 By The Rev. Dr. Molly Scherm
There are so many ways in which the times we’re living in are troubling. I don’t need to list them for you, and I assume that all of us are here this morning for the same reasons – in these difficult times we’re looking to renew what grounds us and balances us and helps us to stay connected in our relationships with God and with one another. We’re looking to experience what our new bishop, Miguelina, has introduced as a new diocesan watch word: “We’re in this together”. And that’s one of the issues. One of the problems in today’s world, and particularly in our own nation, is the deep divide and mistrust between people of different perspectives, assumptions, and priorities. As we know, this often comes down to a division between political parties, and we are living with a government impacted by partisan politics that almost completely prevent it from getting things done. “Trash talk” these days goes beyond the realm of sports: our public life is dominated by divisive language that would never have been acceptable in earlier times. So why do I bring up this unpleasant topic? It is because Paul and Peter and Jesus have some advice for us, in this morning’s readings, on how to be in relationship with people whose perspectives differ from our own. We began with Luke’s account of Paul’s visit to Athens. Following Paul’s conversion to following Christ, in the days when the movement of Christ’s followers was just getting underway, he set out to preach, teach, and baptize both Jews and Greeks throughout Asia Minor. In Athens, he spoke with Jews in the synagogue and philosophers in the marketplace. The Athenians were interested: in the verse just preceding today’s passage Luke tells us that “..all the Athenians … would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.” So Paul went to address the local administrative council, the Areopagus. He was concerned about the idols he had observed throughout the city, and in particular by an altar inscribed “to an unknown god.” Paul is a master of diplomacy in his approach to the council, however. He is brief and respectful. Even as he proclaims to them the God “in whom we live and move and have our being”, “who made the world and everything in it”, he commends the Athenians for the spirit of search that he has found throughout the city and connects his own message to theirs by quoting and affirming their own poets. If only our own politicians took heed of Paul’s model; it turned out to be effective. In the final verse of chapter 17 of Acts we learn that “When they heard of the resurrection of the dead some scoffed; but others said “We will hear you again about this”. And some became believers. In Peter’s first letter to followers of Christ in Asia Minor, he advocated the same spirit of respect while still standing one’s ground. At that time the Jesus movement was a new religion and significant tensions existed between its followers and the larger Greco-Roman culture. Just as Jesus himself been viewed as a danger to the religious and political order, the first Christians were viewed with fear and mistrust, as a potential threat to social stability. Peter’s advice is clear: “Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.” Peter doesn’t deny that even respectful gentleness and reverence may not succeed in averting conflict. Those who stand for the Gospel may well suffer. They will at least do so with a good conscience, and he implies that they will serve as an example to those who witness their testimony. Our gospel this morning is a very brief excerpt from John’s account of Jesus’ farewell discourses to the disciples. In recent weeks’ readings we have been hearing stories of love and reassurance: Christ’s acknowledgement of Mary in the garden on the third day, the visitation to the disciples locked in the upper room and the acceptance of Thomas’ need for direct evidence, the appearance to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and Jesus’ likening himself to the shepherd who cares for the sheep. In last week’s gospel, today’s, and next week’s, we return to John’s accounts of Jesus’ words to his friends at the Last Supper in which he prepares them for his departure, and for the life they are called to lead when he is no longer with them. This morning’s message is simple – keep my commandments, the primary commandment being to love one another. The command is accompanied by promise: we will send you an Advocate to be with you forever… I will not leave you orphaned… the Spirit of truth will abide with you. It is trust in God’s grace, in God’s presence with us in the most difficult of times, that can enable us to meet the hostility that the world sometimes offers, with quiet faith. In a world where angry response and retaliation seem to be the norm, we are reminded that there is another way, and that we are called to it. Certainly there is a place and a need for respectful dissent. We are called, as Peter’s letter reminds us, to stand for the Gospel of Love, to be firm in speaking against injustice and to serving as advocates for the needs of the vulnerable. Confrontation is unavoidable where deep differences exist, but we have models of respectful opposition that we can look to, not only from Paul in Athens, but in our own time as well. I’m sure many of you are familiar with the words of Marion Budde, Bishop of Washington, in the sermon she preached on the day of President Trump’s inauguration in 2025, and with the dustup that followed. In her sermon Bishop Budde offered the hope of unity despite difference, “ the kind of unity that fosters community across diversity and