Revealing: John 21:1-8
Ordinary Time
Sermon series: "Jesus Moves"
Disability Pride Sunday
Later, Jesus himself appeared again to his disciples
at the Sea of Tiberias. This is how it happened: 2 Simon
Peter, Thomas (called Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, Zebedee’s sons,
and two other disciples were together. 3 Simon
Peter told them, “I’m going fishing.”
They said, “We’ll go with you.” They set out in a
boat, but throughout the night they caught nothing. 4 Early
in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples didn’t realize it
was Jesus.
5 Jesus called to
them, “Children, have you caught anything to eat?”
They answered him, “No.”
6 He said, “Cast
your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.”
So they did, and there were so many fish that they
couldn’t haul in the net. 7 Then the disciple whom
Jesus loved said to Peter, “It’s the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard it was the
Lord, he wrapped his coat around himself (for he was naked) and jumped into the
water. 8 The other disciples followed in the boat,
dragging the net full of fish, for they weren’t far from shore, only about one
hundred yards. (CEB)
One
of the things you’ll get to know about me as we do the introductions and
tidbits of a new connection is that I read a lot of queer romance novels. I’m fascinated by the reputation of the genre
and intrigued by how often such novels use romantic tropes as vehicles for
social commentary. Also, honestly, they’re
just fun (most of the time). One of my
go-to authors is E.M. Lindsey, who often writes disabled characters in their
narratives. One of their books, Stick
and Poke, follows a man named Mat who has a traumatic brain injury that
left him unable to comprehend written letters, a hidden disability that he
masks by creating workarounds for a world that expects you to be able to
read. In one scene, Mat is venting at Wyatt—the
character who will become his boyfriend—that it’s infuriating that people
assume he’s “fine” until they find out that his brain is a bit scrambled, when
they start to treat him differently—as less, usually. The revelation of his disability changes the
relationship and he presents his string of one-night stands as proof that it’s
not worth trying to build anything on such seemingly shaky ground.
We
continue our series on the movements of Jesus—on Jesus Moves—still in the
gospel of John. Today’s pericope is a
truncated version of a story that some may know very well: right after today’s
passage, Jesus asks Peter three times if Peter loves Him and Peter gets all
angry about it until he realizes Jesus is undoing Peter’s denials before Jesus’
crucifixion. It’s an incredibly
emotional scene of redemption and this prelude to that story is often
overshadowed. It matters, though, to see
how Jesus is in relationship with His disciples, His friends—how Jesus comes to
be in relationship with us.
Let’s
set the scene: Jesus has been crucified.
The movement He started is falling apart—of course it is, the heart of
it is dead and buried in a borrowed tomb.
The core disciples are laying low in a locked house, handling the
reality that they walked away from Jesus when He needed them most, wondering if
the Empire is coming for them next.
There is sadness, and exhaustion, and anger, and probably some
hopelessness. There is certainly a sense
of feeling lost.
So
Simon Peter—blessed Simon Peter, man of action and not always as much thought—says
to himself that what he knows, what he was doing with his life before Jesus,
where he could find some sense of something, is fishing. Might as well go back to it. “I’m going fishing,” he tells the
others. And because they have spent
three years learning that community is the best place to grieve, celebrate,
hope, and pray, they go along. And the plan
falls flat on its face.
One
of my nephews is a competitive fisherman and finds a great deal of joy in
it. I find it terribly boring. This fishing is neither of those things: this
is a group of men in a boat throwing nets overboard and hauling them back, over
and over, shoulders aching with the movement and legs braced against the
rocking of the waves. This is a job, a
hope for money now that taxes and housing and settling down are going to be
part of the disciples’ lives again. But
there are no fish. Over and over again
they throw the net, pulling it back empty, and empty, and empty as the sky
begins to lighten and the sea laps against the boat and their friend and
teacher and hopes are all still dead.
It’s
not an altogether cheerful beginning to this tale.
Exhausted
and now frustrated that they have failed their trade as well as their trials,
they may have started to pack up to go back to shore and be disappointed there,
where at least it’s dry. Then a man
calls out to them. “Children,” He says—the
Greek is παιδία (paidia), a word used for little kids and infants.[1] It’s the same word Jesus used in Matthew 18
when He talked about how the disciples must become like children to enter the
Kingdom of Heaven.[2] “Children,” this guy on the shore says, “have
you caught anything to eat?”
I
want us to take a moment to give credit to the disciples, especially Peter who speaks
whatever is on his mind most of the time, for not yelling back some form of “eat
your robe if you’re hungry” after having been called children. They’re heartsore, body sore, spirit sore, and
now financially uncertain, but there are men on that boat who have been fishing
since they could walk. They’re
professional in the sense that it literally was their profession, and they’re
grown men by the standards of their culture.
Children! This random guy on the
shore called them children! Dude better
be at least 50 to be saying things like that.
Perhaps the disciples peer at the man trying to tell His age, but
they’re 100 yards out—the length of an American football field. Can’t really tell age from here.
Instead
of a jibe, they call back, “No.”
“Cast
your net on the right side of the boat,” says the busybody on shore.
Again,
the fact that these professionals listened to the man and then actually did what
He said speaks volumes about how tired and discouraged they must have
been. Professor Karyn Wiseman writes, “The
amazing thing to me is that the disciples did not know who he was at first but
they went back out. Was it their desperation for a catch, a love of task, a
desire for success, a sense of the specialness of the man calling them to
return to their task, or something else?”[3] They’ll try anything at this point even
though they’re looking at the water; they’ve been out all night; they know how
fish gather. But sure, fine; one last
go.
