John 21:1-14 · Jesus and the Miraculous Catch of Fish
Who Counted the Fish?
John 21:1-14, John 21:15-25
Sermon
by Donald B. Strobe
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The 20th chapter of the Fourth Gospel ends with the words, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.  But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:30-31) That sounds like the end of the story, doesn’t it?  But then, chapter 21 comes along, and it is almost as if the whole thing starts all over again.  Scholars have long been puzzled by this, especially in light of the fact that there are some stylistic word usages in the Greek of the 21st chapter which suggest that they may have been penned by a different hand.  Still, there is no ancient manuscript which does not contain this final epilogue to the Gospel of St.  John, and so it must have been added to the Gospel for a reason.  What, exactly, is going on here? 

“I am going fishing,” said Simon Peter.  He didn’t mean that he was taking a vacation.  It almost seems as though he is saying that he felt that he had wasted three years trying to be a follower of an unusual kind of Messiah who had managed to get himself crucified, and so he was returning to his old way of life as a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee.  Some of the rest of the Twelve said, “We will go with you.” What else was there to do?  Their Lord and Leader was “crucified, dead, and buried.” Yes, “on the third day he rose again from the dead,” but what was to happen next?  So it was back to the old life and the old ways before they had set off on their journey with Jesus. 

The setting of the last chapter of John’s Gospel is a familiar one.  It is the Sea of Galilee, although in this case it is called the “Sea of Tiberias,” named after the most important town along the western shore of the city which became the capitol of the Galilee after Herod Antipas (whom Jesus called “that fox,” in Luke 13:32) moved it from Sepphoris in the year 20 A.D. 

The event takes place at the northwest corner of the lake, which was the favorite center for Jesus’ teaching, often referred to as the “evangelical triangle.” Here Jesus conducted some 85% of his earthly ministry.  Here is where (according to tradition) our Lord gave the Sermon on the Mount, spoke the Beatitudes, and performed the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes.  Just south of the Mount of Beatitudes there is a small bay with a rocky protrusion, with a pleasant grove of shady trees.  It is today called “Simon Peter’s Landing Place,” or sometimes the Church of the Primacy of Peter.  The little Franciscan chapel there encloses a rocky promontory called “mensa Christi” in the Latin, which enshrines an early tradition.   In the year 384 A.D.  a pilgrim nun named Egeria from somewhere aound France or Spain came to this area and was shown by the local Christians a place with rock-hewn steps leading down to the water, and was told that it was on these steps that the risen Lord stood to call to his disciples who were out fishing.  The landscape there today is pretty much as it was in the first century.  Let’s listen to her own words: Here there “are some stone steps where the Lord stood, and in the same place is a grassy field with plenty of hay and many palm trees.  By them are seven springs, each flowing strongly.  This is the field where the Lord fed the people with the five loaves and the two fishes.  In fact, the stone on which the Lord placed the bread has now been made into an altar.  People who go there take away small pieces of the stone to bring them prosperity, and they are very effective.  Past the walls of this church goes the public highway on which the apostle Matthew had his place of custom.  Near there, on a mountain, is the cave to which the Saviour climbed and spoke the Beatitudes.”

Just north of this area is a place which is called in the Greek “Heptapegon,” or the “Seven Springs,” usually known in its Arabic shortened form as “Tabgha.” Here seven warm springs empty into the sea, thereby attracting large schools of fish.  Even today one can see boats surrounding the area, as it is a great place in which to fish.  The author of this account in the Fourth Gospel knew the geography of the Galilee very well, and he knew the customs of the time.  He knew that night-time was the best time to fish along that place.  On this particular night, however, the disciples who had returned to their nets after the cataclysmic events of Good Friday and Easter in Jerusalem, had labored all night and caught nothing.  I don’t see their return to their nets as necessarily an abandonment of their calling to be disciples of Jesus.  I seems to me that they were simply stunned, and did not know what to do next.  So they did the familiar thing: they returned to fishing in the Sea of Galilee.  Maybe they simply went back to their old life to await further instructions. 

But back to our story.  On the day reported in our scripture lesson, they had toiled all night and caught nothing, Just as the day was breaking, they heard a voice from the shore calling to them, Fellows, have you caught anything?” Their answer was “No.  We have worked all night and have nothing to show for it.” “Well,” said the stranger’s voice from the shore, “cast your nets on the other side ands see what happens.” Now, there is a very strange phenomenon which is reported by fishermen on the Sea of Galilee which may have occurred here.  It is that while one is inside the boat, one cannot see the fish directly beside the boat.  But a person standing on shore can see the dorsal fins of the fish protruding above the water.  I have visited this place many times, trying to see this phenomenon, and once it actually happened for me!  I quickly grabbed for my camera, and got several good shots of the fins of fish protruding from the water.  It is not necessary to see something supernatural occurring here (as though the resurrection itself were not supernatural enough,) and I have no wish to diminish the miraculous nature of what happened; but, on the other hand, I do not wish to see a miracle here when there is no need to do so.   The story makes perfect sense once one understands what is going on.  Jesus was probably saying, “Look, fellows, there are plenty of fish on the other side.  Cast your nets over there and you will not be disappointed!”

