Jesus and Eating Big Fish in John 21

Jesus had a lot more in common with the civil rights leaders like John Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr. than your typical pastor. This makes people uncomfortable, because they think there is no politics in the Bible. But they usually say this because they don't like what it says about it. Freeing poor people is what the gospel is all about. We really see this in the symbols of John 21. In this episode, I show how catching fish and eating them is an act of resistance. It's a much more meaningful and fun story than most people realize. If the gospel doesn’t make you an activist, then you aren't reading it. 

Later, Jesus himself appeared again to his disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. This is how it happened: 2 Simon Peter, Thomas, Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, Zebedee’s sons, and two other disciples were together. 3 Simon Peter told them, “I’m going fishing.”

They said, “We’ll go with you.” They set out in a boat, but throughout the night they caught nothing. 4 Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples didn’t realize it was Jesus.

5 Jesus called to them, “Children, have you caught anything to eat?”

They answered him, “No.”

6 He said, “Cast your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.”

So they did, and there were so many fish that they couldn’t haul in the net. 7 Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It’s the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard it was the Lord, he wrapped his coat around himself (for he was naked) and jumped into the water. 8 The other disciples followed in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they weren’t far from shore, only about one hundred yards.

9 When they landed, they saw a fire there, with fish on it, and some bread. 10 Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you’ve just caught.” 11 Simon Peter got up and pulled the net to shore. It was full of large fish, one hundred fifty-three of them. Yet the net hadn’t torn, even with so many fish. 12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples could bring themselves to ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. 13 Jesus came, took the bread, and gave it to them. He did the same with the fish. 14 This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Welcome to the Real Bible Rub teen cast. Today I'm going to talk about fish and resistance and political things like civil rights and so forth. Maybe something that you've heard about in school, and you might think, well, what does that have to do with Jesus in the Bible? Well, quite a lot, actually. So one of the best stories to talk about this is Jesus after he was resurrected, meeting with the disciples in John 21 by the lake shore and telling them to go fish and uh catch big fish and then roast it and eat it. And it's just the coolest story. In this way, if you understand this story in the way that it was probably written and certainly that they understood, you'll see that Jesus has more in common with civil rights leaders, you know, the people who resisted the government so that um black people could have equality and vote in the South, then uh you might realize. And uh it's super important. So uh I I want to talk about that because I think it's really important right now because there are many things going on that um are trying to undo and get rid of some of those protections that people uh have were put in place so that um black people could vote and have equality in America. So uh let's talk about that. But first of all, let's talk about this uh story. This is John 21. Jesus had already been uh risen. And um it says later Jesus himself appeared to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. This is the Sea of Galilee. And uh some of the disciples said, Well, uh I'm gonna go fishing. And he said, uh Jesus said, I'll go with you. And they went out in the boat, and all night long they couldn't catch anything. And then early in the morning, when uh Jesus uh stood on the shore, uh the disciples didn't know it was Jesus, but he called out to them, he said, Have you caught anything? And they said, No. You can imagine how frustrated they were after a long night of fishing. And then Jesus said to them, Cast your net out on the right side of the boat, and you'll find some. And so they they cast their net out on the other side of the boat, and they had so many fish that they could barely haul it in. So imagine this that you're all you're fishing all night long, you don't catch a thing. Jesus yells out to you, just put your uh net back in on the other side, and then you um catch a whole bunch of fish. In fact, it even the story even tells us uh uh how many um fish they caught. They caught 153 fish. I always find that funny that you know we get this one little detail about how how many fish they did, and it was full of large fish. And um, and then it said, um, then Jesus, when they came back in, took the bread, gave it to them, and he did the same with the fish. He blessed the fish, and they um they roasted it over a charcoal fire, uh, so that they were eating fish together. And then there's this famous thing about where Jesus is talking to Peter and say, go out and and take care of my people, do your, you know, do this and do that. Well, you know, it just sounds like a a straightforward story, and it is, but there's something behind this story that you really need to know. Is that is this story was all about those fishermen not being able to make a living. And a lot of a lot of uh Jesus' ministry was just about that, about being able to make a living. And they did that uh because they uh didn't have any way of fishing in the in the Sea of Galilee there without um having the Romans, you know, who were leading them, who were oppressing them and um getting in on it. And it it turns out that the Romans at this time, and there's some famous rules about this, at this time when Jesus was uh with the disciples, the Romans were changing the rules and making it so that the disciples had to pay a lot of tax on the fish. So whenever they caught the fish and tried to sell the fish, they couldn't uh it they couldn't make any money because uh the leadership was taking taxes from them. And we see this, and if you've ever um watched um The Chosen, which is a TV show that has uh stories about Jesus in it, they actually really do a really good job of in that show of showing how the fishermen how difficult it was for them to make a living by fishing. And it wasn't just that they were running out of fish or that it was hard to catch them, it was more about the fact that the Romans were taxing them so much and forcing them to sell their fish only in a certain way. They also, there might be some stories here about that the fish, um the why they were having so much trouble catching them, is maybe because they were poor, they had to overfish the lake. Now, the lake of um uh the Sea of Galilee, which is a big lake in Israel, is about 13 miles long and about five miles wide. So it's a big lake, right? But and it had a lot of fish in it, and it still does. Uh there's uh people who still fish in it. Um, it's a big