The
writer tells us that “there were so many fish that they couldn’t haul in the
net” and the haul absolutely breaks open the disciples—they know exactly Who these
kinds of miracles happen around. Professor
Karoline Lewis notes, “The moment of recognition of Jesus in this story? When
lack is transformed to abundance. When despair is moved to hope. When
abandonment is replaced with the restoration of relationship.”[4] “It’s the Lord!” the disciples cry, and
blessed Peter dives right into the lake to swim to shore because the time it
takes to row back is too long indeed to wait to see his friend, his leader.
We,
the readers, knew all along, of course; the very first verse of this chapter
tells us this is Jesus, the resurrected Christ. “Later, Jesus himself appeared again to His
disciples,” says the CEB. The NRSVue
says, “After these things, Jesus showed Himself again.” The
ESV—and these are all different English translations, if the acronyms are
unfamiliar—says, “After this, Jesus revealed Himself again.”
Appear,
show, reveal: they’re all translations of ἐφανέρωσεν (ephanerōsen), from φανερόω
(phaneroō), “to bring to light, to manifest, to show, to disclose, to be laid
bare, to appear in true character.”[5] Paul uses it in Romans[6] to
say that we can know God because Jesus has shown us Who God is and in 1
Corinthians[7]
to say that the assessment of our lives after death will involve God showing or
making known the hidden things of our hearts.
I love that it encompasses “to appear in true character” in its meaning
because its use is always about showing up as your authentic self. Jesus reveals Himself, appears as Himself,
shows Himself, because now He is fully Himself: God enfleshed, the resurrected
one, Christ.
Today
is the last Sunday of Disability Pride Month, a month established in 2015 to
mark the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act
that recognized disabled people were still, in every way, people and therefore
deserved the right to be in public life.
Disability is a wide range of realities that affects more than 15% of
the world; the CDC estimates that more than a quarter of the US adult
population has some form of disability.[8] It is the only minority group that all of us
are capable of joining—expected to, if we live long enough. The World Health Organization states that
disability “is part of being human.”[9]
Disability
Pride Month, as Holly Michelle Cole notes, is for many less about “I’m so proud
and happy that I’m disabled and I wouldn’t change a single thing,” and rather
more that “disabled is part of who I am and I refuse to be silenced when I try
to talk about my disability and advocate for myself and others like me.”[10] We celebrate not the pain and frustration of
a body that doesn’t always work well or a society that treats us as less but
the idea that we, too, are worthy of being heard, appreciated, included, loved
with the entirety of our experience.
Mat,
the man with the TBI in the book, has experience after experience that tells
him his whole self is not welcome or wanted.
It’s a beautiful choice by the author that the man who ends up seeing
him is actually mostly blind—Wyatt, who has his own experiences of the world
treating him as a child because he couldn’t drive or walk without a cane. Together, they reveal themselves to each
other, learning how their bodies have shaped them but also how their childhoods
did, how their joy does, how they play cards or cook meals or create art. To reveal oneself to another is terrifyingly
vulnerable and holy, so holy in the hope that someone else will see us, truly see
us in the fullness of our entire selves as God made us and as we have
become. Because when that happens? It’s powerful enough that we would jump out
of a boat and swim to shore to be close to that, to be loved like that.
“It’s
the Lord!” the disciples shout when they recognize the abundance that marks
Jesus’ steps, the Jesus Who defeated death and did not keep it a secret, the
Jesus Who is steadily revealing Himself to His loved ones to say that the
journey is not over, the hope did not die.
They crowd together on the beach and eat of the overwhelming amount of
fish they caught and Peter is revealed as a leader of leaders and the end of
the book of John says there are so many more stories that they cannot all be
written down here, that he imagines “the world itself wouldn’t have enough room
for the scrolls that would be written.”[11] The relationships, the stories, the love of a
God Who lived and died and rose and chided and laughed and ate and still, still
walks with us only work because there is revelation, there is fullness of
being, there is wholeness of self.
So
we work to create that world. We fight
for the rights of disabled persons to live full and supported lives; we fight
for healthcare that actually cares; we fight for accessible buildings and
language that is not dismissive and sustainable financial realities. And we learn more and more about what
“disabled” includes. We call out cruelty
when we see it, refusing to be part of a culture that infantilizes and
dismisses. We listen to the voices of
those living with disabilities; we tell our stories; we build a world where
revealing ourselves is a holy and wondrous thing because we are holy and
wondrous things. We live like
resurrection is possible, like abundance is possible, like God calls to us from
the shore to say try again with Me and that makes all the difference.
Jesus
does not go to the Roman soldiers and show Himself—that is not going to help
His mission. Please care for yourself,
like Mat does in the story, and do not give too much of yourself to those who
will not handle you gently. But Jesus
does go back to His friends—His fractious, doubting, grieving friends—and say
“we are not done yet; I am here.” And
with His scarred hands, He eats fish on a beach and restores hope, fully
present as He is, revealed to them as Christ, Who was and is and shall ever be.
How
marvelous a morning after such a long night.
How wonderful a hope that the sun rises on more, ever more than we could
have imagined alone. Amen.
[3]
https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-easter-3/commentary-on-john-211-19
2013
[6]
1:19
[7]
4:5
[10]
Comment on Birdhism Facebook post, July 22, 2026, https://www.facebook.com/birdhism/posts/pfbid0MwZzi62scwgyEuFHdNWbqHBRsV4z3YQw5tqRn3zMvsjbf6Uyf3p3jU7HSR6nwiRVl?comment_id=3963492057286737
[11]
John 21:25, CEB
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