Taken in comparison with the original nucleus of the Church, the
calling of which we find recorded in the first chapter of this Gospel,
it is to be noticed that of the five men who made the Primitive Church,
there are three who reappear here by name--viz. Simon Peter, John and
Nathanael, and Nathanael never appears anywhere else except in these
two places. Then, note that there are two unnamed men here, 'two other
of His disciples'; who, I think, in all probability are the two of the
original five that we do not find named here--viz. 'Philip and Andrew,
Simon Peter's brother'--both of them connected with Bethsaida, the
place where probably this appearance of the risen Lord took place.
So, then, I think, the fair inference from the list before us is that
we have here the original nucleus again, the first five, with a couple
more, and the couple more are 'Thomas, who is called Didymus'--and we
shall see the reason for _his_ presence in a moment--and the brother of
John, one of the first pair.
Thus, then, to the original little group that had gathered round Him at
the first, and to whom He had been so often manifested in this very
scene where they were standing now, He is revealed again. There, along
the beach, is the place where James and John and Simon and Andrew were
called from their nets three short years ago. Across yonder, on the
other side of the lake, is the bit of green grass where the thousands
were fed. Behind it is the steep slope down which the devil-possessed
herd rushed. There, over the shoulder of the hill, is the road that
leads up to Cana of Galilee, which they had trod together on that
never-to-be-forgotten first morning, and from which little village one
of the group came. They who had companied with Him all the time of His
too short fellowship, and had seen all His manifestations, were
fittingly chosen to be the recipients of this last appearance, which
was to be full of instruction as to the work of the Church, its
difficulties, its discouragements, its rewards, its final success, and
His benediction of it until the very end of time. It was not for
nothing that they who were gathered together were that first nucleus of
the Church, who received again from their Master the charge to be
'fishers of men.'
And then, if we look at the list, having regard to the history of those
that make it up, it seems to me that that also brings us some valuable
considerations. Foremost stand, as receiving this great manifestation
of Jesus Christ, the two greatest sinners of the whole band, 'Simon
Peter, and Thomas, which is called Didymus,' the denier and the
doubter. Singularly contrasted these two men were in much of their
disposition; and yet alike in the fact that the Crucifixion had been
too much for their faith. The one of them was impetuous, the other of
them slow. The one was always ready to say more than he meant; the
other always ready to do more than he said. The one was naturally
despondent, disposed to look ahead and to see the gloomiest side of
everything--'Let us also go that we may die with Him'--the other never
looking an inch beyond his nose, and always yielding himself up to the
impulse of the moment. And yet both of them were united in this, that
the one, from a sudden wave of cowardice which swept him away from his
deepest convictions and made him for an hour untrue to his warmest
love, and the other, from giving way to his constitutional tendency to
despondency, and to taking the blackest possible view of
everything--they had both of them failed in their faith, the one
turning out a denier and the other turning out a doubter. And yet here
they are, foremost upon the list of those who saw the Risen Christ.
Well, there are two lessons there, and the one is this--let us
Christian people learn with what open hearts and hands we should
welcome a penitent when he comes back. The other is,--let us learn who
they are to whom Jesus Christ deigns to manifest Himself--not
immaculate monsters, but men that, having fallen, have learned humility
and caution, and by penitence have risen to a securer standing, and
have turned even their transgressions into steps in the ladder that
lifts them to Christ. It was something that the first to whom the risen
Saviour appeared when He came victorious and calm from the grave, was
the woman 'out of whom He had cast seven devils,' and the blessed truth
which that teaches is the same as that which is to be drawn from this
list of those whom He regarded, and whom we regard, as then
constituting the true nucleus of His Church--a list which is headed by
the blackest denier and the most obstinate and captious sceptic in the
whole company. 'There were together Simon Peter and Thomas, which is
called Didymus,' and the little group was glad to have them, and
welcomed them, as it becomes us to welcome brethren who have fallen,
and who come again saying, 'I repent.'
Well, then, take the next: he was 'Nathanael, of Cana in Galilee'; a
guileless 'Israelite indeed,' so swift to believe, so ready with his
confession, so childlike in his wonder, so ardent in his love and
faith. The only thing that Christ is recorded as having said to him is
this: 'Because I said... believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things
than these.' A promise of growing clearness of vision and growing
fullness of manifestation was made to this man, who never appears
anywhere else in Scripture but in these two scenes, and so may stand to
us as the type of the opposite kind of Christian experience from that
stormy one of the doubter and the denier--viz. that of persistent,
quiet, continuous growth, which is marked by faithful use of the
present amount of illumination, and is rewarded by a continual increase
of the same. If the keynote to the two former lives is, that sin
confessed helps a man to climb, the keynote to this man's is the other
truth, that they are still more blessed who, with no interruptions,
backslidings, inconsistencies, or denials, by patient continuousness in
well-doing, widen the horizon of their Christian vision and purge their
eyesight for daily larger knowledge. To these, as to the others, there
is granted the vision of the risen Lord, and to them also is entrusted
the care of His sheep and His lambs. We do not _need_ to go away into
the depths and the darkness in order to realise the warmth and the
blessedness of the light. There is no _necessity_ that any Christian
man's career should be broken by denials like Peter's or by doubts like
Thomas's, but we may 'grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord
and Saviour.' 'So is the kingdom of heaven, first the blade, then the
ear, after that the full corn in the ear.'
