Chapter twenty of the Gospel according to John tells of the day following the catastrophe, tragedy, and sorrow of the Cross. This man, Jesus, stands before his friends, alive. Jesus comes to his disciples who are locked away, fearful, behind closed doors. He greets them. Then, like the Creator, gives them his breath—the holy ruach of new life. Fade out.
Chapter twenty-one serves as an epilogue. We fade in on a beach, late. Peter sits with James and John, the water lapping the shore. Peter says to them, I’m going fishing. This is not a Sunday afternoon excursion to the lake. This is what Peter knows how to do. This was his livelihood before he met Jesus, before his life and everything he thought he understood was turned upside-down.
I’m going back to normal, he says.
He wants things the way they were, like we do.
The problem, for us, is that the way things were is what brought us here. Normal means that jobs are tied to health care. Normal means that the people who were poor, who were out of work brought it on themselves. It means my freedom might mean more than yours if it inconveniences me.
Normal doesn’t sound like something to which we should go back.
Out on the water, Peter, James, and John cast their nets, drag the waters, and do it again. Dawn begins to break and these men who have been professional fisherman all their lives have caught…nothing.
You know the rest of the story. A stranger calls out from the beach, how goes it, guys? They shake their tired heads in defeat. Try casting your nets on the opposite side of the boat, he calls. Normal won’t work anymore.
And, in response, Peter abandons the familiar, and dives in to swim toward the new.
This past Thursday, 6 August, was the Feast of Transfiguration. It is a day on which we remember how something new broke through into this world. It’s a day about having our eyes opened to something so new, so unexpected, and so different that we are left speechless.
It’s a day when we acknowledge that normal can’t cut it anymore.
Our world has been transfigured, transformed this year. Normal has been swept away as if with the incoming tide. Like Peter, we are still trying to cling to it, believing that what has happened was just a brief interruption. We act as if we can just restart after our lives were paused. We want to pretend everything’s the same.
But nothing is the same. Yes, we can climb into our boats and sail out. But we can’t be who we were. We can throw our nets into the water as if normal is something we can catch and haul into our holds. But we will find them empty. We can try to convince ourselves that nothing has changed. But everything has.
Do we dare abandon the familiar to dive in and swim toward something new?