The story goes that after everything—the years of travel, the final meal, the death, and the return—Peter is sitting by the water, trying to process all that has happened, overwhelmed by what it all meant. And, perhaps tired of trying to figure it all out, he then stands up and tells his friends that he’s going fishing. He’s going to go do something he understands.
The night’s work is unsuccessful. They cast and drag, but catch nothing. Peter, as dawn begins to lighten the sky, is ready to give up, his attempt at normality left empty.
Like most of you, I have been overwhelmed by all that is happening. The number of cases of the Coronavirus, worldwide, is nearing two-million, and here in the U.S. over fifty-thousand people have died. There is talk of a second wave in the fall. Twenty-six million people have filed for unemployment. The economy is headed into almost certain recession. Add to this just trying to fathom the grief, the exhaustion, the fear across this land and the globe. It’s too much to process.
It makes you want to go fishing.
Peter’s trip out wasn’t a day at the lake, of course. He was heading back to what he knew, his life before he’d dropped his nets and began to follow Jesus. He wanted to go back to normal. Perhaps, on some level, he wanted things to go back to the way they were, when things made sense.
His nets, however, end up empty. His attempt to catch, to capture some sense of how things were before the world went mad, comes up empty. No matter how many times, in the darkness, he casts out into the waters, there’s nothing. Normal, it seems, is gone.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve read article after article about how our world has changed and will change in the coming months. And as long as I can think clinically, academically I’m fine. But when I sit here on a rainy April morning, the uncertainty of it all weighing on me, I, like Peter, want to hop into the boat and sail back to the way things were.
However, life and Scripture teach us that there is no return to normality. There is only the way ahead, which is scary and filled with uncertainty. What will we do? How will we live our lives? Will the fear ever subside?
Having returned to shore, Peter has breakfast with the Risen Jesus. Afterward, Jesus takes him aside. Perhaps, Peter thought, he will answer all these questions. Maybe he’ll explain what’s going to happen, make it all make sense.
Instead, Jesus being Jesus, he asks a question: Do you love me? No explanation of this new economy, how to shape the new normal, or what any of it means. Just a question, do you love me?
Yes, I say quietly. And I find no answers or revelations.
But I know what I’m supposed to do.