Thursday Evening Message
READING: John 21:1-19
Introduction
When officer candidates are being trained within the British Army, they are subject to regular Officer Fitness Reports or s206s. Consider the following that apparently have been taken from some of those reports over the years:
· When I first encountered this Officer, he was something of a granny; since then he has aged considerably.
· Since my last fitness report this officer has reached rock bottom, and has started to dig.
· This officer can be likened to a lighthouse in the desert.. definitely bright but of almost no practical use to those around him.
· When this officer opens her mouth, it seems only to change whichever foot was previously in there.
· This officer sets very low person standards and then consistently fails to live up to them.
· This Officer would be out of depth in a car park puddle.
· This officer works well when under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a trap.
And my personal favourite:
· This man’s presence here is depriving a village somewhere of its idiot!
I have the equivalent of an Officer Fitness Report in my past and I’m afraid it was not very positive either.
I told you on Sunday evening that I once caused a bit of a problem at Belfast International airport and I thought you might like to hear a little bit more about that.
Growing up I had always loved the idea of flying. The thought of escaping what, for me, was a pretty miserable life on the surface of the earth and instead soaring on the currents and air streams above it was just enthralling. Most of my presents in my youth were things like kites, airplane models, books about birds and balsa wood toy gliders. For many years I was a proud member of the young ornithologist club. (I’m sure our translators are grateful to me for just using that word!) So, when I was just about to turn 18, even though it was rather surprising given my cultural background, I decided to apply for and was delighted to receive a flying scholarship with the Royal Air Force. And my initial training was to be at Belfast International Airport.
This particular day I was flying solo, and beginning to practice what are known as cross wind take offs and landings. When flying you always take off and land into the wind. That’s why most airports have runways running perpendicular to each other so you can always do that. BUT part of my RAF training was learning how to cope with the wind blowing in the wrong direction so whilst the commercial flights were using the first runway, I was doing rectangular circuits on the second. Basically, I was taking off, flying a circuit around the airport, landing again and then immediately taking off again. This is called touch and go.
Obviously, with planes using the first runway, as well, when I was approaching at the same time, it would not have been safe for the two of us to continue since we might meet in the middle if the other plane had to overshoot. So when this happened I was instructed to hold at the edge of my runway and do a small circle pattern until the other runway cleared.
Anyway, on this particular occasion, I was asked to hold again because a jet was coming in and thus I began my circle.
Unlike other times, however, my circling lasted a very long time. Air Traffic control communication is very formal and correct. It was hammered into me from the very start that I was always to do exactly what the tower told me and not to contact them unless I had very good reason for doing so. When I didn’t hear from the tower after the jet landed I just kept circling. As the time passed, more Jets landed and then jets took off. Jets landed and jets took off. HOWEVER because I was in a little propeller driven, two seater Piper Warrior aircraft, if where I was on my circle was anywhere near the main runway when a jet took off, the turbulance from its massive engine would shake my little plane like it was a toy. I kept it going for about 45 mins thinking about life, and what was for dinner, but eventually, I lost my nerve and I started to feel pretty uncomfortable with all the shaking that was going on. SO, I decided to break protocol and ask the tower if they couldn’t just let me land again and get the heck out of the way.
Well, I pressed the mic button and started my sentence with , “Tower, this is Golf Bravo Golf Kilo Sierra”, which was my plane’s call sign, but I never got any further than that. Right back at me came an immediate and far from polite torrent that began, ‘What the h*** do you think you’ve been playing at?” and continued with several other phrases that I am completely sure would have made baby Jesus cry!
I can tell you I was both shocked and highly indignant. What was he shouting at me for? After all, it was HIM who had told me to hold, it had been HIM who made me wait around all this time and it had been ME getting the living daylights shaken out of me when those jets took off.
Expressing my indignation, I had just started to defend myself when he cut across and spoke the two words that significantly changed the course of my adult life. He said, ‘LOOK DOWN!
”LOOK DOWN”, I thought???
So I leaned over and looked down. Right below me on the aprons of the airport was a veritable sea of flashing red and blue lights! And obviously more were coming in from a number of other directions. It was actually very pretty!
Unknown to me, the tower had been trying to get hold of me for about 43 of the preceding 45 minutes. AND, as far as they had been concerned, I had been deliberately refusing to respond!
Because of this, three things had happened in the meantime: firstly, every plane taking off had initially been forced to take an emergency banked left turn to avoid the student pilot who was refusing to communicate with the tower; secondly, since I had not responded for more than 15 mins, they had been forced to trigger a category one emergency requiring all the fire and police services on site and within a 10 mile radius to be summoned. This was in case I accidentally, or deliberately, collided with another plane; And thirdly, a few moments before I had contacted the tower, all flights had been stopped, and another small craft had been fuelled and was on its way up to me to try to manually signal me to get myself back on the ground. (I’ve always wondered what exactly they expected that other plane to do? Wave? Wind the window down for a chat?)
