Our Readings would appear to go through a progression, with our Gospel focussing of the Lord’s forgiveness of Peter (here representing us), and moving onto a picture of the exulted Jesus, then taking us on to how we experience this all lived out in the lives and witness of the Christian community. Each Reading gives us the opportunity to engage in a graphic experience of what life in, with and through Christ is about.
In our Gospel, (John 21:1-19) the story of the miraculous catch of fish, here transferred from Luke 5:3-7 during the life and miracles of Jesus, we witness something of the ‘messianic banquet’, but not as Luke has it as a foretaste of heaven during Jesus’ earthly life, but rather in its reality in the presence of the risen Christ. We are expected to notice the enormity of the sea-change given by this shift in context, with the disciples back in Galilee at their old trade and their complete failure to catch anything after a whole night’s fishing, the dark representing their emptiness and failure to understand the resurrection. Significantly Jesus addresses them as ‘children’ in Greek (not the Jerusalem Bible ‘friends’) indicative of their ignorance. However they obey the request of the Lord and put out again, catching 153 fish, what Greek Zoologists believed the total number of varieties of fish in the sea, thus representing universality, totality and the shade of their future missionary embrace, and of course the Beloved Disciple recognises who is commanding their behaviour and what it means.
This is all very impressive until we take a careful look at the behaviour of Peter, described very clearly in Greek as ‘naked’ gumnos (and definitely not the Jerusalem Bible’s prurient ‘practically nothing on’!) Immediately, we are flung back to the repeated actions of the impetuous Peter, the one who at Jesus’ arrest was so frightened he denied ever having known Jesus, so a betrayer; whilst other Gospels show the entire number of the disciples running for their lives. John’s is never merely a descriptive story, so we are immediately flung back to a much older story of flight and betrayal, that of Genesis 3 where the disobedient couple in the garden betray God’s trust and command and become aware of their nakedness and lose the life of love and grace which formerly was theirs, and their relationship with their maker. Adam and his wife put on clothing of leaves to hide their nakedness, and similarly Peter wraps his cloak around himself before jumping into the sea to go to Jesus. Normally this would be a ‘togs off moment’. Significantly, there is no chastisement scene, only Jesus’ triplicate questioning of Peter ‘Do you love me?’ This matches the time the Lord spent in the tomb and the number of Peter’s denials, so what we have here is a re-creation moment, followed by his command to care for his, Jesus’, sheep. This is followed by the reminder that now he is given-over to the Lord’s service, and in the future will not be in command of his own destiny. Now he, they, we, are given-over for the Lord’s service.
In our Reading from the Apocalypse (5:11-14), variously described as an ‘enthronement liturgy’ or a description of an ‘Imperial Adventus’, the visit of an emperor to one of his cities, and the once in a lifetime event, with all the razzmatazz that needed, we are invited in as witnesses to the meaning of the resurrection. Imperial occasions were definitely eyes–right moments, when the entire focus was on the Emperor, quite literally and when his honours and status was acclaimed to the masses. John the Divine might well have experienced such an event in Ephesus or Antioch prior to his imprisonment. But he goes further, much further, than any praise of an emperor, including angels, heaven itself, and multitude upon multitude of witnesses including the entire created natural order which acclaims the sacrificed and now risen Christ. Indeed, the entire cosmos shouts his glory as ‘Worthy to be given power, riches, wisdom, strength, honour, glory and blessing.’ Emperors like Domitian liked to have their coin acclaim him as ‘Lord and Saviour’; here we have Christ outdoing him by enormous amounts, Lord of the Universe.
In Acts (5:27-32.40-41) we come down to earth, as Peter and the apostles appear before the Sanhedrin to explain their subversive behaviour, and defy the authorities and insist on reciting the story of the passion and death and resurrection of Jesus, thereby accounting for their miracles of healing in his name. They acclaim Jesus as Lord and Saviour (Luke’s hit at Rome) and insist how proud the apostles were to have suffered imprisonment and flogging in imitation of Christ, as they work for the spreading of the Word among the people. From now on the way of Christian evangelization is clear and inescapable, we know whose we are and what has to be done.
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