Title: That Man is the Lord!
If you ask non-Christians whether they believe or know that Jesus rose from the dead, most would say, "Don't say nonsense." That's right. The resurrection of Jesus was a nonsensical event. So the disciples couldn't believe it either. The Gospel reports about the resurrection of Jesus do not mean that the disciples believed in the resurrection of Jesus, but merely that they experienced the phenomenon of resurrection. It is much later that the early Christian community came to believe in the resurrection of Jesus. Shortly after the resurrection, no one knew what it was. According to John 20:9, Peter and John saw the empty tomb, but “did not understand the scriptures that Jesus must die and rise again.”
After that, John 24-29 tells the story of Thomas. When the disciples, who were afraid of the Jews, were gathering in a house, the risen Lord appeared to them. Thomas, who was not present at the time, heard the story and said that he could not believe without seeing Jesus himself. Thomas, who had been following Jesus for three years, said he did not believe him when he heard what he said.
If any religious strategist had founded Christianity, he would have set aside the resurrection story. Because even without the resurrection, Jesus has many elements that we can learn and follow. The precious teachings of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5-7 are universally touched not only by Christians, but also by many people around the world. During his public life, Jesus healed many sick people and changed the lives of many people, including Zacchaeus. This alone deserves as much respect as Confucius or Shakyamuni.
Rather, the resurrection may become an obstacle for modern intellectuals to develop Christian faith. Nevertheless, the early Christians risked their fate on this very event. Today we are the same. It is not about believing in Jesus and getting healed or becoming a new moral person. Without the resurrection of Jesus, all Christian life is meaningless. This is like Bae Soo-jin for us Christians.
On the shores of Lake Tiberia
Wouldn't it be great if you could explain this resurrection, which is crucial to the Christian faith, in a way that everyone can understand? Unfortunately, the Gospels' explanation of this is also not very logical. No one has ever seen the resurrection of Jesus. In the early morning of the next day after the Sabbath, only the fact that the tomb where Jesus' body was buried was empty, and that the one who had apparently died and was buried in the tomb appeared again to the disciples is reported in fragments. It is difficult to say that we should believe in the resurrection of Jesus based on this evidence alone.
Even among those in the John community, there seemed to be some people who were worried about the resurrection of Jesus. So John adds 21 chapters to the Gospel already concluded with 20 chapters. If you read 20:30,31, which describes the purpose of writing the Gospel of John, you can see that the Gospel of John originally ended with chapter 20. John supplements chapter 21 purely to emphasize the issue of Jesus' resurrection. Some scholars see the author of Chapter 21 as someone else, but this issue is not very important.
In any case, there is a huge temporal and spatial difference between chapters 20 and 21, both of which deal with the resurrection of Jesus. I mean, it's a bit awkwardly connected. To be more specific, chapter 20 describes three resurrection scenes. 1) Mary Magdalene visited the tomb of Jesus early in the morning after the Sabbath and met the risen Lord. It is, of course, the family cemetery of Joseph of Arimathea near Golgotha outside the city of Jerusalem. 2) That evening, the risen Lord appeared to the disciples again. 3) Eight days later, as mentioned earlier, the Lord appeared again to the disciples, including Thomas. Of course, this is also Jerusalem.
Today's text, John 21:1-14, has a completely different background from chapter 20. This is not Jerusalem in Judea, south of Canaan, but on the shores of Lake Tiberia, north of Galilee. The text does not explain why the seven disciples were gathered there. According to Matthew 28:10, there is a saying that the resurrected Lord will go to Galilee, but that cannot be the reason why the seven disciples flocked to the shores of Lake Tiberia. Rather, it should be seen that the disciples returned to their daily lives without understanding the resurrection of Jesus. When Peter told his companions to go fishing, they all followed. If they truly believed that Jesus was resurrected, now is not the time to go fishing leisurely. Also, even if they had no choice but to make a living right away, the fact that they did not say a word about the resurrection of Jesus seems to have been an event that was still not fully accepted by them. Because this case made no sense to anyone looking at it.
The incident on the shores of Lake Tiberia proceeds as follows. At Peter's suggestion, those who went out to catch fish did not catch any fish all night. At dawn, the risen Lord was standing on the shore of the lake, but the disciples in the boat did not recognize him. Jesus asked them if they had caught anything, and the disciples replied that they had not caught anything. It's a very casual conversation. Jesus told them to cast their nets on the right side. They said that they caught so many fish that the nets could not be pulled up.
