In our gospel reading for today, seven of Jesus' disciples are gathered beside the sea. Fresh from their amazing experience in the upper room with the resurrected Jesus, these disciples are poised to do great things. What things? Well...they have no idea what things. So Peter suggests the thing he knows best – fishing - and the rest of the disciples leap on the idea, and off they go. But Jesus himself interrupts their fishing trip and gives them a new direction, promising to provide for them and guide them as they take up his call to feed his sheep and follow him....
Gee, if only I could think of a recent example of a significant historical event that left people clueless as to what to do next....oh wait, now I remember one. There was this election that promised to bring about new opportunities for prosperity, new emphasis on freedom, BUT THEN, it turned out to result in same-old, same-old. And it left some of us wondering, “what are we supposed to do now? How are we supposed to bring about a different result, when none of our votes matter?” And some of us will insist we just need to stick to what we know – keep raising cattle and growing grain and pumping oil and paying transfer payments, and everything will be OK. PERHAPS they're right. Or maybe, the growing frustration of a smaller and smaller catch, will be the sign that a new direction is possible....
The gospel writer John writes as if he appreciates the humour in today's story. Peter and the gang, including John himself, have recently had two amazing encounters with their risen saviour Jesus – they've received from him the power of the Holy Spirit, and the authority to proclaim the forgiveness of sins. They are witnesses to the greatest event in human history – the resurrection of Jesus! They are ready for action! And then in the very next paragraph, we see them standing beside the sea, staring at each other, and saying to each other, “so what do you think we should do now?” “I dunno.” “Maybe we should build a nice building and form a property committee.” And then the bold visionary leader named Simon Peter says, “I'm going fishing.” And all the others are instantly, “Yeah, fishing – great idea – we'll go with you.” Fishing, of course, is what Peter was best at, what Peter was most familiar with. It's what Peter USED to do, right up to the point where Jesus called him as his disciple - to spread the news about the kingdom of God, to heal and to teach people, and to drive out demons and perform other signs of power. Right before all of that, there was fishing. And John sees the humour in going so quickly from “Christ is risen indeed!...to...let's go fishing.” The disciples had trust in Jesus, but they had no clue what to do next.
We, as Lutherans, often find ourselves in the same fishing boat. We have come to the point where we trust in Jesus, but we no longer have a clue what to do about it in our rapidly changing society. You see, we are very careful to explain that there is nothing we can do to earn God's love. We don't want to get in the way of God's gift of grace with a bunch of human rules and demands, and that's good. But sometimes it's misunderstood, and God's gift of grace is taken to mean that God loves us BEST when we do absolutely nothing. And so we don't stress an active discipleship. We don't talk enough about discipleship when we prepare folks for baptism or confirmation. We have faith, but we're unsure what to do with it, outside of this building. And so we file our faith in the back of our minds, and we go back to doing what we used to do.
But discipleship means the same as apprenticeship. Disciples practice doing what they see their teacher doing, and in the case of Jesus as our teacher, that means we practice spreading the news of the kingdom of God, teaching people, asking God to heal people, helping people overcome their demons, and who knows, maybe even calling upon God for a miracle. That's what Jesus did. And we know what else he did – Jesus showed God's love to people through what he was willing to do for our salvation. It helps us as disciples to know our teacher's story backward and forward, so that we know how Jesus responds to people – so we know how we are to respond to people as his disciples. Because if we just stick to what we used to do, we'll be out fishing when the opportunity knocks to be a witness – we'll be fishing for fish, when we could have been fishing for people.