GOSPEL TEXT: The Risen Jesus Appears on the shore of the Sea of Galilee John 21:1-13 The Risen Jesus Questions: John 21:15-19\
The disciples going back to Galilee is like an experience of Starting All Over Again.
After gathering Thomas back into the company in the Upper Room, and seeing the Risen Jesus again, the apostles could now go back home to Galilee. Jesus had given them this instruction on Easter day, if you recall how those directions were given to Mary of Magdala to relay onto the apostles, that they’ll be going back to “Square One” with The Lord. So these Galileans go back to their home-headquarters of Capernaum, and right back to the place where Peter’s fishing boat was moored. It was Like Starting Over—but in a Resurrection, brand New Covenant now.
In 1980 John Lennon wrote a solo song called “Just Like Starting Over” and here are a few words of it: It starts out: “Our life together is so precious together. We have grown – we have grown… (then later it goes) let’s spread our wings and fly…It’ll be just like starting over.. starting over! Let’s take a trip…and be again like we used to in the early days.” I thought of this return-to-a-first-love song by Lennon that could fit a bit to the apostles’ new turn here. Even we hear Peter saying three times to Jesus: I love you.
We join in John chapter 21 in today’s gospel with Peter and some apostles out fishing ‘til dawn on the Galilee sea. It’s two weeks now since the Resurrection Event of Christ. The gospel gives us the point of view of the Risen Jesus sitting on the shore at the place where He first called Peter to come and follow Him, and like at the start way back—Peter is coming back empty-boated of fish. Jesus will fix that—again! Throw your net over to that side for a catch!” And the catch is amazing.
The Word shows the regathering of Jesus’ apostles on the fishing seashore off Capernaum on the Galilee Sea. He loves them for their fidelity to Him, and He wants to gather them back to where it all started. They are collected back to the beginning, but for a re-beginning. They have grown, as they have been formed by Jesus for many months past now, but presently He will launch them with nets for bringing souls into it—the nets of Christ into His kingdom—into this Church of ours still going today.
See the theme of empty nets going to full, overflowing nets in this Gospel. They caught nothing all night, having empty nets to show for it at dawn, which reminded Simon Peter of his time way back months ago and Jesus’ calling of him to follow. His empty nets then had miraculously become full, overflowing nets upon taking Jesus’ fishing guidance. Now, so ironically, it’s happening again. He and John saw a man on the shore giving hand waves and words for them to cast the nets to the right side of the boat, and they did so, since the man had some fish cooking on a beach fire, likely from his recent catch. As the empty nets began quickly became full nets of fish, Peter looked at his buddy John, and a recognition dawned on them. John said: ‘That man on the shore is Jesus!’ Peter agreed and dashed out in excitement and swam to shore.
Upon having a re-gathering soon afterwards on Capernaum’s beach, with an interesting catch of all the types of fish of the Galilee, it was surely like Starting All Over Again. Jesus repeated a phrase to Peter from the past: From now on you’ll be catching men—into the nets of My Kingdom. Jesus then has a lesson for our first pope—you won’t be doing it on your talents alone, but by grace and working as my instrument. Then Jesus holds a confession with Peter for him to be restored from his three denials. It’s true for us today, that in trying to help people come to Jesus, trust Him, and receive Him in their souls–we have to be presenting our own souls to God to be cleansed from sin and brought again and again into holiness of life—by what God gives out to us. Like then, Confession today is a good way to be Starting All Over Again. Our parish gives you three or four hours a week to use that Sacrament—so we provide that Square One time with Jesus. Going to Sunday Mass is also our weekly re-start with Jesus and life in worship and service in His Name. We have seven or eight weekend Masses prayed here for you.
Think of your own life and opportunities that God gives you to start all over again, but not go back to the past, yet rather to get to a square one experience where you can live anew today, building on your learned experiences, and some failures, with a new day in mind with Our Lord.
I will give three pretty dramatic Starting Over examples to ponder.
First, it is of a couple who re-met one another. In my days in the latter 80’s, I was a Catholic Singles chaplain to a movement of a few hundred persons, in the Catholic Alumni Club. I recall Hal and Sal dating one another pretty amorously back then, but their important new careers then sent them to be off far away from one another for all the years until 2015. But in a Starting Over episode, as they both re-located to the DC area again, with Sal coming into a parish with me as pastor (as her once- dating chaplain), and with her stories of seeing Hal again and dating him again. These two older singles rekindled a great friendship and love from before, and—you guessed it—they got married. Like Starting Over Again, but in an updated better part of their lives.
Second, a Silver Spring woman was once a Louisiana girl and young Protestant woman, with her non-Catholic dad having a good friend that was a priest. With all those visits of a priest to her house, back so long ago in her youth, it had left her a good impression of the Catholic Christian faith. Go forward a few decades and she was driving past a Catholic parish every day in her commute, until one day, she heard a ‘voice’ tell her to turn in and meet a priest and re-connect herself to the Catholic Faith, now as here in our area. I was sitting in the yard praying my Liturgy of the Hours book, even dressed in my cassock that day, and she came up and said: “Hi, God told me to turn in today and get to know the priest here. Are you the priest and are you free at the moment?” Cut to the end of the story, I became her private instructor in the Catholic faith, and she became a Catholic, but listen to the Starting Again connection that occurred at the Rite of Election in DC. In the church, she happened to see the same very priest from her Louisiana days that visited her home. He had now become a priest for Washington. It was much more than a coincidence, it was a major sign of a Starting All Over Again experience for her. She’s a Catholic now living in Nashville.
Thirdly, in not so much a religious story, but of a feel good Going Home Again story, I recall a basketball player from the University of Maryland. He had played and starred for the Terps. He went on to be a high school basketball coach, then a college coach at American University, Boston College and Ohio State. At OSU he was a strong winning coach with a great program. Yet there became an opening at Maryland for its head coaching position, but at a time his alma mater was reeling from with sanctions and penalties assessed the school for its pre-1989 mistakes. Gary took it on anyway and coached from 1989 to 2011 for an experience of bringing great basketball back to his alma mater. Gary Williams even won a NCAA National Championship for the school. It was a Starting Over at Maryland feel-good story that still has people so happy for Gary and Terp-dom!
In closing: The disciples went back to Capernaum to the place where it all started for them with Jesus. They’d now see the Risen Jesus numbers of times, be taught more by Him, see Him ascend on high, and then go forth in Pentecost power to change the world. From your baptism in Christ Jesus and into His Spirit, you have commission from that font, right now in Easter renewal, to go and make a difference in this world in His Name and Love. Go do so. Win some souls for Jesus, or go and strengthen some present believers in an age of so much secularism and doubt in the Real, Risen Jesus Who is Lord of the Church. Do it for Him.