This story is similar to the story in Luke 5 (vv. 1-11), which reports the scene where Jesus first called his disciples. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus told Simon, who had not yet been given the name Peter, to cast a net “in the deep” and catch fish. Of course, Simon caught no fish that night as well, but he obeyed the word and threw his net, and many fish were caught to the point of being torn. The reason these two stories are similar may be that one was influenced by the other, or the different traditions coincided with each other. Today, it is difficult for us to accurately grasp all of them. What is important here is the fact that the experience of Jesus' resurrection is closely connected with being a disciple. So, in the story that follows today's text, Jesus repeatedly said to Peter three times, “Take care of my Lamb.” This includes the fact that the resurrection of Jesus is a phenomenon that only happened to the disciples and not to others.
The text is now developed anew. John, the disciple loved by Jesus, said to Peter, “This is the Lord.” and exclaimed. He may have remembered the moment when Peter was first called to be a disciple when he saw a lot of fish caught in the net. Peter put on his cloak and jumped into the water with his unique personality, and the disciples gathered their nets and pulled the boat out to shore.
They saw charcoal, fish, and bread lying on the land. Jesus had his disciples bring some of the fish they had just caught. When Peter pulled the net ashore and counted the fish, it became 153. Some scholars say that this number is the number of people preached by Peter. According to verse 12, Jesus said to his disciples, “Come and have breakfast.” Jesus is speaking only ordinary words right now. But no one asked, “Who are you?” and no one asked. Because it was so clear that He was the Lord. John added that this incident on the shore of Lake Tiberia was the third appearance of Jesus to his disciples after his resurrection. Mary Magdalene, where Jesus first appeared, seems to have been excluded from the number because she was not a disciple.
no one asked
The flow of today's text is not very natural. The reason they didn't recognize Jesus could be said to be because he was a hundred meters away. The Bible doesn't say anything about how the disciples reacted when they saw Jesus when they hurriedly went to the land. Obviously, if a teacher who was crucified and then even buried appears before them again, it is natural to ask a question, but they say nothing. No one asked how he was resurrected, what happened during those three days in the tomb, whether he really was resurrected, or if you were that Jesus. The writer of the Gospel of John explains the reason for this, “because it was clear that he was the Lord” (verse 12).
Ladies and gentlemen, now we have entered the original place of the Christian faith. The resurrection of Jesus is based on two clear facts. First, it's a nonsensical event. This is why the Gospel statements about the Resurrection lack logic. How can you logically explain an event that has never been and will never happen? The resurrection of Jesus is not an event that can be explained by natural science. Because natural science is truth based on past events. Since Newton's mechanical mechanics was the science that explained the world by the theory before it, it cannot explain the later theories of Heisenberg's quantum mechanics or Einstein's theory of relativity. It does not mean that natural science is not very reliable, it means that it is a partial knowledge of truth. If natural science is a science that makes sense, then the resurrection of Jesus was a nonsensical event of God.
Second, the appearance of Jesus was so clear to the disciples. Today's text also speaks of it. There was no logical explanation of what happened and how, and although the disciples themselves could not believe in the resurrection, it was quite clear that the crucified Jesus appeared before them. They did not frame this experience with plausible words. So, they did not adapt the story to be an alibi, but they just conveyed their experiences as they are, although they are rough. They were not confident enough to explain in detail what had happened, but they knew clearly that the dead Jesus had appeared before them. Later, based on the Old Testament, they were able to explain the fact that their experience was the resurrection of Jesus. It is found in several epistles, including Acts and Paul's.
Do you really believe these two facts? Can you believe it? Can you understand before you believe? This issue is not so easy to believe. If you have to believe unconditionally, you will pretend to believe, but there are many people who will not believe you if you ask if it is really. How can you believe something that doesn't make sense? How can we believe that there is no clear evidence that Jesus was resurrected, only the experience of the disciples? Not only that, but the two are also contradictory to each other. How can a nonsensical event appear as a clear experience to the disciples?
I'm not forcing you to believe something that doesn't make sense. Paradoxically, the resurrection of Jesus does not make sense, it does make sense. What we need here is a much deeper understanding of the fact that God is the Creator. Only God, who created the world in which all the secrets of creation will be revealed at the end of the day, can raise Jesus from the dead. This is the reason why the disciples did not explain it well. The disciples, who had not yet reached the end of Jesus' resurrection, could not logically understand the resurrection from the end when life was perfected. It's just that you've experienced something. A very extraordinary event was experienced by very ordinary disciples. I don't know if it's similar to a boy meeting a UFO by himself.
You may be wondering what I mean by this Bible-based explanation, how the end-time life can come into the present. It's better if you can understand it, but it's okay if you don't understand it well. As long as you depend on the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, for your life, one day you will experience the resurrection life that has arisen from Jesus brightly. The day will come when you will sing a joyful song in front of the wonders of that life. In verse 7, John's words will come out of your mouth. “He is the referee.”