After a few large gulps on my part, explaining that I had never heard anything from the tower that whole time, and suggesting that my radio must have malfunctioned, the air traffic controller called the other plane off and told me to come in to land. As I was coming in , I remembered my protocol, pushed the button and tentatively said, “Tower, this is GBGKS. Requesting permission to touch and stay.” To which he promptly replied “Bloody good idea!”
By the time I arrived back at base the police aircraft investigation unit was waiting for me. I was taken into a room, interviewed and then left there by myself for another 45 minutes. I was tempted to move around the room in small circles but resisted the temptation! Long story short, the engineers went out to the plane, examined my radio, and concluded was that there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. As far as they were concerned, the most likely reason for my failure to respond was that I, as students had apparently done in the past, had deliberately tuned the radio onto one of the local music stations – not realising the consequences. While I had in fact been shaking, they had me grooving the afternoon away!
I have to tell you, the content of my RAF report after that incident was rather disappointing.
——————-
Failure comes to all of us. And whilst we can sometimes laugh about it afterwards, (or in this case YOU can laugh at me about it afterwards!) all true failure is never anything but a deeply bitter pill to swallow. I had wanted to be a pilot for most of my life. I’d dreamed of it, planned for it, told everybody about it and the truth was, I just wasn’t good enough. I didn’t notice any of the signs that I should have that day that something was very wrong.
They say if you are going to fail, fail big! I think my personal light show at Belfast International Airport was a reasonable attempt.
Galilee – and the fellowship of failure
Tomorrow, we will be going to the shore of lake Galilee, and the place where one of Scripture’s greatest failures also had life changing words spoken to him. So this evening, I’d love us to consider this scene we find in John chapter 21 and the wonderful encouragement it offers.
Peter, the star of this particular show, has failed just about as badly as any follower of Jesus could fail. After all he had been taught and experienced, after all his bold statements about Jesus and his devotion to him, when Jesus needed him most, he had completely messed it up. Not only had he slept through Gethsemane, not only had he cut the ear off one of the servants of the high priest, he had turned his back on Jesus completely, denied 3 times that he even knew Jesus, and had left Him to face his brutal torture and death alone.
As failures go, Peter’s efforts on the night of Jesus’ betrayal were pretty impressive!
Sometimes our failures are too.
So what do we do? What do we do in those moments when we find ourselves defeated or ashamed or just deeply discouraged? What do we do when we discover ourselves amidst the unwanted fellowship of failure?
Well, notice with me, in John 21, how Jesus restores this failure of a disciple we know as Peter.
1. Remembering whose presence we are in.
v4-5
Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realise that it was Jesus. He called out to them, ‘Friends, haven’t you any fish?’….
‘No,’ they answered.
It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it, what thoughts and emotions must have been coursing through those disciples’ heads that day. How could they make sense of it all? First, the excitement of coming to Jerusalem and the anticipation that all they hoped and longed for was about to be fulfilled. Then, suddenly, their hopes and dreams were brutally crushed before their very eyes. Judas, their own brother, had betrayed Jesus and, then, they themselves had utterly failed him too. Before they’d even begun to process, Jesus had been arrested, beaten, and crucified. Their beloved Rabbi, and the one they truly thought was the Messiah, was dead!
THEN, three days later, the news comes that Jesus’ body is missing, that’s he alive! And now, again, before they can hardly absorb this either, they are back in Galilee and waiting for him. What must their conversation have been like?
And, as they’ve waited, Peter and the 6 other Apostles have returned to their former profession as fishermen. BUT even this hadn’t gone right! The night before Jesus met with them, they had caught absolutely nothing. I wonder if they were they thinking that morning as they returned home – “we can’t even do this right any more?”
BUT THEN JESUS COMES.
6 ‘Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some,’ he said.”
Although it seems that they didn’t yet recognise Jesus, these words would surely have reminded the disciples of an incident earlier in their journey with him. Almost 3 years before (see Luke 5), Jesus had asked them to do a similar thing when he first called them to be fishers of men. Perhaps this is why they obeyed. It almost certainly would have seemed the wrong time and the wrong place but for whatever reason, they were willing to throw their nets out once more.
Sometimes we need such willingness as well.
And what a catch God allowed them to have!
V6 “When they [threw their nets out], they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.”
