‘His Life Rose With Him’—John 21 and the Resurrection of Jesus

Word, Light, and Life

The Gospel of John opens by proclaiming: ‘In the beginning was the Word (Logos) and the Word was with God and the Word was God’ (John 1:1). ⁷ After stating that ‘the Word became flesh and lived among us’ (John 1:14), the Gospel no longer uses the title Logos, but speaks of ‘the word (logos)’ of Jesus. The royal official whose little son was seriously ill ‘believed the word that Jesus spoke to him’ (John 4:50). Jesus called on Jews who believed in him: ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples’ (John 8:31). He encouraged people to ‘keep’ his word (John 8:51; 14:24). The Fourth Gospel frequently attributes to Jesus the related verb legein, right from his very first utterance (John 1:38). At times we find Jesus expressing himself with striking emphasis: ‘Amen, amen, I say (legō) to you’ (e.g., John 3: 3, 5, 11; 5:19, 24, 25).

John 21 ten times talks of the risen Jesus’ speaking: legei in the third person (John 21:5, 10, 12, 15bis, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22), and once in the first person, legō (John 21:18). In that chapter he is credited with saying 101 words. After Peter’s threefold protestation of love, Jesus warns him that he will be violently put to death, evidently by crucifixion (John 21:18–19), ⁸ and introduces this warning in the solemn way that, from John 1:51, he used 24 times during his public life: ‘Amen, amen, I say unto you’ (Jn 21:18). ⁹ The Word who spoke his words with truth and authority during his human life speaks words in his risen existence. The Logos continues to express himself by speaking (legein).

After identifying Jesus Christ as the Word of God, the prologue of the Fourth Gospel insists on his being ‘the light (phōs) of all people’:

The light shines in the darkness (skotia) and the darkness did not overcome it. There was a man sent by God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. (John 1:4–8) ¹⁰

The Fourth Gospel will use ‘light (phōs)’ 22 times and sometimes in counterpoint with ‘darkness.’ In the course of bringing sight to a man who had been born blind and lived in physical darkness (John 9:1–39), Jesus calls himself ‘the light of the world’ (John 9:5).

As light, Jesus is self-revealing. Returning from the dead, Jesus reveals himself at the end of John’s story; he manifests himself ‘just after daybreak’ (John 21:4). He is there on the beach as the dawn comes and darkness slips away. The scene takes the reader back through the cure of the blind man and the claim to be the light of the world to the Gospel’s prologue that has pictured Christ as ‘the true light which enlightens everyone.’ During his human history he has shown himself to be light for others; now resurrected from the dead, he comes to drive away darkness and share his light.

Right at the start, John’s Gospel has identified the creative Word as being not only light-giving but also life-giving: ‘What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people’ (John 1:3–4). The Fourth Gospel uses ‘life (zōē)’ 37 times. After multiplying five barley loaves and two fishes to feed 5,000 hungry people, with the fragments of the loaves filling 12 baskets (Jn 6:13), Jesus presents himself as the very bread of life (John 6:22–61). ¹¹

‘Life’ figures in a promise Jesus made for the sheep of his flock: ‘I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly’ (John 10:10). As the good shepherd, he will ‘lay down his life for the sheep.’ But he lays it down ‘in order to take it up again’ in his resurrection from the dead (John 10:11–18). Before raising Lazarus from the dead, he reveals himself as ‘the resurrection and the life’ (John 11:25). On the eve of his crucifixion, he will call himself ‘the Way, the Truth, and the Life’ (John 14:6). He is life itself and will continue to dispense life, even more richly, in his resurrection from the dead.

In the closing chapter of John, Peter and six other disciples have fished all night and caught nothing. Now Jesus, a mysterious figure on the lakeside, tells them to cast their net on the right side of their boat. They do so and make an enormous catch of 153 large fish (John 21:6, 8, 11)—a symbol of extravagant fullness ¹² and of the life in abundance (John 10:10). This abundant supply of fish matches the earlier excess of bread and the generous quantity of wine made available at the marriage feast of Cana.

