Surprise!

John 21:1-14
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
May 4, 2025

It happened, I’m told, in an Easter day Sunday School.  The teacher asked her third graders, “Do you know what Jesus said to the disciples when He first appeared to them after rising from the dead?”  Immediately, a little boy pipped up, “Surprise!”

Though the Bible doesn’t record Jesus’ saying that, the disciples were surprised to see Him alive once more.  Likely because they took His prior words about His resurrection as a poetic way of talking about life in the next world, they hadn’t expected to encounter Him again in this one.  They were at Easter profoundly surprised.

They also had no clue that Jesus would, from then on, keep surprising them by showing up in unexpected places and at unexpected times.  All they knew for sure was that He had met with them, sent them to fish for people as the Father had sent Him, and breathed on them that they might receive His Holy Spirit to be able to do the job.  They had a whole lot to sort out!

Often, when we don’t know what best to do, we go back to doing what we know best to do.  So Peter, that veteran fisher of fish, proposed to his fellow disciples that they try their luck in their old familiar fishing spot: the Sea of Tiberias (more often called the Sea of Galilee).  Thomas, John, James, Nathaniel and two unnamed disciples joined Peter on the trip.  They fished at night, because dusk and dawn are optimum times for catching fish and because, if a bright moon is shining, nighttime can be just as promising.  As was common back then, they fished, not with hooks, but with nets.

Fishing must have felt comfortably normal for the disciples at a time when everything else was feeling abnormal and extraordinary.  Little did they know Jesus was waiting for them in their very ordinary activity.

They fished for hours, but had nothing to show for it.  Then at dawn, a hundred yards away on the shore, a figure they couldn’t clearly see in the dim light before sunrise yelled out to them over the water, “You have no fish, have you?” and then told them to cast their net over to the right.  Aware that, because of a different angle of vision, someone on land might catch sight of a school of fish missed by those at sea, they gave His idea a try.

Surprise!  Suddenly their nets nearly burst with splashing, thrashing fish.  John took a second look at the man on the shore and cried out “It is the Lord!”  To make himself respectable, Peter hastily threw on some clothes and jumped overboard to swim to Jesus.

The other six stayed with the boat to draw in their catch of 153 fish.  Many have looked for secret meaning in that very precise number.  One commentator, for example, noting how once there were 153 species of fish there, suggests it represents how the net of Jesus’ abundant love draws in every kind of human being. It’s a beautiful and true thought; but the number given might only mean that someone was so struck by the size of the catch that they took the time to count each fish and record the exact total.

Whatever the significance of there being 153 fish, it was an abundance of fish; and this, the last sign of Jesus recorded in the Gospel of John, is like the first sign of Jesus recorded in it, when at a wedding Jesus performed another miracle of abundance by turning a huge amount of water into a huge amount of wine.  It looks like Jesus likes to give enough for everyone to have enough for themselves and enough to share with others!

When they all arrived on shore, Jesus had breakfast ready.  Though He invited them to add some fresh catch to the meal, the amount of food He had called forth from the sea was way more than what the disciples alone could consume – a reminder He gives His fishers of people plenty so that they have plenty to pass on in love.

At any rate, Jesus’ provision of food was so abundant that it was a hard, heavy load to draw up out of the boat and then on to the shore.  It’s worth noting that the verb John used to describe this drawing in of the fish is the same verb Jesus used when, after feeding 5,000 people with next to nothing on a nearby hill, He announced, “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me”; and the same verb He used when, on Palm Sunday a few days before His crucifixion, He announced, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself”.  Drawing people to Himself by the net of His captivating love is both what Jesus does and what those He’s made fishers of men and women do.  Surprise!  Jesus blesses His beloved, not just for their sake, but for the sake of others whom they would in turn bless in His name!

Here’s another surprise: This encounter with a risen Jesus happened, not in a sanctuary or on a mountain top, but on a pebbly shore with stinky fishermen still dripping water, fanning wood smoke from their eyes and salivating from the aroma of sizzling fish.  Yet it was such a vivid revelation of His radiant reality that none asked who it was “because they all knew it was the Lord.”

And here’s a still bigger surprise.  Jesus would be showing up for longer than a couple of weeks two thousand years ago in the Holy Land.  In fact, to this day, and in this not so holy land, He’s still around, reaching out and showing up as He did back then and there.

Jesus is keeping His promise that, wherever two or three are gathered in His name, there He is in the midst of them.  And He is present with special power when, with love, bread is broken and shared in His name – whether it be on a Galilean hillside with 5,000 others, along a Galilean seashore with seven others, at a stop on the road to Emmaus with two others, or around a Communion table with however many others are eating and drinking at it online and in person.

Surprise!  Whenever and wherever we, with love, share the One who is the Bread of Life, He shows up to make Himself known and to make His followers fishers of people, that still more might know His living reality!