division, a unity that serves the common good.” She identified three “foundations for unity”: “honoring the inherent dignity of every human being, which is, as all faiths represented here affirm, the birthright of all people as children of the One God.” “honesty in both private conversation and public discourse.” “humility, which we all need, because we are all fallible human beings.” The Bishop then went on to reflect on the humanity that easily undergirds our conflicts: “We say and do things that we regret. We have our blind spots and biases, and we are perhaps the most dangerous to ourselves and others when we are persuaded, without a doubt, that we are absolutely right and someone else is absolutely wrong. Because then we are just a few steps away from labeling ourselves as the good people, versus the bad people.” Bishop Budde then went on to speak directly to the President, asking that he might govern with mercy. I’m sure you’ll recall that there was considerable backlash against the Bishop following the sermon, and denunciations of her person and her words as “disrespectful”, “nasty”, and “boring”. Peter correctly anticipated how standing up for the Gospel could go. In another recent example, we have also been witness to the prophetic and measured statements by the new American Pope, Leo XIV, speaking out against the war in Iran. In these days of deep divisions and seemingly intractable conflicts, we are so very fortunate to have the models and leadership of faith leaders who are committed to the wisdom of scripture and to the Way of Love. May we give thanks for them, and lets please continue to pray for them. As we go forward - May we follow their leads, and enter conversations with respect and humility. May we listen even when we disagree, have the discipline to pause to consider, when we need to, and quiet the impulse to judge. May God’s gift, the Spirit of truth, guide our hearts.
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 By The Rev. Dr. Molly Scherm
Many would agree that Christmas is the most beloved holiday of Christians, and Easter is certainly the most joyous. We can’t deny the centrality of Good Friday, however. The cross, the instrument of Jesus’ execution at the hands of the Roman state, is the universally-recognized symbol of the Christian faith. It stands at the front of our worship spaces and on our steeples, and we wear it around our necks, bow when it passes by at the head of our processions, and carve it on the headstones when we bury our dead. I think I have probably shared the story, before, of one of my earliest memories of my own religious thought. I don’t know how old I was, though I’m sure it was sometime during my elementary school years, when I asked my Aunt Tinka “If it’s the day Jesus died, why do we call it Good Friday?”. This is an interesting memory because my Aunt Tinka was probably the most unlikely person in the family to ask such a deep religious question. Tinka was a good Congregationalist, but she did not talk about faith. She must have been quite taken aback by my question. Her reply, after she paused to consider her words, was the explanation of Good Friday that we all grew up with. It was something like this: “Jesus died to save us from our sins, and that’s a good thing.” I doubt if I found the answer helpful as a child, and I still struggle with the same question - not why we designate today as “Good Friday”, of course, but the question of how to make sense of Jesus’ death. What it means to me, to us, that Jesus, the embodiment of God’s love in the world, chose to submit to the world’s evil. It seems that Christians have always wanted to rationalize Jesus’ death, from the earliest days of the Church when Mark wrote in his gospel that “Jesus came…to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45). We have a holy week hymn that sums it up perfectly, and we’ve all sung it many times: Here are middle verses of the hymn “There is a green hill far away”. He died that we might be forgiven He died to make us good That we might go at last to heaven Saved by his precious blood. There was no other good enough To pay the price of sin. He only could unlock the gate Of heaven and let us in. Surely the ugliest, most pernicious element in this kind of theology is the notion that God the Creator required sacrifice, required Jesus’ brutal death in order to accept humankind, to offer forgiveness. Theologian Bruce Epperly says that this brand of theology justifies Jesus’ crucifixion as “sacred violence”1. The reason many of us have struggled with Atonement theology is that a God who requires “sacred violence” is not the God who Jesus preached and Jesus embodied. So if we reject traditional formulations of atonement theology, where does that leave us? How else are we to understand Jesus’ sacrifice, his willing acceptance of his own execution? I think there are two ways to think about this that provide me, at least, with something that makes more sense than the explanations I grew up with. The first is that Jesus went to his own death not because God needed it, but because it tells a truth we needed to hear (and still do). Jesus’ death was the inevitable end to the confrontation between his message of radical love and service and the power structures in the religious and political establishments of his time. Jesus had riled people up. He challenged the purity system of the Temple establishment AND the economic exploitation of the Temple. He threatened (in the minds of the Roman authorities) to instigate discontent. He would not go away quietly. He had to be silenced. The way of the power structures in that time and place