A Starboard Suggestion: Red Letter Year 12/30

John 20.30 – 21.14

30 The disciples saw Jesus do many other miraculous signs in addition to the ones recorded in this book. 31 But these are written so that you may continue to trust that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by trusting him you will have life by the power of his name.

21.1 Later, Jesus appeared again to the disciples beside the Sea of Galilee. This is how it happened. 2 Several of the disciples were there — Simon Peter, Thomas (nicknamed the Twin), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples.

3 Simon Peter said, “I’m going fishing.”

“We’ll come, too,” they all said. So they went out in the boat, but they caught nothing all night.

4 At dawn Jesus was standing on the beach, but the disciples couldn’t see who he was. 5 He called out, “Fellows, have you caught any fish?”

“No,” they replied.

6 Then he said, “Throw out your net on the right-hand side of the boat, and you’ll get some!” So they did, and they couldn’t haul in the net because there were so many fish in it.

7 Then the disciple Jesus loved said to Peter, “It’s the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his tunic (for he had stripped for work), jumped into the water, and headed to shore. 8 The others stayed with the boat and pulled the loaded net to the shore, for they were only about a hundred yards from shore. 9 When they got there, they found breakfast waiting for them — fish cooking over a charcoal fire, and some bread.

10 “Bring some of the fish you’ve just caught,” Jesus said. 11 So Simon Peter went aboard and dragged the net to the shore. There were 153 large fish, and yet the net hadn’t torn.

12 “Now come and have some breakfast!” Jesus said. None of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. 13 Then Jesus served them the bread and the fish. 14 This was the third time Jesus had appeared to his disciples since he had been raised from the dead.

Comments

This is such an interesting passage. The disciples are together, it seems like they were sitting around doing nothing, so Peter decided to go fishing. I have heard some sermons treat this as Peter giving up and returning to his prior career. I think that reads too much into Peter’s action and reads it through the lens of vocational ministry, which is a rather recent phenomenon. The text doesn’t suggest anything negative by Peter’s decision to go fishing. When Jesus appears, he does not rebuke them, he helps them succeed, so he couldn’t have been too offended that they were fishing. We shouldn’t be either.

Jesus says four things to the disciples in today’s reading. First, he asks how they are doing (v. 5). Jesus shows real interest in their activities, he wants to know if they are succeeding. When they tell him that they are not doing well, that despite working all night, they have nothing to show for it, Jesus makes a second statement, a “starboard suggestion” as commentator Dale Bruner puts it. They take Jesus’ advice and then things go very well, so well the net can’t contain all the fish they have suddenly caught (and I love how the specific number is given, 153 fish in all).

I hardly ever talk about this because in our culture too many pastors make way too much of it. But, success does matter to Jesus. He didn’t call us to sit around twiddling our thumbs, he called us to make disciples, to love neighbors, to convince the world that God loves them and Jesus is here for them and that we care for them. We can get too wrapped up in a worldly definition of success, but at the same time every fish gets counted, every person who comes to Jesus matters. We should be counting, we should be growing, our nets should be bursting. If that is not the case, we should expect Jesus to make a starboard suggestion to us, a “hey, try this,” that will in some ways be the opposite of what we are doing. We can get stuck in the status quo, we can resist what Jesus tells us, or we can take his advice and catch a net full.

What can keep us grounded and safe from how our culture can run too far with success and counting is what Jesus says next. The disciples get to shore to find a fire already hot enough to cook on, and both fish and bread ready to eat. Jesus invites them to bring some of their fish too, but the meal was not dependent on them catching anything. Their provision was already secure and waiting for them. We can get caught up thinking that growing our churches or ministries is about providing for ourselves (again this is tied to the idea of vocational ministry, getting paid to pastor), but our provision does not come from our own effort and is not the point at all of making disciples and loving neighbors.

Then the last thing Jesus says is, “come eat.” He serves them the food (once again) and the implication there is that Jesus shared the meal with them. The resurrected Jesus cooking breakfast and eating food. John takes this one last opportunity to stress both the humanity and divinity of Jesus – here that these are both still in tact after the resurrection. We are specifically told that these things are presented so we will trust Jesus, trust him as Messiah, trust him as the Son of God, trust him as the Word made flesh, trust him as fully God and fully human. We can trust Jesus when he makes starboard suggestions. We can trust him to care about and assist in our success in growing his kingdom. we can trust him for provision. We can trust him to be present with us like one sharing a meal is present to his friends.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale HousePublishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Top 7 Posts of 2013

I did a lot of writing this year. It really started late fall 2012 when I turned a corner with my Ph.D. dissertation. I finally figured a couple of key things out and then began to write the final draft in earnest. I wrote a lot of it Jan. – Mar. of 2013. That would be enough for some people (more sensible than me), but I decided to add daily blogging through the Gospels on top because I’m crazy like that.