Mission of Disciples Led by Peter

After John 20, the situation we meet in John 21:1–3 is astonishing. Summoned by Mary Magdalene’s unexpected discovery of the open and empty tomb, Peter has visited the tomb of Jesus (John 20:3–10). On Easter Sunday evening, along with the other ‘disciples’ (John 20:19), he rejoices to see the risen Lord, receives the Holy Spirit and is sent on mission (John 20:21–22). Thomas, who was absent on Easter Sunday evening and expresses his crass doubts about the resurrection, a week later sees the risen Lord and blurts out his confession, ‘my Lord and my God’ (John 20:24–29). Then we suddenly find Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, ¹³ ‘the sons of Zebedee,’ and two other ‘disciples’ (one must be the Beloved Disciple and the other perhaps Andrew, Peter’s brother) ¹⁴ out fishing, almost as if Jesus had never turned their lives around by his ministry, death, resurrection, and gift of the Spirit. Peter’s announcement, ‘I am going fishing’ (John 21:3), seems to ignore the association with Jesus which has shaped his recent past. It suggests an uncertainty about the way Peter and his fellow disciples should begin their ministry to the world.

The text assumes what we already know, not explicitly from John but from the Synoptic Gospels: Peter and the sons of Zebedee were fishermen when Jesus first called them from their boats and nets on a new mission to ‘fish’ for human beings (Mark 1:16–20 parr.). ¹⁵ That Peter, Andrew, James, and John had been fishermen must have been a widely known tradition among the early Christians. Peter, who has been called and renamed by Jesus very early in John’s story, albeit only after the calling of Andrew and his anonymous companion (the Beloved Disciple?) (John 1:35–42), ¹⁶ acts as spokesman for ‘the twelve’ in professing faith in Jesus (John 6:66–71). At the Last Supper, Peter plays a notable role: for instance, by enlisting the help of the Beloved Disciple in unmasking the identity of the traitor (John 13:21–30) and by rejecting what Jesus foretells about Peter’s triple denial (John 13:36–38), which then takes place later in the evening (John 18:15–18, 25–27).

At the Last Supper, John’s Gospel has repeatedly pointed to the coming mission to be exercised by the disciples of Jesus (John 14:12; 15:16; 16:2–3; 17:18–23). Jesus speaks of ‘the enduring fruit’ that his disciples’ mission will bring (John 15:16). Earlier, Jesus has presented the image of himself as the ‘true vine’ and warns of the fruitless results that come from remaining apart from him (John 15:4–5). The fishing exhibition of the seven disciples led by Peter evokes the sense of the disciples lacking resources if they remain on their own (John 21:5). Their pre-crucifixion relationship with Jesus will now be transformed by the risen Lord. The history of Jesus—specifically, in his association with Peter and the other six men—rises from the dead. ¹⁷ This transformed association will affect both Jesus and their discipleship and mission, imaged as a fruitful fishing and shepherding led by Peter, rehabilitated as chief fisherman and now appointed as shepherd of the Lord’s flock. As the story evolves in John 21, there emerges a wonderful, unconscious irony in Peter’s words to the other disciples: ‘I am going fishing’ (John 21:3). He will be commissioned for the Lord’s mission, symbolized as ‘catching fish’ (see n.15).

The Self-Manifestation of the Risen Jesus

Right from its prologue (John 1:1–18), the Fourth Gospel introduces language for the divine self-revelation that elicits human faith: ‘word,’ ‘light,’ ‘witness,’ ‘glory,’ ‘truth,’ and ‘make known.’ Fairly soon other significant terms for revelation turn up: for instance, ‘sign’ and ‘manifest (phaneroō).’ John begins his ministry of witness (John 1:19) in order that Jesus might be ‘manifested’ to Israel (John 1:31). Through the ‘sign’ of water changed into wine, Jesus ‘manifested’ his ‘glory’ at Cana (John 2:11). The ‘brothers’ of Jesus exhort him to ‘manifest himself publicly’ (John 7:4). In his closing prayer at the Last Supper Jesus says that he has ‘manifested’ God’s name (John 17:6).

In its final chapter the Fourth Gospel twice tells us that the risen Jesus ‘manifested (ephanerōsen) himself to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias’ (John. 21:1). ¹⁸ Subsequently it will call this Easter appearance the ‘third’ manifestation to the ‘disciples’ of Jesus raised from the dead (John 21:14)—more precisely his third to a group of disciples, as he has also appeared to Mary Magdalene alone (John 20:11–18). ¹⁹ Three times in John 21 we find the verb ‘manifest,’ the same word used to close the story of Jesus miraculously remedying the lack of wine by changing water into wine: ‘Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him’ (John 2:11). ²⁰