It’s possible that the 153 fish mentioned in John 21 represents all the species of fish believed to exist at the time of the Roman Empire, and that would be a great picture of the ministry God was about to give them. But even if that is not the case, for this tough, experienced, band of Galilean fishermen, to know where good fish would be at any time, to know where they would be in the morning when no-one usually fished, and for there to be so many at one go was truly some kind of special!
And Jesus’ intervention had its desired impact. As the disciples gape at their nets, they suddenly know who this stranger is. In V7 John says to Peter, ‘It is the Lord!’ and with that Peter is out of the boat and running.
Both by reminding them of that incident back in Luke 5, and in the sheer miracle of what now lies in their nets, notice that the first thing Jesus does in restoring the disciples, is to remind them of the one whose presence they are in.
When we have failed, we need to remember this, too.
Unlike my experience at the airport, when we are in real trouble, our greatest need is not to look down. It is to look up! It is to look up and see again the wonder, the power, the majesty of the one who has called us!
Psalm 121
I lift up my eyes to the mountains –
where does my help come from?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
3 He will not let your foot slip –
he who watches over you will not slumber;
4 indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The Lord watches over you –
the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
6 the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7 The Lord will keep you from all harm –
he will watch over your life;
8 the Lord will watch over your coming and going
both now and for evermore.
One of the leadership sayings I have unfortunately found to be true is that “success has many Fathers and failure is an orphan.” We seldom feel so alone as we do in failure – BUT, you see, it is only ever a feeling! In our failures, no matter how great, we are never alone. It’s just that our sight of the one whose presence we are always in has gone blurry for a while.
Remember, in 2 Kings 6, when Elisha suddenly found himself surrounded by the enemy forces of Aram? Basically, the King of Aram has rebelled and he has been trying to carry out ambushes against Israel’s troops. But Elisha the prophet keeps warning the Israelites about where the ambushes are. So everytime he sets up an attack his plans are frustrated. Eventually the king of Aram gets decidedly fed up with all this and decides that he is going to go after Elisha instead. A really bad move! So, one morning, when Elisha’s servant looks out the window, he is terrified to see that they are completely surrounded by the horses and chariots of Aram!
“Oh no, my lord!”,the servant cries out in 2 Kings 6:15. “What shall we do?” Words we all know! And then Elisha responds in those other wonderful words God has preserved in his Word for us to read. Verse 16 ‘Don’t be afraid,’ the prophet answered. ‘Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.’
And then in v7: And Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, LORD, so that he may see.” Then the LORD opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.”
You are never alone in your ministry, and you are never alone in your failure. The one who created the heavens and the earth is always with you, the one who never sleeps is always watching over you. Those with you, are always more than those who are against.
In our fear, shame or failure – we need to remember whose presence we are always in.
2. Remembering that our God is for us!
In verse 9 of chp 21 we read: “When they landed, the disciples saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread.”
In Middle-Eastern culture, there is no clearer invitation to friendship and intimacy than the sharing of a meal. In the day of Jesus, and in our day, table fellowship is a very significant thing. When these surprised disciples arrive on shore, they discover that Jesus has not come to rebuke or condemn them, but to bless them. He has prepared for them a wonderful fire and a much-appreciated breakfast. They had caught nothing all night but Jesus had put fish on the fire even before he had put fish in their nets.
Jesus has been preparing for them – and in particular he has been preparing for Peter.
It has actually been a full heaven strategy. In Mark 16:6-7, as early as Easter Sunday morning, the angel says to the women: “Don’t be alarmed, you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, “He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”’
Even after our worst failures, we need to remember, not only our Heavenly Father’s power, but also his love! As the saying goes, God never gets disillusioned with us because he never has any delusions! He knows exactly what we are like. And even when we have royally messed up, his grace, even more royally, flows towards us. It is his kindness that enables us to return home. We don’t come back to God because we realise we are failures – we come back because remember we are loved.
We don’t return because we recognise that we are miserable sinners, we return because we remember that we are beloved children.
And Satan will do everything he can to make us question that. As Rev 12:10 tells us, Satan is the “accuser of the brothers and sisters.” Remember how Satan began each of Jesus’ temptations in Matt 4? In v 3 and 6 “If you are the Son of God…” Knowing that we are sons and daughters is one of the most crucial things in our Christian lives. cf Luke 15:17. – Prodigal Son – we are not hired servants in the household of God. We are his treasured children.
Amidst our failure, we need to remember that the God of the universe is for us.
