Two
Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday May 4, 2025 – 3rd Sunday of Easter
Scripture: John 21:1-19
Let’s talk a bit about Peter. If we only
remember what he did when Jesus was crucified, he doesn’t come off in the best
light. After all, three times he denied
knowing Jesus. Even though, at the start
of Holy Week, Peter had promised to stay with Jesus to the end, to go wherever
he would go, when push came to shove and Jesus was arrested and put on trial,
there in the courtyard in front of the palace three times Peter denied that he
had anything to do with Jesus and his followers.
But this isn’t where Peter’s journey started.
His story didn’t begin with Jesus’s crucifixion and his own denial… and
his story didn’t end there either.
Peter’s story began up north in Galilee.
The details of the story of how Peter first met Jesus are different
depending on whether you are reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, but because
today’s story came to us from the gospel of John, let’s stick with John’s
version of events.
If we turn back to chapter 1 of John, we begin with John the Baptist doing his
thing out in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord and baptizing people
as a sign of repentance, as a sign of hearts and lives that had been changed by
this message.
Jesus shows up one day, and John the Baptist points at him and proclaims,
“Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!” John, like all teachers, had a number of
disciples or students, and two of them, after hearing their teacher point out
Jesus as the Lamb of God, turned from John and started following Jesus.
When Jesus saw them, he gave them an invitation: “Come and see.” They came and they saw and they listened to
what Jesus had to say.
Peter still isn’t on the scene yet, but Peter’s brother Andrew was one of the
ones who had turned from John to “come and see” what Jesus was all about. Andrew, obviously excited about what he was
seeing and hearing, went and found his brother, Simon Peter, and told him, “We
have found the Messiah, the anointed one!”
So Jesus invites Andrew, “come and see”; and Andrew goes and invites his
brother, “come and see!”
In John’s version of the story of Jesus, some of the well-known stories about
from the other gospels are left out. We
don’t get to hear Peter trying to persuade Jesus to turn away from the way that
leads to crucifixion, and we don’t get to hear Jesus condemning Peter in
return, “Get behind me Satan!” In John,
we don’t get the story of the Transfiguration, where Peter, James, and John
follow Jesus up a mountain and witness him transformed and hear the voice of
God; which means that we also don’t get to hear Peter stumbling over his words
with excitement, “Lord, it is good to be here! Let’s build some tents to try
and stay here!”
But in John, we get to see some of Peter’s faithfulness, even in the early
times. When Jesus’s teachings become
controversial, and many of his followers drift away, Jesus asked his inner
circle, “do you want to leave me too?” and it is Peter who answers on behalf of
the twelve: “Lord, to whom can we go?
You have the words of eternal life.”
Peter is the spokesman again on the night before Jesus died, when Jesus kneels
down and washes his disciples’ feet, taking on the role of a servant. Peter protests this act – “Lord, you should
never wash my feet!” Jesus then teaches
Peter, and the rest of the disciples, that we need to do both – we need to be
able to receive the loving acts of service that others offer, and we must also
go into the world to serve others we encounter.
Later in the same meal, Peter proclaims his loyalty to Jesus: “Lord, I will lay down my life for you.” And at first, he keeps this promise. When Jesus is arrested, Peter pulls out a
sword and uses it to cut off the ear of the slave of the high priest. How he smuggled that sword into the garden,
we aren’t told; or even why he thought he might need a sword. But as Jesus is arrested, Peter risks his own
arrest standing up for his teacher.
And then John gives us story of Peter’s three-fold denial of Jesus. Three times, while Jesus is on trial in the
palace, people recognize Peter as one of his followers; and three times, to
save his own skin, Peter denies knowing Jesus.
On Easter morning, in John’s gospel, Peter is one of the first disciples to
arrive at the empty tomb, though he doesn’t get to see Jesus right away – it is
Mary Magdalene who first encounters the risen Christ. But then Peter is presumably with the
disciples as they cower behind a locked door and the risen Christ appears,
saying, “Peace be with you.”
How we get from that moment behind a closed door in Jerusalem to a fishing boat
on the Sea of Galilee isn’t clear, but it seems as though Peter and some of the
other disciples are at loose ends following the crucifixion and the
resurrection. Jesus is no longer with
them. They have lost their purpose of
learning about God’s way of being in the world from the one who showed them
that way. And so they go back to what is
familiar – their boats and their nets on the Sea of Galilee.
And all of a sudden, Jesus is there, and there is a miraculous catch of fish,
followed by a breakfast meal shared on the beach. And following the meal, for each time that
Peter had denied Jesus, Jesus asks him, “Peter, do you love me?” Each time, Peter replies, “Yes, I love you.
You know that I love you!” And then each
time Jesus replies with a command: “Feed
my sheep.”
The first time Peter met Jesus, Jesus called him with an invitation, “Come and
see.” Peter has spent all of this time
seeing, witnessing to God’s Way in the world; and now in his final encounter
with Jesus, Jesus calls him slightly differently, not with an invitation but
with a commission: “Go, and tend my
people.” Peter has been changed by all
that he has seen, all that he has witnessed, and so his calling changes to
suit.
God calls all of us, but like Peter I don’t think that our calling is
static. I think that our calling changes
over time depending on where we are at in our life and where we are at in our
journey with Jesus. There are times when
we might be called to “come and see” – to listen and learn and observe. There are times when we might be called to
simply rest in God’s presence. There are
times when we might be called to feed God’s sheep – to go out into the world to
serve the people we encounter there.
There are times when we might be called to proclaim God’s goodness and
to teach God’s ways. There are times
when we might be called to be prophets – that challenging role of pointing out
to the world how the world is straying away from God’s vision.
I invite you, this week, to ponder God’s calling in your life. What is God calling you to in this
moment? Are you called to come and
see? Are you called to rest? Are you called to go and serve? Has your calling changed at any time?
God needs all of us listening to our calling; the world needs all of us
listening to our calling, and following where we are sent. And just like for Peter, Jesus will be there
with each one of us, accompanying us along the way, and welcoming us home. Thanks be to God!
“Breakfast on the Beach”
Peter Koenig
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