was to execute those who instigated discontent. I don’t think the world is much different today. Jesus was innocent of wrongdoing. He was killed because the power establishments of Jerusalem were trying to preserve their own power, to maintain a status quo that served their own interests. The crucifixion is not just a historic event. As with so much of the gospel story, it’s a demonstration of who we are, and here it is: we are still working to preserve our own power and control. We still demonize those who are different from ourselves. We still want to avoid and silence those voices that challenge us with truths that don’t fit easily into the ways we think about ourselves and the way we think thing are, that challenge the ways we like to do things. We judge others and do what we think we need to do to get others to conform with our own interests. Jesus knew that confrontation was coming: he predicted his own death on many occasions. The Creator knew it was coming. That is different from wanting it or needing it. As far as I can see, God did not REQUIRE Jesus to die in order to forgive us our sins. Jesus preached and lived love, compassion, and acceptance throughout his ministry, and he lived it until the end. Although the gospels make it clear that facing up to the violence of the world’s powers was not easy for Jesus, he trusted in God. Perhaps we needed Jesus to die in order to provide a stark enough truth to shake us out of our complacency. Jesus’ death provides us the means to face up to our own deepest failings. Our fear of death that stands in the way of our trusting God Our fear of losing control that stands in the way of our trusting God Our fear of pain and suffering – whether physical or psychological – that stands in the way of our trusting God. Jesus’ death provides an ugly picture, BUT it has the capacity to transform us, just as life-shattering experiences often provide us with the opportunity to radically reconfigure our lives. Jesus’ death has the capacity to transform us because it is followed by Easter. But I said there were two ways of thinking about the crucifixion that can speak truth to us today, and the second is closely related to the first. There’s a way of thinking doesn’t rationalize Jesus’ death. It doesn’t find reasons to call it “good”. It accepts that this is the nature of a fallen world, that human sin and self-interest continue to crucify, and we are the witnesses. Christ is crucified in the deaths of Renee Goode and Alex Pretti, and before them, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Christ is crucified as hard-won policies protecting the environment are dismantled in the interest of economic gain. Christ is crucified when weapons of destruction are deployed in the service of ensuring political dominance. The gospels all testify that a group of women stood by to watch the crucifixion, including Mary Magdalene, Mary, Jesus’ mother, and others, and John’s gospel adds that John, the beloved disciple, was there too. Theologian Diana Butler Bass recently posted a reflection on witnessing evil. Here’s what she suggests: “Witnesses watch events unfold, even when hearts break. Even when tempted to look away. Witnessing is more than being a bystander, an onlooker. Witnessing is active — it means bearing testimony to what one has seen, to provide evidence of the truth of a thing, no matter how shocking, brutal, or inhumane. Witnesses tell a story…” Bass goes on to say: “We all must witness. Because witnessing the pain turns us from mere bystanders to actors, to be part of the story on the side of victims. To not let the authorities lie about the suffering, violence, and injustice.”2 So perhaps this Friday is “Good” because it shows us who we are without God, and it shows us that Jesus told us the truth. It shows us that Jesus’ way of love and mercy are what saves us. It can be good if it helps us to move beyond being bystanders, and helps us to tell the stories we need to tell, and to take an active part with God in changing and healing the world. In this Holy Week, let us pray that we may be touched and transformed by the cross, that it may be for us a way to the generous and compassionate and bold living that God calls us to. In Jesus’ name, and for his sake. 1http://www.patheos.com/blogs/livingaholyadventure/2015/03/reclaiming-good-friday-salvation-without-divine-violence/#ixzz3VX1orYp2 2 “Witnesses to the bad news”, Diana Butler Bass, the Cottage, January 15, 2026  By The Rev. Dr. Molly Scherm
I love Nicodemus. If some of you found the gospel lesson we just heard utterly incomprehensible, don’t worry. Today’s gospel is a tough passage that is still the object of lively debate among scholars. I love Nicodemus not so much because of what we hear in the interaction with Jesus that we just heard, but because of the whole arc of his story in John’s gospel. But more about that later. So let’s start with a word, first, about John’s gospel. As you know, we have a three-year lectionary cycle of lessons assigned for us to use throughout the church year. The first year, which is what we’re following now, mostly traces Matthew’s account of Jesus’ story, and then we’ll move on to years mostly focused on Mark and Luke. Poor John doesn’t get his own year, so the arrangers of the lectionary insert passages from John into the other three years. This is one of those passages. And here’s what’s interesting: neither Matthew, Mark, or Luke ever mention Nicodemus, but he shows up three times in John’s gospel. What is it about Nicodemus that seemed important enough to John that he included him? What does John want us to learn from