The choice of verb, ‘manifest,’ and the naming of ‘Nathanael of Cana in Galilee’ as one of the six other ‘disciples’ with Peter (John 21:2) should prod readers into remembering how it is in Galilee (John 1:43) that Jesus meets Nathanael and calls him to be his disciple. Before encountering Jesus ‘from Nazareth,’ Nathanael famously expresses his low expectations: ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ (John 1:45–46). Then Nathanael’s confession of Jesus in John 1:49 (‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel’) forms ‘the climax of the responses of the first disciples to Jesus.’ ²¹ It prompts Jesus into promising Nathanael that he will ‘see greater things’ (John 1:45–51). Nathanael and the disciples he represents see this promise being fulfilled in the first sign Jesus performs. ²² At ‘a wedding in Cana of Galilee’ they witness his ‘glory manifested,’ when Jesus changes 120 to 180 gallons of water into wine, indeed the ‘best’ wine (John 2:1–11). Nathanael and a further six disciples will also see something ‘greater’ when, according to John 21, they meet Jesus gloriously risen from the dead and witness the sign of the extraordinary catch of fish. ²³ The lavish number of fish parallels the amount of excellent wine that Jesus, the heavenly bridegroom (John 3:29), provides. ²⁴ Here we should recall how ‘glory (doxa)’ points to the presence of God (e.g. Exod 24:16–17; Lev 9:23; Num 16:19; 1 Kgs 8:11). In John 21 Nathanael and the other disciples, especially Peter and the beloved disciple, enjoy a touchingly intimate, face-to-face encounter with the ‘glory’ or the presence of the risen Lord. What manifests Jesus’ glory during his human history at Cana in Galilee now recurs with fresh intensity when he appears in resurrected life on the shores of the lake of Galilee.

Thus the Nathanael connection deftly implies what has happened to Jesus’ initial relationship with the first disciples. The history of that relationship rises with Jesus, in a gloriously enhanced form, through his resurrection from the dead.

Questions, Irony, and Love

Three characteristics of the Jesus story told in John 1–20 are resurrected to new life in the Easter narrative of John 21: questioning, irony, and love.

Right from the start, Jesus shows himself a questioner. His very first words take the form of a question to Andrew and his anonymous companion (the Beloved Disciple): ‘What are you looking for?’ (John 1:18). Many striking questions turn up as the story unfolds, such as Jesus’ question to the twelve (‘do you also wish to go away?’ (John 6:67)) and his questions at the Last Supper (e.g., ‘do you know what I have done to you?’ (John 13:12)). To be sure, the other Gospels contain questions asked by Jesus, but they are a special feature of the Fourth Gospel. Throughout, the questions bring out many central themes that the evangelist wishes to convey.

When rising to new life, Jesus is reinstated as the divine questioner. At the outset, he asks a question: ‘Children, you have no fish, have you?’ (John 21:5). Then, famously, the chapter features the only question Jesus ever repeats, and he puts it three times to Peter: ‘Do you love me?’ (John 21:15–17). After the resurrection, an old habit is restored and intensified. Peter faces Jesus the questioner, from whom he receives forgiveness and a lasting commission.

Irony has also characterized the story of Jesus as told by the Fourth Gospel. ²⁵ The meaning of what people say and do can go beyond what they intend and even be at odds with what they intend. Thus the high priest Caiaphas gives his advice to the council: ‘it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed’ (John 11:50). The evangelist at once draws attention to the truth about the redemption of all people that has been unconsciously expressed (John 11:51). Sometimes irony emerges in the words of Jesus himself; he knows the true import of what he says or asks, but the persons he addresses do not yet grasp the truth. This is the case when he puts the question: ‘children, you have no fish, have you?’ (John 21:5).

The risen Jesus knows that the disciples have failed to catch any fish and that he himself will bring them a huge quantity of fish. ‘Ironically,’ Brendan Byrne comments, ‘he gives the impression of being disappointed at their inability to provide him with anything to eat, while all along knowing that it is he who will provide them with food in abundance.’ ²⁶ A characteristic that pervades the Fourth Gospel’s account of the human history of Jesus, irony, does not disappear at the crucifixion but is reinstated with the resurrection.

