Blogging Towards Sunday, April 27th
"Have you caught any fish?"

John 21:1-19
Luke 5:1-11

“What Would You Do If You Weren't Afraid?"
“Smell the cheese often so you know when it's getting old."

– Who Moved My Cheese

This 6th in the series of the 7 Next Words of Christ (after the Resurrection) is the scripture I'm using at our church this week. The passage is so human, about change, our fear of it, and our reluctance to embrace and live into transformed lives with new God-given purposes. Peter was called from being a fisherman to become a fisher of men (and women). He follows Jesus for 3 years, is transformed, grows, is stretched and changed...yet when Jesus is gone, seemingly for good because of the Crucifixion he goes back to his earlier, previous life. He just gives up on his dreams, abandons his hopes, settles for the status-used-to-be. It's in his fear-full return to his earlier life that the resurrected Jesus appears and explodes into his comfortable and familiar routine, challenging him to deeper waters of conversion, spiritual transformation, and existential purpose.


We're - at least I am - just like Peter. Something new happens. God pushes me, stretches me, trying to get me to grow in spiritual maturity, knowledge or experience. I want to move there. I'm overjoyed to move there. And then I quickly move back out of fear to my familiar, and/or comfortable place of life, action and thought. I settle for what I know instead of hoping, dreaming and seizing the gift that God is offering me.

How is it that after having seen the risen Jesus in Jerusalem and been commissioned as apostles that Peter and his friends would return to their earlier lives of fishing in Galilee?
After having seen Jesus twice, face to face, why would they fail to recognize him when he appears again in this passage?
Some might say it points to textual errors, or editing in this passage. Perhaps. I think it points to the deepest aspects of what it means to be human: fear of change, desire for comfort, a tendency to settle. Jesus calls us - as he calls Peter in these 2 passages - to follow him, not to a no-man's land, but to a better future out of settlement to an unexpected and long-dreamed-of banquet feast. Why is it that we prefer to settle?

If you haven't seen or read "Who Moved My Cheese?" you can check out a nice powerpoint show of it (HERE). It can be a helpful tool in talking about transformation and adaption to change.