John 21:1-19
“Count the Fish or Feed the Sheep?”
April 24, 2022 – Second Sunday of Easter
“How many fish did you catch?” It’s what you ask a fisherman. We love to answer. We will gladly share that statistic, along with answers to questions you didn’t ask, like length, weight, and how many minutes the big one took to land, how many were almost caught, and maybe the water temperature and the size of the leader and fly being used.
A fisherman’s love for measuring his catch is probably only matched by a mother’s or grandmother’s love for the measurements of a newborn. I cannot remember at all, but I’m sure Beth can tell you how much each of our daughters weighed at birth, and likewise for our grandson. Ask that new mother or grandmother and you may also hear not just about weight, but about length, hours of labor, Apgar score, and, as they grow, the child’s percentile among other babies of the same age.
Jesus’ disciples were just like other fishermen. Writing his gospel maybe forty or fifty years after the events we just read, John wrote verse 11 about the number of fish that were caught. As Oregon writer David James Duncan points out in his marvelous book, The River Why, “we learn that the net contained not ‘a boatload’ of fish, nor ‘about a hundred and a half,’ nor ‘over a gross,” but precisely ‘an hundred and fifty and three.’”[1]
For two thousand years, Bible readers and theologians have operated on the principle that if John was so careful to write down that precise number, then it must be important. There must be some profound significance to 153. The great Bible translator Jerome cited the classical writer Oppian, who wrote a long poem about fishing for the emperor Marcus Arelius. Jerome said Oppian named 153 species of fish in the world.
Jerome concluded that the 153 fish in the net were one of each kind, demonstrating that Jesus would bring people from every tribe and nation on earth into His kingdom. In Matthew 13:47 and 48, Jesus said the kingdom of God is like a fishing net that draws up “fish of every kind.” The problem is that the best counts on Oppian’s poem make it about 157 sorts of fish. Jerome either miscounted or was fudging a little, which is not uncommon for fishing statistics.
Other interpreters have been even more imaginative. Augustine was maybe the first to note that 153 is the “triangular” sum of 17. Like the rows in the triangle of bowling pins, you add up all the numbers in a “triangle” in which each row gets bigger by one, 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 and so on. So 10 bowling bins are the triangular number of 4. 153 is what you get if you add 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5… all the way up to 17.
Well, said Augustine, 17 is clearly the Ten Commandments plus those seven spirits before the throne of God in our reading from Revelation 1:4, the seven-fold Holy Spirit. Or you may remember that Jesus fed the five thousand with five loaves of bread and then they took up twelve baskets of leftovers. 5 + 12 = 17. What could be more plain? Other writers have gone after 153 a little differently, adding up those digits themselves. 1 + 5 + 3 = 9. 9 is 3 X 3, the Trinity squared. What could be more obvious?
More recently, scholars acquainted with Jewish methods of interpretation have applied a system called gematria to the sum of those fish. In gematria, every letter of the alphabet is linked to a number. So in English, A = 1, B = 2 and so on. So you assign a number to every letter in a word and then add those numbers up. That will give you a number for the word. Take the word “rock.” Add up its numbers and you get 47.
So now, stay with me, turn over to Ezekiel 47 where you read about that great River which flows out from the Temple and transforms the Dead Sea, making salt water into fresh. Verse 10 of Ezekiel 47 says that fishermen will stand on the shore and spread their nets from En Gedi to En Eglaim and will catch fish of many kinds. En means “spring,” gedi means “goat,” and eglaim means “calf.” Catching fish from the “Spring of the Goat” to the “Spring of the Calf.” Do gematria on the Hebrew letters of gedi and you get 17. Eglaim gives you 153. Well how about that?
Someone else has tried it in Greek and found that the gematria number for Simon equals 76. For fish it’s 77. Add them together and, voila!, 153.
Are we having fun yet? You can also take the number of the apostles which is 12, square it and get 144, plus the number of the Trinity, square it and get 9, then add them together and there it is again, 153. It’s a really, really cool number. We could probably go on a while yet finding all sorts of spiritual meanings in it. The truth is, no one can say for sure that John, or the Holy Spirit for that matter, intended any of those mathematical meanings when he wrote that there were “a hundred fifty-three” fish in that net.
Actually, I hope that going through all those relatively silly ways that have been dreamed up to parse out that particular number will make you a little more skeptical of “Bible code” sorts of nonsense which purports to find hidden meanings in Scripture using devices like counting words, gematria, etc.