The Fourth Gospel, as it draws to its highpoint, emphasizes the love Jesus shows to others: ‘Jesus loved Martha and her sister [Mary] and [their brother] Lazarus’ (John 11:5). The anonymous Beloved Disciple reclines next to Jesus at the Last Supper (John 13:23), ²⁷ and Jesus names as ‘friends’ all the disciples present and urges them to ‘love one another’ (John 15:12–17). Fulfilling his commands (John 14:15) means loving one another as Jesus has loved them (John 13:34). In presenting the life and mission of Jesus, the author of the Fourth Gospel focusses on love ‘as the sole fruit and requirement for life within the community.’ ²⁸ Love pervades the last discourse of Jesus (John 13–17): the verb agapaō is used 21 times, the noun agape six times, the verb phileō three times, and the noun philia three times. ²⁹ The two verbs, agapaō and phileō, are used interchangeably in the Fourth Gospel. ³⁰

The bond of love rises with Jesus’ victory over death. His first word to the seven disciples, ‘children (paidia)’ (John 21:5), recalls his address at the Last Supper, ‘little children (teknia)’ (John 13:33) and the role of the ‘paidarion (boy)’ at the multiplication of the loaves and fishes (John 6:9), ³¹ and breathes forth tender affection, familial intimacy, and a sense of ‘continued dependence’ on him. ³² On his side, the Beloved Disciple’s eyes of love allow him to see ‘in the abundant catch of fish a sign’ that the stranger ‘who has hailed them from the lakeshore’ is indeed the risen Lord (John 21:7), just as love has enabled the Beloved Disciple’s leap to Easter faith ‘through discerning the significance of the folded and separately placed face-cloth’ (John 20:6–8). ³³ In both cases it is love that enables the disciple to read signs of the resurrection.

Language for the love that bonds Jesus and his disciples is resurrected: in the final Easter chapter agapaō appears four times (John 21:7, 15, 16, 20) and phileō five times (21:15, 16, 17ter). Above all in the sections dedicated to Peter and Jesus (John 21:15–19) and the Beloved Disciple and Jesus (John 21:20–15), a verbal language of love pervades the narrative.

Early in the Fourth Gospel a majestic statement has announced that the human history of Jesus is a story of love: ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son’ (John 3:16). Chapter 21 takes the theme further in the key of resurrected love.

Miraculous Catch, Hauling, one Net/one Sheepfold, a Discourse Following a Sign

The extraordinary catch of fish, the only such miraculous event in the Easter stories of the four Gospels, recalls the miracle of the loaves and fishes (John 6:1–15). Jesus, when he multiplied fish and loaves to feed the hungry, enlisted Andrew the brother of Simon Peter and other disciples to take care of the distribution (John 6:8) and the collection of the fragments left over (John 6:12–13). In the post-resurrection situation, Jesus now directs seven of his disciples to catch fish in abundance. He uses some of those fish to supplement the breakfast of ‘fish and bread’ (John 21:9) that he has already prepared.

A warm humanity shines through what Jesus does in directing the disciples to throw out their net on the right side of the boat and catch a remarkable amount of fish (John 21:6). During his earthly ministry the miracles involve and reveal his humanity rather than compromising it. On the occasion of his most striking miraculous sign, bringing Lazarus back from the dead, Jesus is remembered as weeping (John 11:35). ³⁴ The human style of Jesus’ miracles rises with him in John 21. But here the ‘raising’ of what has happened in the ministry of Jesus goes beyond that style.

The discourse that followed the sign of the loaves and fishes throws up a term to be resurrected in John 21. In that discourse, Jesus speaks symbolically of people being ‘hauled (helkuō)’ to him by the Father (John 6:44). The verb recurs in a promise associated with the future exaltation of Jesus: ‘and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will haul all people to myself’ (John 12:32). During the earthly ministry, the Father is named as the One who ‘hauls’ people to Jesus, or Jesus himself is named as the agent who will do the hauling.

Now John 21 resurrects this ‘hauling,’ when it is Peter, not independently but following a command from Jesus, who ‘hauls’ ashore (John 21:11) an unbroken net containing 153 large fish and brings some of them to the risen Jesus. (John 21:10–11). Adding some fish to those Jesus has already prepared for breakfast symbolizes the unified, fruitful mission that the risen Lord is launching. ³⁵ Initially the whole group of the disciples in the boat cannot ‘haul’ aboard the great catch; all they could do was ‘drag’ the net towards the shore (John 21: 6, 8). It takes Peter to bring the catch to shore—an action that can suggest Peter’s role in ‘hauling’ people to the risen Lord. At the arrest of Jesus, Peter had ‘hauled out’ his sword, struck Malchus, a slave of the high priest, and cut off his right ear (John 18:10). By translating the verb as ‘drew,’ the NRSV respects the English idiom of ‘drawing one’s sword,’ but hides a subtle link to a very different act that Peter will perform for Jesus in the post-resurrection situation. Symbolically, Peter the fisherman is now engaged, not in hauling out his sword and engaging in an armed scuffle, but in personally hauling others to Jesus and, in the service of the risen Lord, gathering ‘the dispersed children of God’ (John 11:52). ³⁶