3. The third thing we do in failure is to face our part.
This expression John uses here in v9, that is translated in our English versions as ‘a fire of burning coals’, is how, in Greek, you describe a fire that is made with charcoal as opposed to one where simple, ordinary pieces of wood are used – not unlike our barbeque charcoals of today. It would be easy to slip by this expression without even noticing it, BUT it is important. This greek word is used on only one other occasion throughout the whole of John’s Gospel. Can you guess where? It is in John chp 18:18 where Peter, the servants of the High-Priest and some Jewish officials were standing around another fire in the courtyard of the High-Priest Caiaphas. It was the fire they were warming themselves at when Jesus was dragged before Annas the father-in-law of Caiaphas. It was the fire at which Peter denied Jesus three times. The very same word that we find in John 21:9 is that that was used in John 18:18.
As Jesus finishes his breakfast with the disciples and moves to his conversation with Peter, what he has actually done here is to recreate the setting of Peter’s previous failure.
At one such fire, Peter had denied his Lord, now, at another he would be given an opportunity to undo that denial.
Jesus intention becomes even clearer as he asks these three times if Peter loves him – directly echoing his three questions in John 18.
“When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’.” John 21:15
“Do you love me?” v16
“Do you love me?” v 17.
John wants us to know that Jesus is very deliberately walking Peter through a reversal of what took place in Caiaphas’s courtyard. And Peter knows exactly what is going on. It is a very painful liturgy for him (v17). But Jesus knows exactly what he is doing and, as we see later, this undoing of his denial, this threefold affirmation of his love, became one of the defining moments in Peter’s life.
Jesus could so easily have been finished with Peter. He could have condemned him for his failure and written him off as a waste of time. It was not the first time Peter had messed up. With our complete understanding, Jesus could have cut Peter from his circle and declared him unworthy of any further part in his plans for the kingdom. But he did not. – And he did not because he does not.
So many of us have grown up in environments where second chances are not offered. Some of us may feel that we were never even given a first one. And this makes the grace we are offered in the gospel so hard to grasp. Yet, here, as we see him with Peter, we see so wonderfully how Jesus is with us.
“Do you love me more than these?’.” John 21:15
“Do you love me?” v16
“Do you love me?” v 17
Three times he had denyed him. And now three times he is asked to affirm his love. I think without this reenactment, that scene at in the courtyard of Caiaphas would have come to Peter for the rest of his life as a constant accusation. But from this moment on, every time he thought of that fire, he would also remember the fire on the shore of Lake Galilee where Jesus gave him another chance.
Not all failure is of our doing – but often we have had at least a part.
That day in the plane, I could so easily have blamed the air traffic controller. I could so easily have blamed the failure of technology. But, as I reflected on it, I should have realised what was happening around me. I should have noticed the planes taking off were turning the wrong way. I should have known I needed to check in with the tower long before I did. My failure was, at least in part, my own doing.
Revisiting our part in our failures and taking responsibility for it is never easy. We read of Peter in v17 that he “was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time.” But as Prov 27:6 puts it – “wounds from a friend can be trusted.”
God only ever leads us back to our failures in order to restore us from them. When we acknowledge that we were wrong yesterday, we are simply stating that we are wiser today.
4. The Final step Jesus takes with Peter is to restore him to the calling he has received.
Peter, do you love me?
If you do, feed my lambs v15
If you love me, take care of my sheep, v16
If you love me, feed my sheep, v 17.
Chapter 21 begins with Peter going back to his vocation as a fisherman. But, now, Jesus makes it clear to him, that his calling is actually to be a shepherd. And it is so interesting that, later in his life, when writing to leaders in Asia Minor, and Peter is looking for a metaphor to use, he doesn’t use one from his youth. He doesn’t call the leaders, there, to be fishers of men (though of course that is true) but rather he calls them to be shepherds of God’s flock. (I Peter 5:1-2)
Peter never forgot his conversation by Galilee.
All calling comes with a price. In verses 18-19 of John 21 Jesus reveals to Peter that this will be very much true for nhim. Tradition says that he was eventually crucified upside down. But, for Peter, and for us, whatever the cost, God’s call on our lives is worth it.
In John 10:11-13 Jesus says ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.”
Sometimes we all want to run. Even without persecution, we all know setbacks, frustrations, discouragement. We want to give up because our enemy’s attacks have hurt us. We want to give up because our own failures have hurt us. Sometimes we want to give up simply because sheep can really stink!
And in these moments we need to remind ourselves that we are not mere hired hands. We are children of God – called by him to be shepherds, and pastors and teachers and carers of His flock.
So tomorrow, as we visit Galilee, imagine that you have just had breakfast with Jesus and now he has quietly led you away from the others to chat just with you. What is it you need to raise with him? What is it that you need to face, to admit, to begin to undo? What is it you need to confess and receive his forgiveness for? He is the safest person you will ever entrust yourself to, so don’t miss the opportunity. Perhaps Jesus has prepared this trip just for you, and tomorrow will be your new beginning as well.
AMEN
