How are we to act,
now that Christ is Risen?
Long after having
witnessed the Risen Jesus in the upper room, the disciples are still at a loss,
so they turn to the one activity they know:
they go fishing. In John’s Gospel, when the disciples fish
alone, they catch nothing. This is not
how their lives have been defined; they see failure no matter which way they
turn. But when a man the disciples do
not recognize as Jesus tells them, Cast
the net over the right side of the boat and you will find something, the
disciples pull up so many fish that they cannot even haul them into the boat. It is the Lord who shows the disciples that
they need to go further, to stretch the boundaries of what they know, to expand
their horizons, to explore how they understand themselves now that Christ is
risen. They have been radically changed,
and they need to move forward. Peter offers
the clearest example. Having denied Jesus
three times, Peter must repeat three times, Lord,
you know everything; you know that I love you. It’s not enough simply to say so, however;
Jesus then tells him, Feed my sheep.
The Acts of the Apostles chronicles the disciples’ efforts to do just that, teaching in Jesus’ name, obeying God rather than men. The apostles are witnesses to salvation, but
the Sanhedrin are not open to that revelation; indeed, the Sanhedrin are at a
loss as to how to confront this ongoing profession of faith, because they
cannot believe in Jesus as God. But the
Holy Spirit is at work in the apostles, who give
thanks to his holy name (Psalm 30), their mourning changed into dancing as they are dismissed by the Sanhedrin,
rejoicing that they have been found worthy
to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name. In the Book of Revelation, the Risen Lord
will be referred to as the Lamb that was
slain, a symbol of salvation always depicted as alive in that text. The angels
and living creatures and elders who witness the Lamb recognize
that God’s power and plan are unfolding in the Lamb; they give witness to God’s
immense love as embodied by the Lamb and all that he can accomplish in us… so
long as we cast our net over
the right side of the boat!
This post is based
on Fr. Pat’s Scripture Class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
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