It is a significant number, though. Its significance is the fact that we have it. It’s a very, very specific number. Listen to David James Duncan again. He writes:
Consider the circumstances: this is after the Crucifixion and the Resurrection; Jesus is standing on the beach newly risen from the dead, and it is only the third time the disciples have seen him since the nightmare of Calvary. And yet we learn that in the net there were “great fishes” numbering precisely “an hundred and fifty and three.” How was this digit discovered? Mustn’t it have happened thus: upon hauling the net to shore, the disciples squatted down by that immense, writhing fish pile and started tossing them into a second pile, painstakingly counting “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,…” all the way up to an hundred and fifty and three, while the newly risen Lord of Creation, the Sustainer of their beings, He who died for them and for Whom they would gladly die, stood waiting, ignored, till the heap of fish was quantified. Such is the fisherman’s compulsion toward rudimentary mathematics![2]
The significance of the number is the very fact that we’re given the number. The disciples counted the fish. They cared about how many they caught. They cared enough to put off talking with Jesus for a little while. Maybe Jesus Himself wanted to know how many.
Look at the connection that John himself, the beloved disciple, saw and told Peter in verse 7, “It is the Lord!” That fishing miracle was the same kind of thing that happened when they first met Jesus in Luke 5. They had been fishing hard all night, but not caught anything. Then Jesus comes along and suddenly they’re catching huge amounts of fish. How did Jesus explain that to them? As they followed Him, the Lord told them, they would learn to fish for people, they would learn to draw men and women into God’s kingdom.
This after-the-Resurrection fishing miracle happened, and the number was recorded by John, to say that the mission was still the same. After all that had happened, Jesus still wanted them to be, in the old words, “fishers of men.” He still meant for His apostles to help bring in every person who wants to be saved by the grace of Jesus. And each and every one of those people is important enough to be counted.
In a few weeks on Pentecost we will read Acts chapter 2. We will hear Peter quote from the prophet Joel, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Then later in the chapter we will learn they counted how many were saved that day, three thousand who believed and trusted in Jesus. A little further on we read that after Pentecost “God added to their number each day.” They were keeping count, doing their angler’s math for this new and beautiful sort of fishing. Jesus wants to bring everyone into the circle, into the net of His love and grace, and every single person counts.
That’s why we keep church records. That’s one of my responsibilities as a pastor which I will be passing on now. That’s why we have deacons who tried very hard to stay in touch with everyone for the last two years during the pandemic. Everyone counts in God’s kingdom. Everyone counts here in Valley Covenant Church. We are joining in Jesus’ mission to bring the world to God. So like good fishermen, we count the fish.
Let’s return to our text. In the rest of verse 7 that intrepid fisherman Peter is ready to jump back in with both feet. When he knew it was Jesus standing there, he jumped out of the boat and swam to shore, leaving the other disciples to drag in and count that pile of fish. Verse 9 says Jesus had already started a fire and cooked some other fish. Did He catch them Himself? In any case, Jesus told them to bring some of the fresh caught fish. Then they sat down and broke bread and ate fish with Jesus. Which may have reminded them how they once shared bread and fish with a huge crowd along those same shores. Jesus gave them all sorts of signs that He was the same Master they had followed for two or three years, risen from the dead now.
In verse 15, though, the focus changes, gets a little more serious, as it often does in conversation when a meal is over. Jesus began a conversation with Peter, asking him the question, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He either meant, “Do you love me more than all this fishing business, more than the boats and the nets and the water and all that?” or He meant, “Do you love me more than these other disciples do?”
Either way, Peter immediately understood that Jesus was looking for a reaffirmation of his personal commitment. Jesus looked him in the eye and asked for a declaration of loyalty, of love. And Peter responded like you or I might respond to a spouse or a child who asked us that question, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”
You may have heard sermons or read books where someone makes a big deal out of the fact that Jesus used one word for love while Peter used a different, supposedly weaker word. They will tell you that Jesus used the Greek word agape, asking his disciple something like, “Do you love me with all your heart?” Peter replied using the Greek word phileo, saying “Yes, you know we’re friends.” But forget all that. It’s wrong and off track.
