Shame is a powerful thing that we don’t talk about a whole lot in the church. While it’s really important to be able to acknowledge and confess our sins, allowing God to deal with our shortcomings, it’s not unusual for healthy conviction to metastasize into this debilitating shame that keeps us cowering in the corner, trying to do penance for sins long forgiven…

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Transcript:

(Scripture Reading: John 21:1-17)

So, Luke told me that you’ve been talking about responses to the resurrection. And what a great topic that is!

I think that many times, we evangelicals get stuck at the cross. We talk a lot about how Jesus died for our sins, but maybe not as much as we should about how he rose from the dead to give us new life.

And really, that’s the whole point, isn’t it?

Romans 5:10 reminds us that if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!

We’re Easter people! 

And we’re not supposed to stop at forgiveness, like the person who lingers by the door for fear of tracking mud into the house.

We’re supposed to step forward into this new, abundant life Jesus has provided for us, and make our dwelling there.

But you know, I don’t think we’re the first people who have been tempted to stall out at the cross.

I think Peter struggled with that as well, until Jesus met him at the lakeshore, and showed him the way forward.

So that’s what we’re going to be talking about today: How Jesus called Peter out of self-focused shame, and into self-sacrificial service.

Shame is a powerful thing that we don’t talk about a whole lot in the church.

While it’s really important to be able to acknowledge and confess our sins, allowing God to deal with our shortcomings, it’s not unusual for healthy conviction to metastasize into this debilitating shame that keeps us cowering in the corner, trying to do penance for sins long forgiven.

In fact, do you know that shame is the first negative emotion mentioned in the Bible?

When Adam and Eve bit into the apple, and their eyes were opened to their own glaring insufficiencies, they were ashamed.

And what did they do? They hid.

They sewed clothes out of fig leaves, creating barriers between themselves and others, and when God came walking in the garden, they took to the bushes instead of reaching out to him for healing and wholeness.

Shame is the antithesis of intimacy and relationship. It cripples our walk with Christ, keeping us focused on our own failures instead of Christ’s victory.

And I think this is where Peter was at in John 21. Peter was smarting with shame over his denial of Jesus before the crucifixion.

Now, something people don’t mention a lot when they’re talking about this passage is that Peter has already seen Jesus at this point.

It’s not like Peter just thought “Oh well, Jesus is dead, guess I’ll go back to fishing.”

No, this is a man who had already seen the RESURRECTED Christ two times!

And the first time, Jesus had breathed on him and told him to receive the Holy Spirit.

And yet, he STILL goes back to his fishing boat in Galilee!

And not for fun, either.

You can almost hear the bitter resignation in his voice when he says: “I’m going fishing.”

Peter had failed, and from his perspective, whatever great ministry God had planned for him went down the tubes when he denied Jesus.

He just couldn’t see his way forward, so he retreated to Galilee to lick his wounds.

Have you ever been there?

Even for those of us who have walked with Jesus for a long time, who have borne witness to the power of his resurrection and received the Holy Spirit, it can be so easy to get discouraged, can’t it?

Something knocks us off the course we had envisioned for ourself—a divorce, or a lay-off, or an illness—and suddenly the voice of the accuser starts sounding a lot louder than the voice of God.

Suddenly our inadequacies loom a lot larger than Christ’s sufficiency.

And we decide, forget this.

Maybe at one time, I thought God could do something really, really incredible in and through my life, but who was I fooling?

That’s completely out of my league.

I’m glad Jesus conquered sin and death and all, but I’m a washed up mess, and I’m going fishing.

So, Peter puts his post-jesus plan into action.

He goes back home to Galilee, rigs up his boat, and goes back to being a fisherman. At least he won’t starve, right?

Six other disciples join him, since they didn’t have anything better to do anyway.

But there’s one problem.

They don’t catch any fish.

Now if I’m Peter, I’m starting to get pretty frustrated at this point.

I’m beginning to think this is some sort of divine retribution.

And it’s not only impacting me; it’s impacting my family and friends.

You know, Peter’s dad was sometimes called Jonah, which is a pretty ironic name to give a fisherman.

And here is this son of Jonah, in a boat surrounded by a bunch of men who looked to him for leadership, knowing that once again, he let them down.

Once again, this disaster was his fault.

At this point, he’s probably wishing there were whales in the Sea of Galilee, and that one would show up and swallow him whole.

But instead, as the sun comes up, he sees a man standing on the beach.

The boat isn’t far from the shore, so the guy calls out and asks how the fishing is going.

And of course, they’ve got to tell him they’ve got nada. Nothing. The night was a complete failure.

Then the guy yells “throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.”

And I’ll bet that everyone on that boat just freezes for a minute.

Because they have heard this before.

Let’s turn to Luke 5, verses 1-11 for a minute, when Jesus calls the first disciples.

Now, if you kind of patch the different gospel accounts together, you realize that this isn’t Peter’s first encounter with Jesus.

They had met before, which may explain why Jesus was taking such liberties with his boat.

But this was a definite turning point in their relationship.

One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret—that’s the Sea of Galilee—the people were crowding around him and listening to the word of God.

He saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets.

