Third Sunday of Easter; 1 May 2022; Easter 3C (RCL); Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 30; Revelation 5:11-14; John 21:1-19.
Luke summarizes and compresses (and fictionalizes) the story of Paul’s conversion. Paul himself gives several accounts of it: in Galatians and in 2 Corinthians, both times as authorization for the gospel he preaches. But Luke catches the essential elements. The passage in John’s Gospel gives us something like a conversion story for Peter.
John’s Gospel came to a suitable end at the end of chapter 20: Jesus did many other signs not written in this book, but these are written so that you may come to believe. The story could easily have ended there. This passage has all the feel of an appendix. Life has gone back to normal. Peter says, “I am going fishing,” and several other disciples join him — two of them unnamed, one of those two, the disciple whom Jesus loved.
Characteristic of many of the resurrection appearances, the disciples do not at first recognize Jesus. And even after they recognize him, there remains some ambiguity — no one dared ask him “Who are you?” for they knew it was the Lord (not Jesus, but the Lord). To me, this seems like an event within the life of the community of the resurrected Jesus; someone within the community has delivered a word, and community consensus is that it is the word of the Lord.
In part, this passage deals with the rehabilitation of Peter within the Johannine community. On the shore is a charcoal fire. The word for charcoal fire is used exactly one other time in the New Testament — in John’s Gospel, in the courtyard of the high priest’s house, the crowd is warming itself at a charcoal fire. At that fire, Peter denies Jesus three times. Also, at the last supper, Peter asks Jesus to wash him all over. Here, he throws on some clothes before jumping into the sea — the reverse of what one would expect in a story typical of a baptism.
There is some hinky-ness with translations. In the NRSV, Jesus asks the disciples if they have any fish. In the Greek, he asks, “You have nothing to eat, do you?” The word for something to eat occurs only here in the NT. I wonder if the intention is a specific kind of something to eat. On the charcoal fire is bread and fish, which seems to me a kind of resurrection eucharist; Jesus eats bread and fish after the resurrection in Luke’s Gospel, and of course bread and fish constitute the meal in the wilderness recorded six times in four Gospels. Jesus’ action in giving bread and fish to the disciples in this passage are exactly the same as his actions in feeding the crowd in chapter 6 of John’s Gospel. The disciples receive a word from the Lord at a eucharist.
Jesus then asks Peter three times if he loves him. In the first two instances, Jesus uses the verb ἀγαπεῖν — agapein. Peter answers that he loves Jesus φιλεῖν — philein. The third time Jesus asks, he uses the verb φιλεῖν, and Peter is crestfallen because he asks a third time with the verb φιλεῖν. Some scholars make the case that the two verbs are synonyms in John’s Gospel, and indeed, John does seem to use them interchangeably. In the description of the disciple whom Jesus loved, John sometimes uses the one and sometimes the other. In the love of the Father for the Son and Jesus for the Father, sometimes one and sometimes the other.
However, in this instance, I think John intends a difference. First, this is an appendix to the Gospel, perhaps added by a hand other than the first author(s). Second, Peters grief at being asked with φιλεῖν the third time suggests a lowering of expectation.
In all three instances, Jesus asks Peter to care for, tend, feed, his sheep, recalling the Good Shepherd, and the one flock under one shepherd. I think this appendix narrates the grafting of the Johannine community onto the Petrine community. The Johannine community had nearly destroyed itself with inner conflict (see Raymond Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple), and sought to save itself by union with Peter’s community. The 153 fish, in that case, would be the remaining number of members of the Johannine community. Peter drags the net ashore, and the net was not torn.
Peter is a problematic figure in the NT. Paul scolds him for hypocrisy at Damascus for first eating with Gentiles, and then withdrawing when certain men from James arrive. I think the episode of Peter walking on the water, and then sinking when he sees the storm (of controversy) in Matthew’s Gospel narrates that same incident. If John’s community had admitted Greeks (see chapter 12), joining the Petrine community would be a difficult step. Hence, the need of undoing Peter’s denials, and making sure he would tend the sheep of another flock.
This would represent something of a conversion for Peter or at least the community that claimed him as its patron, something Paul never records. It would likely have happened after Paul’s death (that would be consistent with the timing of such an appendix to John’s Gospel).
Acts, of course, records Paul’s own conversion. In both cases, the conversion involves opening the community to people previously seen as outsiders. In the reading from Acts, the church is referred to as the Way (or the Road). It understood itself as the new community on the new wilderness way, gathering up people as it went, just as the first people had done on their way to God’s promises. This would involved surrendering one identity in order to claim another (Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone, but if it falls into the ground and dies, it bears much fruit — in reference to the Greeks who ask to see Jesus at the Passover in chapter 12).
Moving forward into a new vocation always involves surrendering something of the old. The old guard has to move aside to allow new leadership to step in. Things aren’t ever going to be again the way the used to be in the good old days. Conversion is always costly.