The remarkable way in which the net remains unbroken, despite its enclosing so many large fish, brings to mind the unity of believers that the earthly Jesus promised through the image of uniting all in ‘one flock’ (John 10:16) and prayed for at the Last Supper (John 14:12; 15:5; 17:18). The death of the ‘one shepherd’ (John 10:16–17) brings salvation for all humanity (John 3:16–17), now gathered under this ‘one shepherd.’ The images of fish and sheep differ. At the time of Jesus very few people bred fish in artificially constructed ponds, and no one, either then or later, cared for shoals of fish in the way that human beings may care personally for flocks of lambs and sheep. But the images of the unbroken net and the one flock converge in symbolizing the prayer which ‘rises with’ Jesus: ‘that they may be one’ (John 17:18) and that his church might hold all together in unity.

In the Fourth Gospel, explanatory discourses follow some signs. Such a discourse (John 5:19–47) comes after the healing at a pool in Jerusalem (John 5:6–9); the discourse on the bread of life (John 6:22–59) follows the feeding of the five thousand (John 6:11–13); another discourse (John 9:39–10:18) comes after the healing of a man born blind (John 9:6–7). The risen Jesus resurrects the sequence of a sign explained by a discourse, with the discourse becoming a dialogue with an individual (John 21:15–19) rather than a discourse to a large group of people (as in the three examples just given). After he ‘provides fish for his followers, he summons their leader [Peter] to continue to provide for his followers.’ ³⁷

The abundant catch of fish does not, however, function like the signs that occur during the life of Jesus. They worked to reveal his identity. His signs rise with him, but now introduce reasons for recognizing the identity of Peter (as agent of unity) and the beloved disciple (as trustworthy witness). ³⁸

A Meal

Early in John 21, the theme of food and eating surfaces when Jesus asks the seven disciples: ‘you have no fish [or you have nothing to eat], have you?’ (John 21:5). The question retrieves the story of Jesus’ contact with the Samaritans (John 4:31–38) and, specifically, the moment when the disciples offer him something to eat and he responds by saying mysteriously: ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ At once he explains: ‘my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work’ (John 4:32, 34). His food is the fruit of missionary work, into which he will induct the disciples (John 4:38; 17:18; 20:21). In the Samaritan setting, the mission is pictured as harvesting grain, from which bread will be made (John 4:35–38). The image of food will be resurrected in John 21, which highlights the mission of the disciples—in particular, that of Peter and the Beloved Disciple (see below). ³⁹

In John 21, when the disciples reach land, they see that Jesus has already found for them some fish and bread (John 21:9). By personally preparing a cooked meal (here of fish), the risen Jesus does something they have never seen him do during his earthly lifetime. But then with words and gestures he evokes what he has done when multiplying the loaves and fishes for the five thousand (John 6:8–11). Asking the disciples to bring some of the fish they have just caught and adding them to the fish he has already prepared (John 21:10), he ‘takes’ and ‘gives’ them bread and fish (John 21:13). We think of his ‘taking’ and ‘giving’ for a large crowd during his earthly history (John 6:13) and of his promise that those who come to him ‘will not hunger’ (John 6:35). ‘The Son of Man will give you food that endures for eternal life’ (John 6:27); he promises that ‘the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh’ (John 6:51). ⁴⁰ As the host at breakfast, he resurrects what he has done as host during his lifetime and also done on the shores of the same Lake Tiberias (John 6:4–13). ⁴¹ It is only in the Fourth Gospel that this lake is called the Lake of Tiberias (John 6:1 and 21:1). The setting for John 21 recalls what happened in Chapter 6, and also introduces something similar that is about to happen—not least a prominent role for Peter (John 6:67–71) who will be given a shepherding role (John 21:15–17).