Nicodemus? One thing, and I suspect we can all identify with this, is that Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus gives us a glimpse of an individual struggling with questions of faith and it invites us to explore what the idea of spiritual rebirth means. Nicodemus was an important person: he was quite a big cheese. As a Pharisee, he was part of the elite – better educated than most, a member of the Sanhedrin (or ruling council at the Jerusalem Temple), he was an insider and would have been accorded lots of respect and privilege. You’ve heard me say before that I think the Pharisees are given an unfairly bad rap in the gospels. Pharisees were the most progressive of the Jewish sects that existed in Jesus’ time. Despite their rigidity in relation to applying the Law of Moses - which led to their conflicts with Jesus over his sabbath practices, for example - they believed that interpretation of the Torah, of scripture, was a matter of ongoing process, ongoing revelation. They didn’t assume that they had all of the answers, but rather, were open to an evolving understanding of God’s intent for humankind, which may be what prompted Nicodemus to seek Jesus out to learn more about the new rabbi’s teachings. It would certainly have been unusual for a member of the religious establishment to seek out Jesus, and so it’s not surprising that he did so under cover of night. Nicodemus would not have wanted to advertise any association with this radical religious teacher about whom his community had such reservations. It seems that he couldn’t resist the impulse to learn more, however: he couldn’t dismiss his sense that “something is going on here….” We never actually find out, in John’s narrative, what Nicodemus wanted from Jesus, because immediately after his initial statement acknowledging Jesus as a “teacher who has come from God,” Jesus effectively takes over the conversation to launch into a line of instruction, with Nicodemus practically scrambling to keep up. Jesus’ instruction addresses what one needs in order to enter the kingdom of God. It includes a Greek term – anothen -that is difficult to translate, and that has caused consternation and controversy within Christian communities: Jesus tells Nicodemus EITHER: No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above. OR No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born again. Nicodemus assumes the second meaning and takes it literally; he gets stuck on and bewildered by the notion of a person having to physically re-enter the womb and experience literal rebirth. Jesus, of course, is talking about something else, about spiritual rebirth, about making a fresh start. He tells Nicodemus that rebirth is not a matter of the physical self, but of the spiritual self, and that it is the work of the Spirit, leading one to new life. This verse has been understood by some Christian groups as a specific requirement. Some believe and preach the necessity of being “born again” in a particular kind of experience, that one must have in order to be “saved”. This isn’t the way we understand things in the Episcopal Church. But back to our gospel passage. After the exchange about rebirth, Jesus’ meeting with Nicodemus transitions into a sermon. I already mentioned the fact that John’s gospel differs from the Matthew, Mark and Luke. It was written anywhere from twenty to forty years after the other gospels and includes long passages of discourse – some of them very long – that are attributed to Jesus, and that represent what the young church had come to believe about the purpose of Jesus’ life. John’s community told stories that have Jesus explaining the meaning of his life and ministry. The brief sermon that we hear Jesus offering to Nicodemus is one of these. It includes what may be most quoted verse in the Bible, a verse that Marin Luther described as “whole gospel in a single verse”, John 3:15: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. And the final verse of the text further reiterates and reinforces the theme of God’s expansive and inclusive love: Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. *** So what might Jesus’ words mean for us today? Is spiritual rebirth what we should be hoping for? Is it what the God who “so loved the world” wants for us? Is it something that takes place as an event that we should be seeking and working toward? Jesus tells Nicodemus that in order to see or enter the kingdom of God, a person must be born of the Spirit. Our ancestors in faith often assumed that in speaking of the kingdom of God, Jesus was speaking of a realm that exists outside of the world we live in, one that we can hope to enter after our physical life ends. Today we no longer understand God’s realm to be separate from our lives here and now. Today we understand Jesus to have been preaching about what former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry refers to as “God’s dream”, the community of love, justice, and peace that God intends for all of God’s creation. This reign of God is a time of living in right relationship with ourselves, with one another and with God; it is a reality we can build in the present, and it extends into the “eternal life” that Jesus speaks to Nicodemus about. To be “born of the Spirit”, I believe, simply means living a life that grows out of our relationship with God. I can best understand the idea of spiritual rebirth as being found in the gradual path of spiritual growth that we all work at over the course of our lifetimes. We work at spiritual growth through prayer and reflection, through study, through participation in worship, and through the