They did as they were told and, lo and behold, there was a great abundance of fish!  The “disciple whom Jesus loved” (usually thought to be St.  John) exclaimed to Peter, “this reminds me of Luke, Chapter 5!  Do you suppose it is the Lord?” And I can imagine Peter slapping his hand to his forehead saying, “Wouldn’t you know it!  Just when I got my life on an even keel again, the Lord would show up when I least expect Him!” So Peter, who was stripped for work, puts on his clothes and jumps into the sea.  That isn’t as silly as it sounds, for it is a well-grounded Jewish tradition that one does not appear before the Lord naked.  Still, there is something incongruous about the scene - Simon Peter putting on his clothes to go swimming!  The rest of the disciples in the boat are left behind to tend their nets and haul in the great catch of fish, while Peter stumbles his way through the surf ahead of them to the shore to meet the risen Lord. 

When the rest of the disciples get there, they find Jesus tending a charcoal fire, with fish on it and bread, and He invites them to come and share a meal with Him.  Again, it is important that we know some of the customs of the times of Jesus in order to understand what is going on.  In the Middle East in Biblical times and even today, the way you become reconciled with your enemies is to share a meal with them.  For a while it seemed as though Jesus’ closest friends had become His enemies.  Peter had denied Him, and “All of (the rest of) them deserted Him and fled,” according to the Gospels.  (Mark 14:50) But Jesus was still their Friend, and he invited them to break bread with Him on the seashore in the epilogue of the Fourth Gospel.  This is what is called the “Meal Covenant.”  In the Hebrew Bible, when Abraham comes to Salem, the high priest Melchizedek comes out and they share a meal together in the Valley of the Kings, (Gen.  14:18) which means that “My army won’t fight your army.” In the familiar 23rd Psalm, when it says that, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies...” the picture we should have in mind is not sitting down to table for a sumptuous feast while our enemies are looking in hungrily from the outside; rather it means that God enables us to sit down at table with our enemies and be reconciled with them.  When Anwar Sadat made his famous visit to Israel from Egypt in 1977, he and Menachem Began ate bread and salt together in the ancient city of Beersheba.  So the risen Christ meets once again with his friends, and is reconciled with them in the breaking of bread and sharing a common meal.  For them, the “Last Supper” was not to be the “last” supper, after all!  Beyond Maundy Thursday and Good Friday there was an Easter Sunday and a renewed fellowship with the risen Lord! 

When the disciples finally arrived on shore, they found Jesus tending a charcoal fire, with fish on it, and bread, and He invites them to have breakfast with Him.  Can you picture it?  Why all these little personal touches?  Well, one of the purposes of the writer of the Fourth Gospel was to refute a very popular “heresy” of those early days (“heresy” means a misunderstanding of the faith) - in this case, the heresy of “gnosticism” which asserted that Jesus never had a real body after the resurrection...only a “spiritual” one, whatever that is.  (The Gnostics hardly believed that Jesus had a real body before Easter, much less afterwards!) But the author is saying to us: Look, friends, this was a real resurrection.  Here is a real person, not a ghost.  Ghost and spirits do not build campfires and share meals of bread and fish.  This is not a vision or a hallucination, but a real Person.  In the previous chapter Jesus showed them the nailprints and the wound in his side.  He is a real person, not a ghost.  A ghost would not be likely to point out a school of fish to a party of Galilean fishermen, nor kindle a charcoal fire along the beach.  Yet the epilogue to the Fourth Gospel asserts that Jesus did all of these things! 

In a poem titled “Seven Stanzas at Easter,” writer John Updike captures the spirit of the 21st chapter of John.  I quote only two of the stanzas:

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall. 

It was not as the flowers
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as his flesh: ours.

One reason the author of the Fourth Gospel included this appendix at the end was to make absolutely certain the reality of Christ’s resurrection.  It was not a vision, not a figment of faith’s fevered imagination, not the appearance of a spirit or a ghost fltting about the earth.  It was the Jesus who had lived and died and conquered death and come back again to strengthen his frightened friends! 

But the author had (you will pardon the expression) other fish to fry, as well.  And this brings us to the story of the marvelous catch of fish.  The Gospel says that Peter waded back out to the boat and helped his partners to haul in a tremendous catch of fish, and that there were one hundred and fifty-three of them.  Not one hundred and fifty-two, not one hundred and fifty-four, but one hundred and fifty-three!  I have always wondered: who counted the fish?  And why?  Can’t you just picture the disciples, as though they had nothing better to do, sitting down on the pebble beach and sorting the wiggling fish into piles: ten here, ten there, ten more over there.  Let’s see, that makes...153!  Why 153? 