The post-resurrection breakfast signifies the risen ‘Jesus’ ongoing presence and provision for his own. He is the ‘life-giving Lord,’ who feeds the seven disciples and through them the entire church. This ‘life-giving and life-sustaining work continues’ through Peter who ‘will serve as a shepherd in tending the flock, and through the Beloved Disciple who ‘will offer his distinctive witness, a testimony that underwrites the Gospel itself.’ ⁴²

The ‘charcoal fire’ around which the disciples take their breakfast (John 21:9) retrieves a memory of the charcoal fire in the high priest’s courtyard where Peter has dreadfully failed Jesus by denying that he even knows him (John 18:18, 25). Despite an explicit recall of the Last Supper that comes in John 21:20, ⁴³ what may pass unnoticed here is the way in which the lakeside breakfast resurrects the memory of earlier meals. Those earlier meals have proved occasions of deadly threats against Jesus (John 12:1–11), disputes about ‘wasting’ precious nard to anoint the feet of Jesus (John 12:4–8), the betrayal of Jesus by one of his disciples (John 13:21–30), and a ‘misunderstanding’ when the wine runs out at a marriage feast (John 2:3–4). The miraculous feeding of the five thousand is also significant here. It leads to a discourse on the bread of life, which ends with many disciples leaving Jesus and the first warning about Judas’s treacherous betrayal (John 6:25–71). That meal throws up a double crisis.

In a loving, healing way, the Easter breakfast at dawn resurrects meals and crises associated with them that have shaped the history of Jesus. The breakfast of bread and fish promises the saving activity of the risen Jesus that will continue through Eucharistic meals. From the second century, Christians will take up the image of ichthus (fish) as a title and image for Christ, with ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour’ in Greek (Iēsous Christos Theou Huios Sōtēr) giving rise to the acrostic Ichthus symbolizing the presence of their glorious Lord. The fish symbolism represents Christ and the Eucharist. ⁴⁴

Peter and the Beloved Disciple

The last phase of Jesus’ history links him with a special pair, Peter and the Beloved Disciple—at the Last Supper (John 13:21–30). Commentators identify the Beloved Disciple with ‘another disciple,’ who brings Peter into the courtyard of the high priest, where Peter miserably denies his relationship with Jesus (John 18:15–18, 25–27). Peter is absent at the crucifixion, whereas the Beloved Disciple is present and declared a son of Jesus’ own mother (John 19:25–27). Peter and the Beloved Disciple are linked by a visit to the empty tomb, but Peter does not share the faith in Jesus’ resurrection which the arrangement of the grave clothes brings to the Beloved Disciple (John 20:2–10). In John 21:7, the ‘privileged knowledge’ of the Beloved Disciple who identifies the stranger on the beach (‘It is the Lord’) is passed on: ‘Peter is shown to be dependent on the insight and word of the Beloved Disciple for his recognition of the risen Jesus.’ ⁴⁵ The Beloved Disciple outran Peter in the race to the empty tomb but allowed Peter to enter first into the empty tomb (John 20:4–6). As Lincoln observes, Peter is now ‘determined to be the first to get to shore’ and so the first to meet Jesus. ⁴⁶ Risen from the dead, Jesus resurrects his relationships with both Peter and the Beloved Disciple. The earlier history of those key relationships rises with Jesus.

At their very first meeting, before changing his name to ‘Peter,’ Jesus has addressed him as ‘Simon son of John’ (John 1:42). ⁴⁷ He picks up and repeats three times the same address at their post-resurrection encounter: ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ (John 21:15–17). The risen Jesus brings back to new life his relationship with Peter. The recent terrible failure of Peter is wiped away through his threefold profession of love for Jesus. The risen Jesus now guides Peter to a self-knowledge and love that will allow him to live up to the name Jesus gave him at their first meeting (Cēphas) and truly prove a ‘rock.’

In the imagery of the Good Shepherd and his sheep, the Good Shepherd calls his sheep by their names (John 10:1–8). Called by his original name, ‘Simon son of John’ is now commissioned to feed the Lord’s lambs and sheep. ⁴⁸ It is not that Peter replaces ‘Jesus as Shepherd.’ Rather, ‘Jesus entrusts to him for safekeeping and nurturing the flock,’ which remains the flock of the Good Shepherd. ⁴⁹

The great catch of fish with which John 21 opens might have shaped the missionary charge as ‘cast my net, catch my fish.’ Yet in Johannine imagery it is not fishing but shepherding the flock which involves danger and even death (John 10:11–15, 17–18). Peter the fisherman becomes Peter the shepherd. His commission calls him to utter self-sacrifice in the service of the flock. No longer will it be a matter of his deciding whether or where to go or stay (John 6:67–68). He will be carried where he does not wish to go (John 21:18–19)—with Jesus making a fairly clear reference to the way Peter will share his Master’s destiny by also being crucified. ⁵⁰

Like Philip at the beginning of the Fourth Gospel (John 1:43), Peter at the end hears from the risen Christ the simple but radical call to faithful discipleship: ‘follow me’ (John 21:19, 22). Shortly before his passion and death, Jesus says: ‘whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also’ (John 12:26). At the Last Supper, Peter hears Jesus speaking of his impending death and telling Peter, ‘where I am going, you cannot follow me now; but you will follow afterward’ (John 13:36). Peter is now ‘bidden to do what previously had been impossible for him’—follow Jesus in a violent death. ⁵¹ The history of Jesus rises with him in the sense that he now definitively calls Peter to follow him and do so on the road to martyrdom.