experience of life in community, especially through our work together in service to others and to God’s world. Lent is the perfect time to focus on spiritual growth. I also know that we can also experience instances of dramatic change of our spiritual awareness, times when the circumstances or events of our lives produce in us real moments of transformation, of opening and expansion, of new self-knowledge and deepening in our relationship with God. Some of these times of change grow out of the joyful moments in life – I think of the birth of children and how profoundly that experience alters our view of what is important – but many times our spiritual development is painful, and grows out of times of loss and failure that bring us up short, requiring us to look at the truth of our lives in new ways. Jesus’ words to Nicodemus about spiritual rebirth suggest relationship and experience rather than doctrine and dogma. They describe a kind of spiritual growth that depends on courage and trust, but that leads to new possibilities of life marked by freedom, joy, peace, and love. And so, once again, I return to why I love Nicodemus. John’s gospel never tells us what impact the conversation with Jesus had on him, but the whole of John’s gospel provides quiet suggestions. Nicodemus appears two more times in John. As a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish court, John tells us that Nicodemus spoke up in defense of offering Jesus a fair trial, at the time of his arrest. And finally, Nicodemus is the one who brings myrrh and aloes, along with Joseph of Arimathea, to prepare Jesus’ body for burial after his crucifixion. Did Nicodemus turn toward rebirth, toward a life of faith in Jesus? It certainly seems to be John’s implication. Nicodemus’ story promises us that rebirth is possible, that change can happen. And if it can happen to Nicodemus, it can happen to us. May we, in this season of Lent, like Nicodemus, dare to bring our questions and our uncertainties forward before God. May we find in ourselves the will and the trust to invest in our own spiritual growth. In these violent and disturbing and frightening times, may we keep our eyes on Jesus. I came across a line that stayed with me, just yesterday. Quoted in the context of response to our nation’s attack on Iran, it also speaks to the work of investing in our own spiritual growth. It comes from Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jewish writer who was deported to and executed at Auschwitz. She said: “Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.* May we, through God’s grace, travel toward new life in community with our siblings in faith and live into an openness of heart, so that we, too, may be reborn of the Spirit. Amen *Cited in “Those Who Make Peace”, The Cottage, Diana Butler Bass, Feb 28, 2026  by Rev. Dr. Molly Scherm
On my day spent with my grandson Elliot this week, we played several rounds of his current favorite board game, “Race to the Roof”. Like the old game Chutes and Ladders, each player tries to get to the end first, by rolling dice. In Race to the Roof, if you roll a six, you pick a card that has a picture of an object found somewhere in the house – the teddy bear in the baby’s room, the turkey on the dining room table, the first aid kit in the bathroom, and the like – and when you’ve found the pictured object you then move to that room, either gaining or losing ground in your journey to the roof. Elliot desperately wants to roll sixes: it’s the basic thrill of gambling, but I’ll give him credit that when a card sends him back to the basement, he’s good humored about it. At four years old, he’s inclined to roll the die off the table and, when I can’t see it, tell me he rolled a six. Sometimes when he rolls a one or two, he simply asks “Can I roll again?”. It's Elliot’s desire for “do-overs” that was surfacing in my mind as I sat with this morning’s gospel lesson this week. We all want and long for do-overs, for second chances when the dice have not given us what we wanted. But often enough, the do-overs we want are the chance to rectify the mistakes that result from our own actions Many of our errors in life result from hurrying, or from not paying enough attention. My colleagues in St. Andrew’s Guild know that we need lots of do-overs in knitting and stitching – when you find that you dropped a stitch several rows back, or sewed a seam with the fabric facing the wrong way. These are trivial do-overs. Some of our more serious life errors are also results of not paying enough attention, or from rushing or carelessness. But many of the choices we make that we’d like a second chance at are from acts that we knew at the time were problematic – when we tried doing something the easy way rather than the hard-but-right way, or when we are acting out of fear, or selfishness. Sometimes we’re fortunate and we get do-overs, but in the more serious mistakes, the do-overs are usually not as easy as re-rolling the die in a board game or picking up a dropped stitch. Anyone familiar with 12-Step Programs used by Alcoholics Anonymous and other addiction-recovery programs is aware that among the important steps practiced in recovering from addiction and moving toward wholeness is the work of acknowledging harm that one actions have caused, and making amends. We can begin to move on when the person we have hurt chooses to forgive us, in time, or when we are able to rebuild what we lost. The wisdom behind this practice in 12-Step programs is that our errors - when we don’t do the work of taking responsibility and making amends – can become toxic in our lives. They DO US