After that day, everything was different. The first disciples witnessed a dead man walking. Their lives would be forever changed, defined by “life before Easter” and life “life after Easter.” On numerous occasions, Jesus showed up in resurrected form before he ascended. In the season of Easter we will examine six “after Easter” encounters with Jesus. What did he say and do? In what practical ways does resurrection change my daily life? Nothing will ever be the same.
Invocation
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Invitation
“You have made us for Yourself. And our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” (Augustine)
Creator of all things, hear my voice, for you have made it. You who live in heaven, hear my prayer from earth. I am one person in one little town in one corner of your vast creation. Of all the people on the planet, hear me also. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Confession
O God, in the beginning you made us good, even “very good.” I admit the many things in my life that are far from your good intent. I try to change, and then find myself in the same place once again. Lord, you know me. Have mercy. Make me right. Forgive my wickedness. Bring me back to good, as you intended from the beginning. Amen.
Word
“‘I am going fishing.’” John 21:3
Meditation
Today’s meditation is by Megan Roegner.
I love how Jesus speaks to his disciples in the language and gestures that they understand. The beginning of John 21 seems to intentionally reference the calling of the first disciples—described in Matthew 4 and Luke 5—when Jesus disrupts the pattern of their lives, leading them away from their vocations as fishermen to instead become “fishers of men.” In the wake of the extraordinary events that follow Jesus’s death, Peter attempts to return to the familiarity of his former life and goes out to fish along with some of the other disciples. But after a night on the water, they catch absolutely nothing. Of course, when Jesus appears and suggests they throw their nets on the other side of the boat, they pull them up teeming with fish.
I have to wonder if this event was a way of driving home to Peter and the others that they cannot return to their former way of life—by following Jesus in his ministry, they have been fundamentally changed. Peter isn’t a fisherman any more, he’s a fisher of men, and anything he accomplishes is on Jesus’s terms. This moment is a “reset”—a demonstration that they are still disciples of Christ even when they can’t see him walk beside them.
There are so many paradoxes and inversions in this passage—tension between the familiar and the unknown, between the mundane and the miraculous, between service and power, between need and abundance. I think this is a perfect analogy for all Christian lives: Although we live out our ordinary routines of work and meals, we are participating in a bigger story with roles that have been chosen for us. And just like the disciples don’t recognize Jesus at first when he shouts out from the shore, calling them “friends,” how often do we fail to see his hand disrupting our own patterns—the job that doesn’t work out, the friend who no longer calls, the nets that won’t fill? In my own life, it has been in the wake of disappointments and failed plans that I have most clearly seen him waving from the shore with a better plan and a hot meal, too.
Prayer: Lord, help us find our identities in you. Keep our minds, hearts, and eyes open for the plans you have for us. Amen.
Benediction
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
(Rom. 11:33,36))