Third Sunday of Easter, 18 April 2010

‘So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn’.

A great deal of scholarly sweat has been expended and a great many scholarly ink bottles have been emptied in attempts to interpret the extremely precise number of fish that Simon Peter hauled ashore. The tradition of interpretation began in the late fourth century when the great Biblical translator Jerome recorded that ancient opinion was that there were 153 species of fish in the world’s oceans. The net therefore represents the Church’s embrace of all peoples and all nations. Jerome’s friend Augustine of Hippo adopted a more mathematical approach. 153 is the sum of the numbers one to seventeen, and ten and seven are both Biblical numbers of mystical significance. Moses receives Ten Commandments and John of Patmos receives a vision of seven spirits of God. The net therefore represents God’s self-revelation to his people both old and new.

This debate continues, and although it is extremely tempting to view it with a mixture of bewilderment and suspicion as Dan Brown territory the fact that it continues requires us to recognize that when we read the twenty-first chapter of John’s Gospel we read something complex and multi-layered. In the twenty-first chapter of John’s Gospel have an allegorical epilogue to the original text.

In the twentieth chapter Jesus sends his disciples out, full of the Holy Spirit, and says to doubting Thomas, ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe’. That is surely the closing benediction that John intends for us, his readers, who are among those who have not seen. That is surely the original end of the Gospel. Then comes what we have heard this morning, the afterthought, the story of the fishing trip and the seaside breakfast, the story of Jesus’s questions to Peter and of Peter’s protestations of love, a story replete with symbolism and brimming with prophecy.

It is a story written down many years after the crucifixion, a story intended to portray the mature Christian community that has grown under the leadership of the martyred Peter. The fishing trip is the community’s mission; the unbroken net is its unity; the seven disciples listed represent the totality of the faithful (that magic number again); Jesus’s command to Peter to shepherd the flock authenticates the role that Peter has in fact had; Jesus’s dark prediction of Peter’s future validates the death he has in fact suffered on a cross. The chapter assures the people to whom it is addressed that their common life has its origins in Jesus’s risen life.

Interpreting the story in this way is a satisfying exercise, but if we do no more than interpret it in this way then it will remain a self-referential puzzle, theological Sudoku, and its impact upon us - its power to change us - will be negligible. We hear the Gospel as good news, not as food for our intellectual curiosity, or we do not hear the Gospel at all. And in this strange story of experienced fishermen who catch nothing and of apostles commissioned by Jesus who fail to recognize Jesus, at least two themes emerge which speak to us through a swirling mist of symbolic gesture and oracular sign.

The first is encapsulated in those 153 fish. The net brought to shore was full of their quivering, silvery, shimmering forms. It was a substantial haul, a huge haul. It far exceeded what seven hungry men needed for their breakfast. Yet this was the last of the signs that Jesus performed; perhaps the disciples looked upon the net and remembered the first of the signs that he performed. After all, one of them was Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the town where Jesus had turned water into wine all those years before. He had turned water into a substantial amount of wine, a huge amount of wine, an amount far exceeding the needs of the most boisterous of wedding parties. At the beginning of his ministry and at its end Jesus deals in profusion: he reveals the reckless bounty that God lavishes upon the world even when the world has hung his Son on a cross; he reveals the love that is without limit, the goodness that has no boundaries.

The second is encapsulated in the responses Jesus makes to Peter’s increasingly desperate pledges of love. They resonate oddly in the ears of the soap opera generation. When a lover in Albert Square or even Ambridge asks the beloved ‘do you love me?’ and receives the answer ‘yes’, he or she is likely to say ’I don’t believe you’ or ‘prove it’. What Jesus says is ‘Feed my lambs…tend my sheep…feed my sheep’. Jesus does not play a lover’s games with Peter, and he will not allow Peter to hug his love to himself, as something to warm his heart and cheer him up. He wants him to turn his love into love for others. ‘If you love me’ says Jesus ‘then love my people’.

Scholarly sweat and scholarly ink will never precisely identify identified a date and a place for the writing of this afterword to John’s Gospel. But perhaps we can imagine a community, cowed by the death of its great leader Peter, hearing it and through it being reminded that they originate in the miraculous resurrection of God’s Son. Perhaps we can imagine them being reassured that God’s care for them is endless; perhaps we can imagine them resolving that the only possible response to that care is to care for others.

It was Gospel for that far-flung, long-lost community, and it is Gospel for ours. Amen.