spiritual harm. The regret, guilt and shame of our wrongdoings - or, perhaps, the delusional self justification we engage in as a means of escaping our guilt – can cause us to become the secondary casualties of our own mistakes. Doing the work of fixing things we did wrong the first time is deeply important. And tragically important is the fact that some mistakes can’t be undone, or made amends for, and the consequences can last a lifetime. I still think about a wonderful young man I worked with as a Student Leader in the dorm when I was on the faculty at Northfield Mount Hermon School. Not too long after his graduation he made the terrible mistake of driving under the influence and caused an accident that resulted in a death. I’m very sure that even having served a period of incarceration, he will never get over that mistake. *** What does this have to do with this 3rd Sunday of Easter? Today’s gospel from John is a wonderful, interesting story with lots of implications, but one of its themes is that it’s a do-over story, a story of Jesus’ providing the second chance that Simon Peter quite desperately needs. But first, a comment about historical context – Today’s gospel from John 21 is the third and final post resurrection appearance of Christ in John’s gospel. It immediately follows last week’s story of Jesus’ appearance to the disciples on the day of the resurrection, his gift of the Holy Spirit, and his appearance a week later to Thomas. Today’s breakfast on the beach is the ending of John’s Gospel. Do you remember how last week’s gospel ended? Here’s what we heard: Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. Sounds like the ending, doesn’t it? But then in the following chapter, today’s gospel, we hear that Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Galilee. It happened this way, And we hear about a disappointing fishing trip, a stranger on the shore giving advice, a miraculous catch, a breakfast cooked on a fire, and then an intimate and powerful exchange between the resurrected Christ and the disciple Peter. Scholars conclude that this 21st chapter of John, like the ending of Mark, is a later add-on to the gospel’s original form. It’s believed that what sounds like an ending after the Thomas story WAS the original ending. But the Johannine community, later, felt a need to tack on one more story (and at its end we get a second summary conclusion.) We can speculate on why this additional story was important – and many have – but one of the most compelling theories is that the community needed to account for Peter’s prominence in the leadership of the early church, especially in the light of the damning story of Peter’s denial of Jesus after Jesus’ arrest. Peter is the one who initiates the nighttime fishing expedition that brings up nothing but empty nets. When the stranger on the shore suggests where to drop the net that is then filled with fish, John exclaims to Peter, “It is the Lord!” Peter’s response - not unlike Adam and Eve in the Garden hiding themselves when God appears after they have eaten the fruit – is to cover himself and to jump out of the boat. Peter is frightened. Peter is ashamed. He is does not want to face the Master who predicted that Peter would deny him, and who Peter did, in fact, deny three times. Somehow, the return to shore and the need to haul in the net with its enormous catch enables Peter to get beyond his own distress and withdrawal, and he rejoins the group, now being fed the meal Jesus had prepared - a breakfast of fish and bread. It is after the meal has ended that the important moment comes: When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” Jesus asked Peter the question not the once, but three times. Did Peter notice the details that John wants us, as readers, to notice – that the triplicate question giving Peter the opportunity to affirm his relationship with Jesus is a parallel to that earlier moment when Peter did it wrong, both exchanges taking place around a charcoal fire? In the first instance Peter’s fear prevented him from owning his relationship. Finally, he is able to affirm that his bond with Jesus is that of love. Jesus is not only giving Peter a do-over, but he gives him the blessing of a purpose, as well: Feed my lambs. Feed my sheep. Jesus gives Peter the gift of forgiveness, but he also gives him the reason to move forward beyond the fear and shame that have paralyzed him, and he gives him the work that will fill up his moving beyond. And the story ends as it began, with Jesus’ invitation to Peter, to disciples, to us, to Follow me. Jesus’ final gift to disciples (in John) is gift of encouragement, of nourishment, of reminding them who they are, who they are called to follow and who they are called to be. Likewise, this is Jesus’ gift to us. In baptism we are commissioned to share life and ministry of Jesus, but remembering how to do it is hard. We fall short. Get sidetracked. We compromise. We fail to follow through. We get discouraged. We fall back to old ways, failing to bear witness to faith in living Christ. So WE need lots of do-overs. Jesus stands on shore saying “Try again”. “Put your net on the other side.” God looks beyond our failures. She not only accepts our shortcomings and invites us to try again, He not only feeds us, but God also invites us to give what we have - to bring ourselves, our skills & resources, our love – to the feast. As Jesus did with Peter, God gives us do-overs. God calls us to follow, to live in Christ, to feed God’s sheep. Alleluia, Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia. |
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