Sermon of 29 April 2007
***********************

Readings: Acts 9:1-6, (7-20), Psalm 30, Revelation 5:11-14, John 21:1-19


Our readings today are two of my favorite readings from our Easter season cycles. While Saul’s is a more obvious story of calling and conversion, both stories demonstrate a profound example of God’s call, and specifically Christ’s call to us to carry on his work in the world.

A lot could be said of Saul. He was a Pharisee, a highly pious Jew, practically a zealot. He was a persecutor of Christ’s followers, approving of the stoning of Stephen and carrying off Christian men and women to prison during their mourning of Stephen’s death. His reason for being on the road to Damascus on the day of his conversion was to arrest and imprison all of the followers of Christ therein.

In his own words from his letter to the church at Philippi, Paul describes himself saying “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”

Here was a man who knew that he was right. He had power, prestige, and an impeccable reputation spiritually as well as for getting the job done. The religious authorities in Jerusalem were only too glad to give him papers for the arrest of Christ’s followers in Damascus.

Then the unthinkable happens. Saul’s clear vision of what was right and who he was met up with God’s clear vision of what was right and who Saul must become. On the road to Damascus, Paul’s vision was taken away from him in a very literal way with the bright flash of light. From the ground where he lay stunned, Saul cries out to the unknown voice of God in Christ, seeking to know how he could have been persecuting the same God that he so blamelessly served.

Spiritually blinded by the devastation of his false vision, and physically blinded as a bodily manifestation of God’s work in leading him out of darkness into the light of Christ, Saul is led by his companions into the very city he had come to persecute. Such was his emotional, physical, and spiritual distress that Saul could neither eat nor drink for three days.

We see in this story Saul’s own metaphorical Easter passion. With the flash of light and Holy condemnation of all that he had worked his whole life to become, we see the death of Saul, who, through Christ is resurrected as Paul after three days in the dark stasis of blindness and confusion during which he neither ate nor drank – another metaphor for bodily death.

Ananias, risking his own life as the women had risked theirs in coming to the tomb on Easter morning, goes to Saul to pray over him. However, it was Saul who suddenly found clear sight of the risen messiah in this encounter. At Ananias’ prayer, scales fell from Saul’s eyes and his resurrection and conversion were completed with his Baptism and taking of food.

The taking of food is yet another symbol of resurrection. In the stories in the gospels in which Jesus resurrects Lazarus and Jairus’ daughter, he exhorts the family and bystanders of those they resurrected to give them something to eat. Jesus’ own resurrection appearances to the disciples similarly surrounded food where Christ was made known in the breaking of the bread in Emmaus, where he prepared breakfast for his disciples on the beach in Galilee, and where the disciples gave him broiled fish to eat in Jerusalem.

In Saul’s resurrection, as he later tells the Corinthians, he has become a new creation. Taking a new name for himself as Paul, he accepts Jesus’ call and sets out on a journey that lasts him the rest of his life as he proclaims the Good News of Christ.

John’s Gospel tells us a similar story today in Christ’s resurrection appearance to the disciples on the beach.

The disciples, disillusioned and defeated after Christ’s death, had already begun to split up and return to their previous lives. Of those with Peter in today’s reading, there totaled seven of the eleven remaining disciples after Judas’ betrayal. They had already made their way back to Galilee, their home from even before they set out to follow Jesus. Peter, having denied Christ three times in the High Priest’s courtyard has reconnected with his scattered friends and, disappointed that their hopes and dreams in Jesus were too good to be true, decides it is time to get back to the business of living life. He announces to his friends that he is going fishing. They join him, reclaiming the remains of their lives by going back to the one thing they had always known. The trouble was it didn’t work. They spent all night out on the sea, catching nothing but their own troubled thoughts in the aftermath of Christ’s death.

From the beach, around the time of dawn, a man calls out to them, guessing that they had caught nothing. They confirm his guess and he tells them to cast one more time on the other side of the boat. Sensing the déjà vu of the moment, and sunk in their own thoughts they thoughtlessly obey, perhaps thinking back on the good old days when Jesus would tell them to do something similarly pointless only to achieve miraculous results.

When the miraculous occurs, John guesses immediately that it is Christ, announcing it to Peter, who dives into the water, swimming toward his Lord and Savior for all he’s worth.

The familiar theme of food is present in the charcoal fire where fish and bread are warming in the cool hours of dawn.

What draws my attention more than any other part of this story, however, is what happens after breakfast.

