background, and shamefully, that he was also an Anglican priest, the conversation changes significantly. It dawns on my interlocutors that they too will almost certainly know people who have been subjected to this type of violence, even if they haven’t heard about it. None of us is an island.
One of Pope Francis’ last outings was when he made an impromptu visit to the nearby Regina Coeli Prison on Holy Thursday. He told the inmates he wished he could wash their feet. He told reporters that every time he visits a prison, he asks himself: “Why them, not me?” Indeed, change just a few circumstances in our life and that could be any of us. Lest we forget, the two Holy Doors that Pope Francis personally opened at the start of this Jubilee Year were at St Peter’s on Christmas Eve and two days later in the chapel of Rome’s Rebibbia Prison, the largest in Italy.
Recognising the risen Lord here at Mass is intended to help us understand what it means to be brothers and sisters to each other as well as to him, children together of a loving parent; to seek the justice and peace of his Kingdom for all; to follow by loving and nourishing others and seeking their flourishing; and to challenge the perversions of relationship that are fostered by violence and hatred in the light which is not overcome by the darkness but shines to lead us to new life.