The Third Sunday of Easter Year C

The Third Sunday of Easter

Acts 9.1–20
Revelation 5.11–14
John 21.1–19
John 21 contains in microcosmic form most of the elements of the previous narrative. We are back in Galilee, with Peter and his friends going fishing. Jesus reveals himself as he had done throughout. He feeds them by the lake. He offers forgiveness, challenge and commission.

Only now, instead of the drama moving forward inexorably to Calvary and Easter, it moves out from there. The fishing, the feeding, the forgiveness and the challenge are all shot through with a sense of something accomplished now to be worked out, something achieved that must now be implemented, something which Jesus has done which must now sweep Peter and the rest along in the tidal wave of new life, new possibilities. The scene is full of a sense of freshness and wonder: sunrise, lake and breakfast picnic hint at the transformation of creation itself...