He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat.

When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”

Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.”

When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.

When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”

For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon’s partners.

Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.” So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.

So there’s a lot of history there, right?

And here they are again, after a miserable night of not catching anything, and a strange man telling them to let down their nets on the RIGHT side of the boat.

So they do it. And the nets are loaded with fish.

And when John yells “it’s the Lord!,” something inside Peter just breaks.

He pulls a tunic over his head, jumps overboard, and starts booking it toward Jesus, stumbling through the waves and the weeds, probably bawling his eyes out. I would be at least.

And when he gets there he finds breakfast waiting for them—bread, and fish cooking over a charcoal fire.

Now, there are only two occasions in the New Testament that talk specifically about a charcoal fire.

There’s this instance on the beach, and the fire in the high priest’s courtyard, where Peter was trying to keep warm when he denied Jesus.

I don’t think this is a coincidence.

I think that charcoal fire must have felt like a punch in the gut to Peter, a reminder of all the ways he had failed.

But when Jesus invites Peter to sit down and have breakfast with him, he doesn’t shrink back.

Instead, he approaches that fire, that reminder of so much shame and pain, sits down with Jesus in front of it, and allows him to serve him.

Peter’s not hiding in the bushes like Adam, trying to explain away his rebellion.

He’s stripped bare before God, like a raw, quivering nerve.

He’s facing all the ugliness and consequences of his own sin, and accepting God’s loving and gracious provision.

And you know, we’ve got to give Peter credit here, because this is not an easy thing to do.

Most of us struggle with this nasty thing called pride. We want to gloss over the less attractive parts of ourselves and make our own way in the world, be our own little gods.

“How are you?” “Oh, fine, fine. Doing well! Business is good, kids are great, I’ve got everything UNDER CONTROL.” As long as we don’t dig too deep, right?

But there comes a point when we realize that we can’t heal ourselves, and that these attitudes are holding us back from healing.

It’s like the first two steps of any twelve step program: We have to admit our powerlessness over the things that hold us in bondage, and believe that God can restore us. That God WANTS to restore us.

And then, once God has restored us, we can go out and help others find that restoration as well.

Amen?

Now, I want to wrap up by talking about fish.

John 21 is a pretty well-known story, and I’m guessing most of you are familiar with the “feed my sheep” part of it, right?

Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him, countering Peter’s three-fold denial in the high priest’s courtyard.

Each time, when Peter says yes, he does love Jesus, Jesus tells Peter to feed his sheep. To care for the people Jesus cares about, just as Jesus has cared for him.

Peter is admitting that his heart isn’t entirely where it should be—that he has phileo, or brotherly love for Jesus, instead of the perfect agape love Jesus is asking about.

But even so, Peter, with his imperfect, divided heart is being called out of self-focused shame, and into sacrificial service.

And God will eventually bring him to a place where he IS willing to lay down his life for Christ.

But I’m going to focus on the fish, not the sheep.

Now, it’s still a couple weeks until Pentecost, but I think we see some foreshadowing of it in this story, which is the epilogue of John’s gospel.

It’s very interesting to me that while Jesus had already prepared a breakfast for the disciples, he invites them to bring some of the fish they had just caught by acting in obedience to him.

Jesus had provided everything! But he still let them participate.

So Peter goes to get the fish, and there are 153 of them in the nets.

Now people tend to get all excited when they see numbers in the Bible, and sometimes, it can distract us from the more important things.

But in this case, I’ll venture a guess as to why the author specified that number.

It has been suggested that there were 153 known species of fish at that time. And these hapless fishermen, who couldn’t catch anything by themselves, were about to spread the gospel to the entire known world, to every tongue, and tribe, and nation.

Jesus is recommissioning them, reminding them that they’re supposed to be fishing for people, not perch.

I also think it’s interesting that while the nets were filled to the point of breaking when Jesus first called and commissioned the disciples, John tells us that this time, even though the nets were overflowing with fish, they did not break under the strain.

They were doing the same thing they were doing before, but these were post-resurrection nets.

These were Pentecost nets.

The Holy Spirit had upgraded the whole system, making it possible for them to do things that would have been impossible for them before.

Friends, Peter and the other disciples were so far from perfect.

They had divided hearts and minds, they didn’t love Jesus as much as they should have, and they made many, many mistakes.

But instead of wallowing in their failures and inadequacies, they brought those ugly truths to Jesus.

They sat around the fire with him, allowing him to nourish them with his provision and presence.

And they committed to follow Jesus wherever he led them—even if it meant following him to their deaths.

And God used these ordinary, messed up people to turn the world upside down.

And he wants to do that in us, too.

So, where are you at with this?

Are you still hiding out in Galilee, licking your wounds and settling for a life of spiritual defeat?

Or are you ready to sit down at the fire with Jesus, allowing him to deal with your fear and shame?

Will you let Jesus feed you with his love and grace, so you can go out and offer the same spiritual food to others?

Jesus wants to restore us, and recommission us to carry the good news of his resurrection to a world that is starving for it.

It’s time to stop focusing on our own failures and inadequacy, and start focusing on his sufficiency.

We’re Easter people, after all, and out of death, comes life.