fishermen and shepherds

a newly commissioned life…

We find in John 21 (one of the most moving and profound chapters in the whole Bible) a multilayered statement of the new commission already announced in 20:19-23. The disciples go fishing but catch nothing. Jesus then helps them to an enormous catch but proceeds to commission Peter to be a shepherd rather than a fisherman. There are many things going on simultaneously here, but at the center is the challenge to a new way of life, a new forgiveness, a new fruitfulness, a new following of Jesus, which will be wider and more dangerous than what has gone before. This is a million miles from the hymns that speak of Jesus’s resurrection in terms of our own assurance of a safe and happy rest in heaven. Quite the contrary. Jesus resurrection summons us to dangerous and difficult tasks on earth.

In this story, fishing seems to stand for what the disciples, like the rest of the world, were doing anyway whereas shepherding seems to stand for the new tasks within the new creation. To develop that as a metaphor, it seems to me that a good deal of the church’s work at the moment is concentrating on fishing, and helping others to fish, rather than on shepherding. Yes, there are tasks to be done in helping the present world to do better what is should be doing, Jesus will help us to do that. We are to be at work in partnership with the wider world. But if we only try to do alongside others what they are doing already, we will miss the really significant task.

As with Isaiah’s vision in the Temple, and many other scenes both biblical and modern, Peter’s change from fisherman to shepherd comes through his facing of his own sin and his receiving of forgiveness, as Jesus with his three-times-repeated question goes back to Peter’s triple denial and then offers him forgiveness precisely in the form of a transformed and newly commissioned life. Those who don’t want to face that searching question and answer may remain content to help the world with its fishing. Those who find the risen Jesus going to the roots of their rebellion, denial, and sin and offering them love and forgiveness may well also find themselves sent off to be shepherds instead.

Let those with ears listen.

N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope, p 240-41.