Down through the centuries there have been some ingenious answers to that question.  Let’s look at them chronologically.  One of the “fathers” of the early Church, a man named Origen, in the third century suggested that the number could represent the Trinity.  3 x 50 + 3 = 153.  Just how that represents the Trinity, I do not know.  Another early Christian suggested that you take the square of the number of disciples (144) and add it to the square of the Holy Trinity (9) and you become up with...153!  St.  Augustine in the fourth century had another ingenious explanation.  He said that 10 is the number of the Law (the Ten Commandments, remember?) and 7 is the number of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  10 + 7 = 17.  Now, if you add up all of the numbers from 1 through 17 what number do you get?  153!!  All of this sounds pretty far-fetched to me.  It sounds much like the way some television evangelists tinker with the number of verses in either the book of Daniel, or Ezekiel, or Revelation, and end up predicting the Lord’s imminent return. 

A much simpler explanation about the number of fish in John 21 was given to us by St.  Jerome, who lived and worked in Bethlehem in the fourth century, and translated the Bible into Latin.  We must remember that St.  John is always a bit tricky to interpret, because he tends to tell us things which have more than one meaning.  He uses the same word, for instance, to describe “wind” and “Spirit” in chapter three.  Well, in the fourth century St.  Jerome commented that there was a tradition in his day that in all of the seas in the world there were exactly 153 species of fish!  And so the catch reported in John 21 tells us that the Gospel net is for “every kindred, every tribe, on this terrestrial ball,” as the old hymn puts it.  The Gospel message is for all people, everywhere.  “In Christ there is no east or west, in Him no south or north; but one great fellowship of love, throughout the whole wide earth.” I must confess that I like that interpretation best of all.  Not only is there room within the Gospel net for all the peoples of the earth, people of every race and clan and tribe, but they are together and the net does not break!  What a ringing affirmation of the fact that in the Church of Jesus Christ there is room for all sorts of people, people of every race and clime and tongue.  The Church is supposed to be inclusive, and not exclusive.  Perhaps this is the reason why the 21st chapter of John is tacked onto the rest of the story. 

But there may well be another reason.  Perhaps the story is put here to remind the Church that the disciple Peter who had denied his Lord was forgiven and reinstated.  Some years ago the London Daily Telegraph carried a letter written by an eleven-year-old boy to his mother while he was on vacation in Switzerland.  He wrote this: “Dear Mom, yesterday the instructor took eight of us to the slopes to teach us to ski.  I was not very good at it, so I broke a leg.  Thank goodness, it wasn’t mine!  Love, Billy.” Now, that mother had only a limited insight into what actually happened on the ski slopes of Switzerland that day.  And you and I have only a limited insight into what happened on the shore of the Sea of Galilee that day.  But one thing we know.  Jesus asked Simon Peter “Do you love me?” three times.  Why did he badger him so?  Was it because Peter had denied his Lord three times and wanted to give him three opportunities to affirm his love and thus wipe the slate clean?  I think that is so. 

“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” Jesus asked.  Now, that question is capable of at least two different meanings.  (a.) It may be that Jesus swept his hand around the boat and its nets and its equipment and the marvelous catch of fish and said, “Simon, do you love me more than all these material things?” These material things are not evil (as the Gnostics teach), they have their place, but that place should not be first place.  “Are you willing to give up all these things—a steady job, comfort, and security—and come, follow me?” That is one possible meaning of Jesus’ question.  Or, (b.) perhaps the question means: “Simon, do you remember how you said to me a few days ago that you would follow me anywhere; that even if all others should fall away from me, you will not?  Simon, do you really love me more than these others do?  You were not much better than they were, when the chips were down and the cross went up.  You, like the rest of them, ran away.” Was Jesus gently reminding Peter of his braggadocio which had such unfortunate consequences.  The late Peter Marshall once preached a sermon on Simon Peter and called him “The Rock that Moved.” Sometimes I think Jesus called Peter “rock” as much for his sinking qualities as for his standing qualities! 

“Do you love me?” That is the question by which each one of us stands or falls.  Peter, like most of the rest of us, had little evidence to show that he did.  He failed his Lord.  He deeply hurt the One he had professed to love.  And yet...and yet...in spite of all that he had done or had failed to do, he knew that deep in his heart he did love his Lord, in spite of everything.  So he said to Jesus, with tears streaming down his cheeks, “Lord, you know what is deep down inside of me.  You know that I have failed and faltered and fallen short.  But you know that I do love you.” And Jesus said to him, “Peter, feed my sheep.”

In the commentary on this chapter of the fourth Gospel which we find in the Interpreter’s Bible, the great Scots preacher Arthur John Gossip gives us these tremendous words: “...in the end of the day what other plea has any one of us?  We, too, have failed and faltered and deserted Christ too often.  And yet we can also protest that in spite of much which we do not deny seems to make the claim ridiculous, we do love Christ, and He knows it.” (The Interpreter’s Bible, New York & Nashville, Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1952, p.807)

There is an old Gospel hymn which goes like this:

Lord Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine;
For thee all the follies of sin I resign;
My gracious Redeemer, my Saviour art Thou,
If ever I loved Thee, Lord Jesus ‘tis now. 

Amen.

Dynamic Preaching, Collected Words, by Donald B. Strobe