Then I got an idea to write breath prayer reflections for Lent, so for a while I was banging out two posts per day and writing the dissertation. (I also preached weekly at Vineyard North in Wake Forest and taught courses at Meredith college in the spring and Wingate University in the fall, so 2013 saw a pretty dramatic jump in my content output.) Then there were the occasional posts for various reasons or no particular reason at all.

So I thought it would be good to look at which posts from all this seemed to resonate the most. Most of the Red Letter Year entries had a steady daily following, but these are posts that had significant views beyond the day they were immediately posted. This list only includes posts from 2013. I have several older posts that still get some hits.

1. On Women and Slaves: Red Letter Year 11/21. This was the most viewed post of the year, thanks to a nod from Rachel Held Evans on her blog. I almost didn’t post this one though. I had a shorter reflection written and uploaded. Then I woke up at 2am and sat up writing until 4 (or 4:30, I lose track). It all sort of spilled out of me, like it had been pent up for a while. It was so much longer than my goal for RLY (the focus should remain on the text) that I thought about deleting it or using it for something else. But I ran with it because it highlights the logic the religious leaders used to justify killing Jesus and tracks how that same bad ethic gets used in the church today, specifically with women leading in the church. Key line: “We can’t call something “biblical” that falls short of the highest goal the Bible sets for us. Slavery is not biblical. Restrictions from church leadership based on gender aren’t biblical either.”

2. Spiritual PTSD. In this post, I shared about my experience with military service members suffering with PTSD and the parallels I see between how they suffer and how people hurt by church/religious experiences suffer. I have done more reading and talked to more people since posting this (the post itself led to really good conversations and new friends). I am more convinced than ever that spiritual PTSD is real and is an area I need to give theological and pastoral attention to going forward. Key line: “I am so sorry the body of Christ has been so awful to you. I am so sorry that the instruments of healing have been used to cut, wound, and abuse you. I hope, I pray that you will experience the healing power of Jesus.”

3. faith bullies. Coming a week before, this now reads like a prelude to #2, but at the time I was just irked by something on Facebook. Someone was promoting an anti-evolution video (I could link to it but I refuse to dignify it) that said a lot of nasty things about Christians who accept evolution as true. I posted in my feed that it is okay for Christians to think evolution is true, that the two are not logically incompatible. And that sparked a tempest in a teapot. I got some nasty responses of my own, so I blogged about people of faith using classic bullying techniques. Key line: You can’t bully someone into faith. You should not be bullying people of faith into thinking what you think they should think. Such tactics are out of bounds for followers of Jesus.”

4. What to do about Raleigh not allowing hungry people to be fed. I posted this in the wake of Biscuitgate, where the City of Raleigh sent police officers to break up a dangerous ring of biscuit dealers, er, ministries giving out free Bojangles’ biscuits and coffee (the photo of the officer holding a free cup of said coffee while explaining the ban is priceless for its irony). A lot of my friends were upset and wondering what to do, so I gave them some advice taken straight from Dr. King. Key line: “You are probably wondering what you can do to help. There is a tried and true way to overcome such injustice.”

5. Leave Her Alone: Red Letter Year 11/22. Some of the popularity of this post can be explained by its appearance the day after #1, but I actually like this one better. Makes the same point stronger and more succinctly (two qualifies that usually go together). The idea of Mary anointing Jesus the way we anoint someone before sending them into ministry is powerful, as are the words Jesus has for those who seek to stop her. Key line: “The church needs to here again the rebuke of Jesus: “Leave her alone.” Her calling, her leadership, the anointings she receives and gives are great gifts of worship to our Lord. She must not be hindered from whatever the Spirit leads her to do for Jesus.”

6. Failure of Justice in Raleigh, NC. This post reflected my twice broken heart, broken once by public news, but broken before that on a personal level. I am friends with a dear family who just had their son sentenced to 8 years in prison for a barroom fight that resulted in an eye injury. Then I learned that a sheriff officer assigned to Wake County jail had lifted up and slammed a poor man to the hard prison floor twice, killing him. The officer was sentenced to 90 days in jail. Raleigh has an unjust judicial system and a press that largely looks the other way. Key line: “we have a judicial system that seems to have lost all sense of justice.”

7. Lent Heart Prayer introduction. Writing this series was one of my highlights in 2013. Even I thought this was too much to take on, but the thing got on my heart and would not get off. So I wrote it out. I started with this introduction and linked to it in each prayer, so I think most people who participated in the LHPs read this at some point. I am going to collect all 40 links onto one convenient page to make future use easier. Key line: “What we’re doing here is ”fasting” from a way of thinking/seeing ourselves and the world, replacing the negative input we are fed (and tell ourselves) with God’s way of thinking about us and seeing us.”

There you have it. My top 7 posts of 2013. I am going to take a short break from the blog to figure out what’s next. Thanks so much for reading this year and for the comments, likes, and encouragement. It means a lot to me.

Blessings on 2014 for all of us!

Michael