The Resurrection appearance in John 21 is my favorite Gospel passage. In 2021, I had the icon tattooed on my right arm.
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Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?”
They answered him, “No.”
We have been fishing all night long, and we have no fish.
I expect everyone here has known this feeling of exhausted futility. Many of us feel defeated because of all that is going wrong in the world. We feel powerless to do anything about it. We have been fishing all night long, and we have no fish.
But we can feel like that for other reasons. Some of us are waiting for a diagnostic report about a health scare. Others of us have gotten the report back already, and the treatments have started — excruciating, enervating treatments. One of our members says it this way: when she recovers from chemo, she feels “puny.” Puny: small, little, diminished. We have been fishing all night long, and we have no fish.
Still others of us feel puny because we made a big mistake, or just did the wrong thing. Occasionally someone meets with me for confession and absolution (one person did this just last week), and the deep, wrenching feelings gush out. The pain pulses: Like Peter fishing through the night, ruminating on his denials, we feel sorry, but we also feel strung out. We have been fishing all night long, and we have no fish.
But these terrible, vulnerable places in our lives are the precise places where the risen Jesus appears to us. He is strange, mysterious, even unnerving. He knows our inner selves. But he draws near to us with compassion in difficult moments of our lives. He draws near to us with mercy and grace, with healing and challenge.
All of the resurrection stories confirm this. The Risen Stranger approaches his friends on the seashore precisely when they are lost in their gray, early-morning despair. The Risen Challenger approaches Paul when Paul is a violent persecutor, traveling to Damascus. The Risen One overwhelms, even traumatizes Paul, forcing him to be dependent on others — dependent on the very people he persecuted! They lead Paul by the hand into his new life. This dreadful encounter reveals Paul’s desperate vulnerability, his dreadful weaknesses, his many mistakes. The appearance of the Risen Challenger is painful, even devastating. But Paul is transformed. He rises to a new life.
The risen Jesus appears to many others who are lost, vulnerable, guilty, or grieving. He approaches Mary Magdalene — a faithful, savvy disciple to be sure, and the first to realize that she had seen the risen Lord — but he approaches Mary from her blind side: lost in her grief, she doesn’t recognize him at first because he is not at all what or who she expected him to be. And the risen Jesus appears to Cleopas and their evening companion as they walk the road to Emmaus. They are out of ideas and out of hope, exhausted by the massive disappointment and trauma of the crucifixion. That’s when the Risen One appears.
And so it is with us. The risen Jesus approaches us precisely when we throw up our hands in weary exasperation about all that is going wrong in the world. The risen Jesus approaches us precisely when we are terrified by our own mortality, coping with both physical and emotional pain — when we are feeling “puny.” The risen Jesus approaches us precisely when we are lamenting our failures, when we know that we messed up, when we don’t know how to make things right.
The Risen Stranger comes to us in our worst moments, and when he appears, he asks, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” Somehow, he knew. Somehow, he knows. He knows we have no fish, even though we’ve been fishing all night.
He knows we have been giving in to helplessness when there are so many things we can do to mend the world, if only in this little corner of that world. He knows we are frightened of our frailty and mortality. He knows what we did, and what we failed to do. It’s no use to hide the truth from him, from one another, from ourselves.
He knows.
So it works like this: where in your life are you weakest, most vulnerable, most afraid, most frustrated, most defeated? Go there. Focus there. Then, take a deep, cleansing breath. It is there, right there, in the terrible places of our lives, where the risen Jesus draws close to us. It is there, right there, where the risen Jesus confronts us.
And then the resurrection breaks into our dreadful contemplations, into our sleepless nights, into our desperate gray days. Jesus tells his friends to fling their nets in the other direction, and suddenly their boat is groaning under the weight of a wondrous catch of fish. Then he invites them to shore, for breakfast, and they are transformed into his apostles. In my reading, he pairs the hot breakfast with strong, steaming coffee. They awaken from their miserable ruminations. They shake their heads clear of despair. They rise to new life, abundant life, resurrected life.
This happens here, in this community of faith. Many, many of us are gathering and networking to build our skills as advocates for those who are under threat from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Many, many of us are gathering routinely to pray for those who are sick and organize our visits to them. Many, many of us are listening to our children and young people, hearing their worries, learning their insights, joining their cause.
But the resurrection is about much more than all that’s going well here at St. Paul’s. The resurrection is not just a metaphor or image for the hope we feel when our community is taking care of people and cultivating, however slowly, authentic hope for the future. The resurrection is about that, but it is about more than that.
We don’t just encounter the risen Christ in our flurry of ministry activities. We encounter the risen Christ here, at this Table, in our prayers of thanksgiving at this Table, in the breaking of bread at this Table, in the drinking of the cup at this Table. We just need to understand that idea, that truth, that Good News, more deeply.
One of our great contemporary Anglican writers can help us. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, says that we meet the risen Christ here at this Table when — and only when — we are what Williams calls “a community that actively seeks to live in reconciliation.”
When we are a community that actively seeks to live in reconciliation, this Eucharistic Table is our breakfast table by the seashore; this Eucharistic Table is our crisis point on the way to Damascus; this Eucharistic Table is our vision of Mary Magdalene’s Rabbouni in the graveyard garden; this Eucharistic Table is our evening encounter with the Risen Christ on Emmaus Road.
But the good archbishop says it better. Yes, the Eucharistic meal becomes for us an encounter with the risen Christ “when [we are] a community that actively seeks to live in reconciliation.” Yes. But this reconciliation is not merely a quick kiss-and-make-up session after a quarrel.
This reconciliation — the reconciliation we experience when we encounter the risen Christ, the reconciliation that reveals to us, here in this Eucharistic meal, not only resurrection but the Risen One himself — this reconciliation is nothing less than this: Quoting Rowan Williams, “...[T]he risen Jesus is present where [people] turn to their victims and receive back their lost hearts.”
“...[T]he risen Jesus is present where [people] turn to their victims and receive back their lost hearts.”
We have lost our hearts in this deathly world of human struggle. Now, we may know that we are vulnerable and fallible; we may know that all human beings are prone to error; but we may not necessarily think or feel that we have “lost our hearts,” or worse, that we have “victims” we need to turn toward to receive back our lost hearts. If I have a victim, then I am… well, then I am an offender. I am guilty of offenses. I am offensive. That’s a bitter pill to swallow, and it doesn’t easily make sense as part of a message of Easter Good News.
But let’s face it: we do have victims, each of us, and all of us. We have taken what does not belong to us, including this very land we stand on, and pray on. We enjoy privileges that most of the world can only dream of. You or I may be innocent of many things: I have not taken a life; I do not consciously steal; I habitually tell the truth. But we all have victims.
So we come to this Table to face our victims. We turn toward them with courage we can only receive from the risen Christ. And when we do this, then it is repaired; the wound is closed; the patient begins to recover; life resurrects.
There is nothing more valuable, dear friends in Christ, nothing more significant, nothing more desperately desired by our exhausted spirits, than this reconciliation, this restoration, this turning toward our victims, and this receiving back our lost hearts.
When we turn toward one another in painful reconciliation; when we turn toward the world with forthright honesty, bracing courage, and breathtaking vulnerability; when we acknowledge our terrible mortality and choose to live fully and courageously in this reconciled community… When we do all of these brave things, then, when the Risen Stranger asks us, “Children, do you have any fish?”, then we can reply, with astonishment and gladness,
“Yes.”
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Preached on the Third Sunday of Easter (Year C), May 4, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Acts 9:1-6
Psalm 30
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21:1-19
Work cited:
Rowan Williams, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd Ltd., 2014 edition), 101-102.