“Simon son of John, do you love me more than these,” Christ asks. “Then feed my lambs.”
Again, Christ asks him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” … “Then tend my sheep”
A third time, Christ asks him, “Simon son of John, do you love me? ... “Then feed my sheep.”

By the third time, Peter is hurt by Christ’s questioning of him, but I very much believe that Jesus is doing something very intentional through this interaction. Just a few weeks earlier, Peter had denied knowing Jesus three times while Jesus was in the custody of the Jewish religious leaders at the High Priest’s house. Peter’s world had come crashing down on him when he realized what he had done, and had fled into the waning hours of the night.

Now reunited with his friends in the company of Jesus, Peter is asked to affirm his love and commitment to Jesus, once for each denial.

Perhaps it is just because Peter is a bit thick that Jesus does this, but whatever the reason, Jesus reaffirms his faith in Peter, asking him to carry on his work in the world. No more is he to try to return to life before Christ. He was no longer a fisher of fish, but had already become the fisher of people that Christ had originally told him he would make of him. What he lacked was the confidence to carry on as a leader in continuing Christ’s ministry. Jesus had always been their teacher, their leader, their guide. In this encounter, Jesus commissions Peter to the work that he had been preparing all the disciples for over the past three years of ministry together.

We know from the Acts of the Apostles that Peter, strengthened beyond imagination by his denial of Christ and subsequent forgiveness and commissioning on that beach, carried on boldly, faithfully, and was finally able to be that rock that Christ told him he was founding his church on.

Something profound happened in that moment. At what must have been the low point of his life, Peter finally understood what Christ had been trying to teach him for three years. It wasn’t about Peter or any of the other disciples, it never had been. It was about being an instrument of God’s incredible abundance and, through prayer and willingness to serve God’s purpose in the world, to bring the reign of God near to all those with whom he came into contact.

For the rest of his life, Peter carried on Christ’s mission with the rest of the re-gathered eleven remaining original disciples, adding Stephen to make them twelve again. He performed signs and wonders through prayer, demonstrating God’s reign just as Christ had done in his life and ministry, but never again confusing his service and glorification of God with glorifying himself.

In a very real sense, Peter was converted just as Paul was converted – from a false vision of Truth to a new and invigorating vision of God’s Truth that propelled them both into lifelong service to the Good News of God.

In these two profound examples of God calling Peter and Paul to newness of life and to become new creations through Christ, we are encouraged to look with new eyes on our own vision of God’s truth, and to examine where God calls us to newness of life and recreates us every day to be Christ’s hands and heart in the world.

Each of us has the capacity to bring God’s reign near to those around us. Each of us has the capacity to demonstrate God’s abundance through reaching out to lift up and draw those around us into Christ’s community of love.

...

At the end of today’s reading, Christ speaks of the aging process – reminding Peter of the freedoms of carefree youth compared to the responsibilities that come with aging. As some of you may have noticed tonight, I have just entered a new phase in my own aging process as my wife, Fuego, and I have just brought home a beautiful baby girl that we’re in the process of adopting. What Jesus speaks of in this passage becomes abundantly clear to me as I have the belt of fatherhood placed around my waste and no longer have the flexibility to go wherever I want to go whenever I want to go there. I now have an amazing new life that I am responsible for. I wake when she wakes to care for her needs rather than my own. I feed her and seek her comfort before my own. I have a new schedule that revolves around feedings, naps, bath-time, and bedtime. Of course, there are amazing rewards to taking on this new yoke in my life, ones I wouldn’t trade for all the freedoms of my youth!

So it is for Peter today as Christ bids him to take up the yoke of responsibility for all of Christ’s flock.

By accepting Christ’s challenge to affirm him and this new calling of leadership three times, Peter not only undoes the damage done to his own self esteem and self confidence from Good Friday’s denials, but he accepts Christ’s yoke just as freely and with gladness in his heart as I have accepted Emjay as my daughter. No longer does he have the freedom to wander back to his old life and hide from his troubles out on the sea, fishing. Where he had previously only considered himself a follower of Christ, he finally understands that in order to be a follower of Christ, he must be willing to carry on in Christ’s name and to take up the kind of servant leadership that Jesus demonstrated throughout his life and ministry. And as frightening as that might have been before meeting Jesus on that beach, in the moment of affirming his love for Christ and his commitment to carrying on Christ’s teachings, Peter is changed forever. He will never look back wishing for the past again, no matter how tight the new belt becomes, it is worth it.

May the wisdom, love, peace, and inspiration of your continued calling be a light and joyful burden as you seek to bear the light of Christ to all those around you.

Amen.