Today's Gospel

Your Way or the Lord’s Way?

In this Sunday's gospel, the disciples go fishing. You get the sense that they're sort of sitting around. Jesus has risen from the dead at this point. But Peter says to the disciples, he says, "I'm going fishing." And the disciples say, "We'll come with you." And so they go fishing. And they used to fish during the night, and they fished most of the night, and they didn't catch anything. And then the Scripture says, "Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the beach." So Jesus shows up and He says to them, "Do you have any fish?" They say, "No." He says, "Cast the net to the right side of your boat and you'll find some." And of course, this is one of those instances where they catch so many fish, they almost sink the boat. So they catch these fish, they bring these fish in, and then they come in to shore. When they get to the land, there's a fire burning already, and there's fish on the fire. So Jesus already had fish. He's put fish on the fire. He's got bread. But he says to them, "Bring some of your fish that you have caught." It shows this collaboration, this desire that God has to always be collaborating with us. So they bring some fish, and then Jesus says to them, "Come and have breakfast with me."

Now, we read this story and we think, "Okay, we've seen it, we've heard it many times, different versions." But one of the things that we miss here is what the gospel writer is really trying to tell us is that Jesus is not a ghost. That Jesus rose from the dead, not as a ghost, not just as a spirit, but body, blood, soul, and divinity. And how is the gospel writer doing that? He's saying, Jesus sits down and he has breakfast with his disciples and ghosts don't eat food, ghost don't eat. And so that and all of this, of everything that's going on here, that's what the gospel writer is trying to tell us. He's trying to tell us something that's very, very important about the resurrection of Jesus. And that is that Jesus rose from the dead, not as a ghost, not as a spirit. The disciples were not imagining these visions of spirits or ghosts or whatever. But he was there as a real person, body, blood, soul, and divinity. And as a real person, he was able to sit down with them and eat breakfast.

And of course, for the early Christians, this was one of the great proofs that Jesus had, in fact, risen from the dead, that it was not just a myth, that it was not just a story, but that people had sat down and shared a meal with him, and shared a meal with him. What is it that you believe about the resurrection of Jesus? What is it that you believe about the resurrection of Jesus? Have you ever really thought about, "What was the resurrected Jesus like?" How was the resurrected Jesus different to the Jesus that was crucified on the cross? How was the resurrected Jesus the same as the Jesus that was crucified on the cross? In early Christianity, these seemingly small things, these nuances were critically important to build the defense of the resurrection of Jesus. They remain important today, but very often we read straight through these things when we're reading the Scriptures. Every gospel reading has a thousand ways to look at it. That's why we hear them over and over again, because there are many, many ways to look at it, and because our lives are in different places when we hear them.

In what way is Jesus calling you to collaborate with Him in your life right now? Jesus says to the disciples–he's got the fish. He's got the fire going. He's got the bread. He says, "Bring some of the fish you caught," out of that desire to collaborate with us. In what way is God inviting you to collaborate with Him today.