The risen Jesus renews his relationship with Peter, reinstates him in his leadership role, and points to a future where he will heroically glorify God. The Fourth Gospel has associated the glorification of God with the coming death of Jesus (John 12:28; 13:31–32; 17:1, 5). As William Loader remarks when commenting on John 15:8, ‘to glorify God is also the task of the disciples as they fulfil the commission given them.’ He recalls John 17:19 and notes that ‘already during his earthly ministry Jesus was glorified by the disciples’ response.’ ⁵² The risen Jesus resurrects this language by inviting Peter to glorify God through a martyr’s death on a cross.

The closing chapter of John’s Gospel ends by highlighting the distinctive relationship of the Beloved Disciple to Jesus (John 21:20–25). He witnesses the start of Jesus’ ministry (John 1:35–40), is close to Jesus at the Last Supper and the crucifixion (John 13:23; 19:26–27), and testifies to the piercing of Jesus’ side on the cross (John 19:34–37). ⁵³ Unlike Peter, he has never denied his Lord and needs no rehabilitation. After the resurrection he will continue, through the completed Fourth Gospel, his unique witness to the light and life communicated by the Son of God. The Gospel as a whole is attributed to the testimony of the Beloved Disciple, ‘the disciple who is witnessing to these things and has written them.’ The community of believers (‘we know that his witness is true’) confirms the truth of this ideal witness (John 21:24), just as the community confirms the truth of the incarnation at the start of the Fourth Gospel (‘we have seen his [the Father’s only Son’s] glory’ (John 1:14; see also the ‘we’ of John 1:16).

The cryptic remark of Jesus about the Beloved Disciple ‘remaining until I come’ (John 21:22–23) concerns the role the Beloved Disciple played. Some or many disciples have misunderstood the remark and supposed that the Beloved Disciple ‘would remain alive until Jesus’ eschatological return.’ ⁵⁴ John 21:23–25, by correcting this misunderstanding, resurrects something that happens throughout the Fourth Gospel’s story of Jesus: individuals and groups of people misunderstand Jesus (e.g. John 3:4; 6:60–65).

Like Peter, by the time the Fourth Gospel was finally composed, the Beloved Disciple has already died but not as a martyr. Yet the contribution of the Beloved Disciple as witness and disciple is ‘not diminished either by the fact or the manner of his death.’ ⁵⁵ Despite his death, the Beloved Disciple does ‘remain’ (John 21:24) and ‘makes an irreplaceable contribution to the entire believing community’ through his witness to the saving events and ‘the written record of that testimony that he has “authored” in the shape of the gospel.’ ‘Authored’ does not mean that the Beloved Disciple ‘physically wrote all that is contained in the text.’ Rather ‘it means that he instigated its composition as a record of his unique witness to the life-giving revelation disclosed in Jesus.’ ⁵⁶

Here at the end the Fourth Gospel retrieves two themes with which it opened its account of the history of Jesus: witness (the verb marturēō and the noun marturia) and truth (the noun alētheia and the adjective alēthēs). The witness of John the Baptist (John 1:7, 8, 15, 19–36) ushers in the story of Jesus’ historical ministry. At the Last Supper, Jesus tells the disciples that they are qualified for the task of witnessing to him, since they have been with him from the beginning (John 15:27). The Gospel ends by resurrecting the theme of witnessing to Jesus, and does so in his relationship with the ideal witness, the Beloved Disciple (John 21:20–24). Jesus is risen from the dead and so too has human witness to him.

The theme of truth (26 times) and true (12 times) pervades the Fourth Gospel. Identified as ‘full of grace and truth’ (John 1:14), Jesus promises that ‘the truth will set you free’ (John 8:32), calls himself ‘the Truth’ (John 14:6), and insists that ‘my witness is true’ (John 8:14). The closing words of the Gospel qualify the witness of the Beloved Disciple as ‘true’ (John 21:24). True witness, which has testified to the earthly Jesus, continues with his resurrection from the dead. Let us summarize the case for interpreting John 21 as the history of Jesus rising with him.