lake, but it's not so big that you can just keep fishing and fishing. You have to be careful about the resource, about how many fish are there. So um because of the way this was, and because of those fishermen not being able to make a living, they probably were overfishing it too, because the way the Romans were oppressing them. So this is all that background that you don't really have in the um Bible because the people who were reading this, the people who were reading the Gospel of John already knew what the Romans and the leaders were doing to these people. They already knew that um that the people were being oppressed and uh so forth. So I talk about this a little bit like um a lot like civil rights today, something you've probably learned about in school, but you gotta keep learning because a lot of people are not telling it the whole story and the truth about that, because um the reason why we have to protect the the um people and like things like whether people can vote, whether they uh have equal rights and things like that, and why uh leaders like John Lewis, you may have heard about, or Martin Luther King Jr., of course, you've heard about those men were really working hard to push back and get laws so that we so that they could be free. And it was so hard for them. Um, and so you go, well, this is the connection. This is the connection between how what the Bible says and what Jesus says, and something that we're very familiar with. Nobody today, um, you know, who uh really knows what they're talking about today can say that black people are equal or were certainly were equal uh back um in the time of Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis. Some people, even today, it's really hard to be a black person and getting to vote in the South, for example, or in other places. Because there's all these forces, like the, you know, just like it was for these poor fishermen, all these forces in our in our society and government against them. So we have to be careful about that, right? So that that's why when you think of Jesus and you think of this story, it's an act of resistance. Jesus is pushing against and encouraging the the his followers to push against Rome, to push aga which is the big empire, but also the local leaders like Herod, Herod Antipos. We you hear about him in the Bible a lot. Um, they were the ones that were making these rules so that the fishermen could hardly make a living. And so, of course, this is where the gospel is not only about, you know, loving your neighbor and being um, you know, and about salvation and things like that, but it's very, very practical. And the gospel is about protecting poor people and standing up for poor people or people who the government and all the things in society are pushing down. That's why we do social justice. That's why churches who do a good job should be ones that um you know that have food banks and have um support and and you know and um rally people um and protest and things like that because that's what that's what Jesus is doing in this story. One thing I want to kind of draw your attention to that makes this so interesting is that they say the big fish, and also it says that Jesus grilled some of the fish, and the idea is that Jesus grilled some of the big fish. And you go, well, why is that important? Well, there's been a lot of research about what that means, and the big fish were the fish that um that that the Romans taxed the most and they wanna so you wanted to catch big fish because you could get more money for it, right? Because they're bigger and and more desirable, they weigh more, but then the Romans started saying, No, we're gonna tax you heavier on that. So to eat those fish by Jesus and the disciples eating those fish over that charcoal fire, they did that without paying the taxes. So you can see that's kind of an act of resistance. And um, and anybody who was reading uh John 21 or heard about the story at that time knew exactly what this was about. They go, Oh, wow, look at they're really sticking it to the uh to those authorities, right? So it was an act of defiance and liberation and protest. So it's built right into the story, it's built right into Jesus' ministry, that it's an act of protest. Now, Jesus never advocated for violence, he never um he resisted uh becoming a violent leader or leading in what they call an insurrection against the government. Many people wanted him to do it, and there's all these stories that where it kind of said they tempted Jesus to go do this, and he never did. But did Jesus resist? Yes, he did many times. You can see it in in the writings that he was resisting, but he resisted non-violently. He did it by doing things like uh uh protecting the fishermen, by um, you know, all the things that he said. That's why when I think of Jesus, I think of him as a resistance leader. I think him of him like a civil rights leader like John Lewis or Martin Luther King Jr. or others who was willing to put his personal safety on the line in order to help poor people and people who didn't have power. Wow. Uh that is so inspirational to me. And you do that in a and when you do that today, and when we do that today, we do it, we do it carefully, right? We do it in a way that works strategically, right? Uh we don't just go and not obey rules, right? But we say we're going to resist the things that hurt poor people, that hurt people. So that's that is so built into this story. And that's something that I really hope whenever you're reading in the Bible, you always have to think, who are they talking to? Who is reading this? Is it going to be the rich leaders that are reading this, the lawyers or the doctors or the politicians? No, it's going to be regular people, um, a lot of times poor people. Sometimes it's going to be poor fishermen that hear these stories and say, Oh, I'm so glad that I've got Jesus on my side. And um, you can do that too. So I think you have to do that when you think about today and how we do that today. So whenever you're thinking about fishing, and in fact, today, um, when you go to Israel, and I hope uh I think I said this in another podcast episode, I said, I really hope you get to go to see these places someday. Because if you do, you'll you'll you'll be so enriched. You go to Rome or you go to um Greece or you go to the Sea of Galilee, then you can see, you can get a feeling of what it's like to be a fisherman there. Um, or you could just watch it on YouTube or on TV, um, or you can watch The Chosen, which is a really great story, does a good job of describing this. So you can see, uh, this is the Jesus I love. It's not the Jesus that I hear about um on the news or from some big preacher, um, not so much. I mean, of course, sometimes big preachers say some good stuff about Jesus too, but the real Jesus is the one that stands on the lake shore with poor fishermen. That's what we're told about. So, with that, I'm so glad that you um decided to listen to the to me today and um and listen to this content. I'm really hoping that what you see is that the Bible is way more interesting, way more subversive and liberating than you probably ever thought. So, with that, I say thank you and God bless you.