First of all, Jesus and Peter were most likely conversing in Aramaic, not in Greek. So there’s been a translation from the original words already. Second, in John’s Gospel, those two words for love are interchangeable. As a writer, John just likes to vary his language a bit to avoid dull repetition. Right here in the same passage, as Jesus responds to Peter and says what He wants him to do, Jesus uses different words, “Feed my lambs,” “Tend my sheep,” Feed my sheep.” Same idea expressed with slightly different words each time. It’s the same with the two words for love. It’s as silly to look for subtle differences in those words here as it is to start mathematically carving up 153.
The point, the point, the point is that Jesus asked Peter the question three times. It’s the repetition of the question, not Jesus’ choice of words, which shook Peter down to the core of his soul. Verse 17 tells us Peter felt hurt when asked the third time if he loved Jesus. Three was a number that fish-counting disciple remembered very well. Three was how many times Peter denied Jesus on the night before the Crucifixion. After declaring publicly on three occasions that he didn’t know Jesus, Peter was now being given the opportunity to declare publicly three times that he not only knew but loved Jesus.
This was Peter’s rehabilitation, his welcome back into that mission of catching fish, of proclaiming the good news about Jesus and bringing people into the kingdom of God. But now as He dealt with Peter’s own failure, regret, and pain, Jesus added another dimension to that mission. He didn’t talk about fish. He talked about sheep.
Sheep get counted too. Jesus told a parable about a shepherd who knew exactly how many sheep he had, a hundred of them. When one was missing that shepherd knew and went looking for it. But unlike fish, sheep also need care. So Jesus told Peter, “Feed my lambs.” “Tend my sheep.” “Take care of my people.”
Jesus was telling his disciple that there would be many other people like Peter. They would be burdened and troubled by their sins. They would be overwhelmed by traumatic events and by sorrows they had experienced. Just like Jesus was doing for Peter right then, His people would need to be loved and cared for down through the ages.
Here at the end of John’s Gospel, it’s not just “count the fish,” it’s “feed my sheep.” Jesus gave Peter those two parts to his mission. Peter was the leader, the representative of all the apostles. So he also represents all of us who follow Jesus. Our mission has both dimensions to it. We count the fish and we feed the sheep.
Counting the fish, we want to reach out into our neighborhood and local community, as well as into the larger world to bring people to Jesus Christ. Yet as we bring men, women and children to Jesus, drawing them into His kingdom, we also realize how much they, and how much we, need to be fed and cared for like sheep. We can’t treat each other or the people around us like mere fish to be counted then tossed in the cooler while we try for another. With Peter we have a mission to love and feed and care for our Lord’s sheep, for the people He brings into the net of His love and grace.
I’ve tried to practice that mission over the years here as your pastor, counting fish and feeding sheep. Now I’m getting ready to hand off those ministries here to you all and to the person who will follow me as pastor. Like Jesus said to Peter at the end of the text, when you get old, you don’t really know where you will be led. But I do know that the Lord will continue to lead you and me. And through you and those yet to come God will continue to gather people in and to care for them here at Valley Covenant Church.
Please keep inviting friends to church with you. Please keep offering Sunday School for children and fellowship and Bible study for adults. Please keep supporting missions that share Jesus far away and supporting ministries that help people around us right here. Fix up the building to make it warm and inviting. Keep that trailer space available out there. And count the fish who are gathered in by all that you do.
But with Peter also keep joining the Great Shepherd in caring for the people He is saving. Continue to greet each other warmly and to phone those who seem to be missing. Take meals to those who are sick or just overwhelmed. Teach those children and care for the littlest ones in the nursery and children’s church so both they and their moms and dads feel loved by Jesus. Always, always, always pray for each other. Feed the sheep.
Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him, but then asked Peter to love those whom Jesus loved. We net the fish with love and we feed the sheep with love. At the end of The River Why, Duncan quotes Meister Eckhart who says God’s love “is like a fisherman’s hook… he who is caught by it is held by the strongest of bonds…”
Love is the way Jesus caught Peter and then brought him back after he ran away. Love is how Jesus reaches down and pulls in each of us. That line of love runs through you to those around you, hooking and drawing them to Jesus as well.
May you and I stay fastened on the line of our Savior’s love, caught up in the net of His grace, counted and cared for, counting and caring for each other. Then when the time comes He will draw us all home to fish forever in that beautiful River which flows from the Throne of God and to cast our nets into that crystal Sea which spreads out before it.
Amen.
Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2022 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
[1] The River Why (San Francisco, Sierra Club Books: 1983), p. 14.
[2] Ibid., p. 14f.