Word, Light, and Life

The attributes of word, light, and life, which permeate the Fourth Gospel’s portrayal of the historical Jesus, are resurrected in the final, Easter chapter. The word (logos) rises again when the risen Jesus speaks (legei) and says just over 100 words (logoi). He uses once (John 21:18) a solemn expression that has turned up 24 times in the Gospel’s portrayal of the earthly Jesus: ‘Amen, amen, I say unto you.’ The Word has spoken with authority and truth during his human lifetime, and does so once again when risen from the dead.

The key theme of ‘light (phōs),’ found 22 times in the Fourth Gospel’s account of Jesus’ history, returns in the final chapter. The risen Jesus shows himself ‘just after daybreak’ (John 21:4). Light is streaming into the sky, when Jesus appears on the shore of the lake. Resurrected from the dead, he proves himself now and for ever the light of the world. His history, which has been a history of light shining in the world, has risen with him.

So too has his life-giving attribute. At a wedding feast in Cana Jesus supplies a generous amount of wine for the marriage guests; later, near Lake Tiberias, he provides abundant life by feeding 5,000 with five loaves and two fish. An enormous catch of fish, not to mention the preparations for breakfast (John 21:1–14), shows how the history of the One, who is ‘the bread of life’ (John 6:22–59) and even ‘Life’ itself (John 14:6), is risen with him.

The Disciples, their Mission, and Christ’s Self-manifestation

In their fruitless fishing exhibition, the seven disciples (symbolizing all Jesus’ followers) exemplify the empty results of any mission apart from him (John 15:4–5). By ‘manifesting’ himself, the risen Jesus now reveals the something ‘greater’ that he has promised to Nathanael (John 1:50): the divine glory disclosed in the resurrection. The Nathanael connection recalls the history of Jesus’ initial relationship with his disciples, which now returns in an enhanced form.

Questions, Irony, and Love

In John 21, the history of Jesus also rises through three characteristics that have shaped his earthly life: questions, irony, and, very strikingly, love. Rising to new life, Jesus is reinstated as the divine Questioner—above all, through the threefold question he puts to Peter. Irony has qualified the story of Jesus as told in the Fourth Gospel. Irony returns in the question he puts to the seven disciples: ‘Children, you have no fish, have you?’ (John 21:5). The love that has bonded the earthly Jesus with his disciples rises with renewed intensity in the Easter chapter. The language of love pervades the passages dedicated to the relationship between Jesus and two of his followers, Peter and the Beloved Disciple.

The Meal, Peter, and the Beloved Disciple

The story of Jesus’ earthly existence is also evoked by further themes in John 21: the miraculous catch, the question about food (John 21:5 recalling 4:31–38), Peter’s ‘hauling’ ashore the unbroken net, Jesus’ language about his sheepfold, and a discourse that follows a sign (the catch of fish). But we must also include the meal of fish and bread and what it recalls about the feeding of the five thousand, the promise of the Eucharist, and Peter’s denial that has taken place at another ‘charcoal fire.’ The breakfast on the shore of Lake Tiberias also brings back various meals that have occasioned shadows and even crises in the story of Jesus’ ministry.

We also saw how Jesus’ relationship with Peter is resurrected and transformed in the Easter narrative of the Fourth Gospel. Here the violent death, which Jesus predicts for Peter, reminds us that Jesus’ own history is made up not only of what he does and says but also by what he suffers. The suffering history of Jesus rises in the coming crucifixion of the apostle, who will also ‘glorify’ God by his martyrdom.

As for the Beloved Disciple, the risen Jesus values him as the ideal witness, who through his Gospel continues his testimony to the revelation and salvation brought by the Son of God. A full account should also factor in the themes of misunderstanding and true witness, which characterize the Fourth Gospel’s narrative of Jesus’ earthly story.

Conclusion

Scott Holland’s claim that ‘when Jesus rose, his life rose with him’ finds ample warrant in the closing Easter chapter of John’s Gospel. In Studi sul vangelo di Giovanni, Marcheselli stresses the ecclesial message of John 21. ⁵⁷ But we can also (or even better) read that chapter Christologically. The allusions, images, and terms with which John 21 persistently evokes and re-reads earlier chapters allow us to say that the ‘life of Jesus rose with him.’