Reflections: What now?
After Jesus was resurrected, Mary, the mother of James, Mary Magdalene and Salome went to anoint his body for burial but finding the stone rolled away, they entered the sepulchre and saw a young man sitting on the right side of the burial clothes. Like any angelic meeting, the young man told them not to be scared. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified, but he isn’t here. Look, here’s the place he was laid. But go on, tell his disciples and Peter he’s gone ahead of them into Galilee. He’ll meet you there as he told you. (Mark 16:6-7) After he appeared to two disciples on the road to Emmaus and explained who he was from the scriptures beginning in Genesis. After he visited the 11 disciples in the upper room and showed them his pierced hands and side. In the middle of their incredulity, Jesus commissioned them to spread the gospel. The disciples were trying to make sense of all that had happened. Peter, always with the first idea, said, well, I’m going fishing. He wanted to return to what he had always known. It was a place of safety and familiarity. He could fish almost automatically without thinking and let his mind sort things out. It was the place Jesus called him to “Follow me” and he did along with his brother Andrew and their fishing group James and John. They returned to a place of intimacy, the Sea of Galilee, the cool breeze and the smell of fish. Fishing was why Jesus called them: to follow him and become fishers of men.
What a month it had been! It began normally enough: feeding the hungry, healing the sick, cleansing the lepers. But suddenly everything changed. Wildly amazing things could not be dismissed: Lazarus raised from the dead, the crowds waving palm branches, shouting, “Hosanna,” the cursed fig tree shriveling from the root, the money changers, Passover, Gethsemane, arrest, trials, crucifixion but now the wildest of all: Resurrection! Life from the dead. Jesus, the seed in the parable, the Word of God was planted in the earth rising alive with a harvest: some thirty, some sixty, some a hundredfold (Matthew 13:8, 23; Mark 4:8, 20). But he wasn’t walking with them in the way they once walked. His body was similar with nail holes in his hands and feet and the wound in his side but he walked through walls! He breathed on them in such an unusual way.
As had happened before (Luke 5:5), they ran up against the trials of fishermen. They toiled all night and caught nothing (John 21:3). That morning, they were startled to see someone along the shore who called out to them asking if they had caught anything to which they responded, “nothing.” So Christ urged them to cast their nets on the other side of their ship where they caught 153 fish — causing their boat to begin to sink and needing assistance to bring their catch to shore.
We like those fishermen can toil all night catching nothing for (John 15:5) without him we can do nothing but with Jesus on the scene, our boats overflow for He strengthens us both to will and to do of his good pleasure all things through Christ (Philippians 2:13; 4:13). Let us look for him at the appointed place.
(Cathy Bayert is pastor of Greybull First Baptist Church.)