Then, still further, there were here 'the two sons of Zebedee.' These
were the men of whom the Master said that they were 'sons of thunder,'
who, by natural disposition, in so far as they resembled one another
(which they seem to have done), were eager, energetic, somewhat
bigoted, ready with passionate rebukes, and not unwilling to invoke
destructive vengeance, all for the love of Him. They were also touched
with some human ambition which led them to desire a place at His right
hand and His left, but the ambition, too, was touched with love towards
Him, which half redeemed it. But by dwelling with Him one of them, at
least, had become of all the group the likest his Master. And the old
monastic painters taught a very deep truth when, in their pictures of
the apostles, they made John's almost a copy of the Master's face. To
him, too, there was granted in like manner a place amongst this blessed
company, and it is surely a trace of _his_ hand that his place should
seem so humble. Any other but himself would certainly have put James
and John in their natural place beside Peter. It must have been himself
who slipped himself and his brother into so inconspicuous a position in
the list, and further veiled his personality under the patronymic, 'the
sons of Zebedee.'
Last of all come 'two other of His disciples,' not worth naming.
Probably, as I have said, they were the missing two out of the five of
the first chapter; but possibly they were only 'disciples' in the wider
sense, and not of the Apostolic group at all. Nobody can tell. What
does it matter? The lesson to be gathered from their presence in this
group is one that most of us may very well take to heart. There is a
place for commonplace, undistinguished people, whose names are not
worth repeating in any record; there is a place for us one-talented
folk, in Christ's Church, and we, too, have a share in the
manifestation of His love. We do not need to be brilliant, we do not
need to be clever, we do not need to be influential, we do not need to
be energetic, we do not need to be anything but quiet, waiting souls,
in order to have Christ showing Himself to us, as we toil wearily
through the darkness of the night. Undistinguished disciples have a
place in His heart, a sphere and a function in His Church, and a share
in His revelation of Himself.
III. The last point that I touch is this, that the purpose of this
group is significant.
What did they thus get together for? 'Simon Peter saith, I go a
fishing. They say, We also go with thee.' So they went back again to
their old trade, and they had not left the nets and the boats and the
hired servants for ever, as they once thought they had.
What sent them back? Not doubt or despair; because they had seen Jesus
Christ up in Jerusalem, and had come down to Galilee at His command on
purpose to meet Him. 'There shall ye see Him, lo! I have told you,' was
ringing in their ears, and they went back in full confidence of His
appearance there. It is very like Peter that he should have been the
one to suggest filling an hour of the waiting time with manual labour.
The time would be hanging heavily on his hands. John could have 'sat
still in the house,' like Mary, the heart all the busier, because the
hands lay quietly in the lap. But that was not Peter's way, and John
was ready to keep him company. Peter thought that the best thing they
could do, till Jesus chose to come, was to get back to their work, and
he was sensible and right. The best preparation for Christ's
appearance, and the best attitude to be found in by Him, is doing our
daily work, however secular and small it may be. A dirty, wet fishing
boat, all slimy with scales, was a strange place in which to wait for
the manifestation of a risen Saviour. But it was the right place,
righter than if they had been wandering about amongst the fancied
sanctities of the synagogues.
They went out to do their work; and to them was fulfilled the old
saying, 'I, being in the way, the Lord met me.' Jesus Christ will come
to you and me in the street if we carry the waiting heart there, and in
the shop, and the factory, and the counting-house, and the kitchen, and
the nursery, and the study, or wherever we may be. For all things are
sacred when done with a hallowed heart, and He chooses to make Himself
known to us amidst the dusty commonplaces of daily life.
He had said to them before the Crucifixion: 'When I sent you forth
without purse or scrip, lacked ye anything? And they said, Nothing.'
And then He said, as changing the conditions: 'But now he that hath a
purse or scrip, let him take it.' As long as He was with them they were
absolved from these common tasks. Now that He had left them the
obligation recurred. And the order of things for His servants in all
time coming was therein declared to be: no shirking of daily tasks on
the plea of wanting divine communications; keep at your work, and if it
last all night, stick to it; and if there are no fish in the net, never
mind; out with it again. And be sure that sooner or later you will see
Him standing on the beach, and hear His voice, and be blessed by His
smile.