Going back in time

After Jesus rose from the dead, different people encountered him along the way. Whether it was at the empty tomb, or when the disciples were gathered together in the upper room, or along the road to Emmaus. The gospel for last Sunday (Third Sunday of Easter, year C) from John 21:1-18, tells us of another encounter of the risen Jesus but this time it is by the Sea of Tiberias. A few of the disciples of Jesus are together and Peter decides he’s going fishing. The others said they would go with him. They went fishing just like they did before they met Jesus. Jesus himself stands on the lake shore but they don’t recognise him.

When I was small, my dad brought myself and my brother, Kevin, to see Star Wars in the Classic Cinema up from Harold’s Cross when it was released in 1977. I still remember we queued up to get in to the ‘Pictures’ as we called it. In 1985, we queued up for another movie; Back to the Future. This was a story a California high-school student, Marty McFly, who loved his rock music, and his guitar, and his girlfriend, Jennifer. His friend, eccentric scientist Doc Emmet Brown invents a time machine made out of a De Lorean motorcar and with the aid of a ‘Flux Capacitor’, a device powered by Plutonium which is inserted into the car, they are able to travel in time back to 1955.

Where would you go if you were able to travel through time? Would you go to meet one of the major figures of world history? Maybe attend the scenes of history being made? Would you perhaps go and be around for the first gigs of your favourite recording artists? Or would you go back to straighten out a quarrel with someone which has lasted to this day? Since it is possible to travel through time, then we can go forward and see future winning horses in Cheltenham and Aintree and even see the winning Lottery Numbers!

However, it is not possible to travel through time like that. For one, the future doesn’t exist and the only place we all live in is the now. But we can go back in time and through different experiences, it is possible to be instantly taken back to childhood memories or place we’ve been.

I was over with the family the other evening and one of my sisters was up with her two children. The younger one, a baby boy, is four months old. My mother was trying to get him to sleep after a feed and she was walking him up and down as she sang to him. All the while she was saying; “Sshhh…” as the little guy settled. The conversation in the house quietened down. It took me back forty years to when my younger siblings (one who is now the mother of these two) came along and there we were playing quietly while the baby was getting to sleep. The sound of the television was down low, the fire was lighting, the dinner was cooking, and there was steam on the kitchen windows.

I can’t imagine going back to a time in my life and not having met the people I know and love now. How could we manage now if we had not developed the skills or learned all we have over the years? A musician would miss out on having learned the rudiments of the skill they now know and love.

The disciples who gathered on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias that day were lost and confused. By going fishing it was like they were going back in time to a place before they knew Jesus. Was it as if they never knew him? Then Jesus himself stands on the sea shore and calls out to them. Even after the years they spent with him, the things they all experienced, and the times they had together, they didn’t recognise him. They need to be reminded. So, he asks they have they caught anything? No. He invites them to throw their nets out to starboard. Straightaway, they net a huge catch. The penny drops. Immediately John, the beloved disciple, recognises Jesus. Peter reacts quickly and soon; they all begin to remember what it is like being with Jesus. It is Jesus himself, the one who died and rose again at Easter, who reminds us of the difference he makes when we walk with him on our journey through life.