The Third Sunday of Easter - May 4, 2025 - Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Wallens

St. Pauls - Easter 3 - May 4, 2025

This week’s Gospel reading begins with shame so thick, it makes me cringe.  It begins with the disciple Peter battling his shame on a fishing boat in the Sea of Tiberias.  Peter the Rock.  Peter whom Jesus astounded with a miraculous catch of fish.  Peter, a fisher of men. Peter who proclaimed Jesus the Son of God before any other disciple dared to. Peter whose mother-in-law Jesus healed. Peter who walked on water.  Peter who saw Jesus transfigured on a mountaintop. Peter who promised to stay by Jesus’s side even unto death.  Peter whose courage failed so catastrophically around a charcoal fire on the night of Jesus’s arrest that I’ll bet he expected to spend the rest of his life fleeing from that single, searing memory:  Hey! I saw you with Jesus!  You must be one of his followers.  No.  No, I am not! I swear, I don’t even know the man. 

That complicated, wounded Peter returns to his fishing boat.  Isn’t that what we all do when we’re ashamed?  Retreat to whatever is safe, comfortable, and familiar? Run headlong towards something — anything– that will help us feel competent and worthy again?  Peter flees to his boat, his nets, his vocation before Jesus.  As if there is some time or place in his life where shame is not.  Where his wound is not.  Where Jesus is not.

But of course, there is no time or place in our stories where Jesus isn’t.  He is just as present in our fleeing as he is everywhere else.  Just as loving in the midst of our failures as he is when we succeed.  It’s not Jesus who has stakes in drawing out our humiliation or maximizing our penance.  That stuff is on us.  It’s on our flawed theologies.  Our voyeuristic obsession with other people’s failures.  Our need to rebuke and shame wrongdoers in order to keep ourselves pure. Jesus doesn’t have those flaws, obsessions, or needs; his will is reconciliation, and his pleasure is grace.

But Peter doesn’t know this.  So he spends a long night trying to catch fish without Jesus, and he fails.  Dawn breaks, Jesus shows up, a miraculous catch follows the night of futility, and Peter finds himself, breathless and soaked, sitting by a charcoal fire.  Again. Looking into the eyes of the Lord he thrice denied.  Again. Facing three costly questions.  Again.

What I find both searing and instructive in this story is the way Jesus saves Peter by returning him to the source of his shame.  He doesn’t wrap the humiliated disciple in gauze.  He doesn’t avoid the hard conversation.  He doesn’t pretend that Peter’s denials didn’t happen and didn’t wound.  But neither does Jesus preach, condemn, accuse, or retaliate.  He feeds. He feeds Peter’s body and then he feeds Peter’s soul.  He surrounds the self-loathing disciple with tenderness and safety, inviting him to revisit his shame for the sake of healing, restoration, and commissioning: Do you love me?  Do you love me?  Do you love me?  Feed my sheep. 

As I meditate on Peter’s story, I wonder what our failures would feel like if we offered each other the safety Jesus offers his disciple.  The safety to return to the heart of our wrongdoing and despair.  The safety to wrap fresh language around our failure. The safety to experience unconditional love in the midst of our shame.  The safety to try again.  What would our witness look like if the Church epitomized Jesus's version of reconciliation?  What would the world be like if Christians were known as the people to run to in times of humiliation?  Can we, like Jesus, become sanctuary for the shamed?

Around the fire Jesus builds, Peter’s fear and denial (I don’t know the man!) evolves into trust and worship: Lord, you know everything.   You know that I love you.  In the end, Peter realizes that it’s what Jesus knows that matters.  Jesus knows that we’re more than our worst failures and betrayals.  He knows that we’re prone to shame and self-hatred.  He knows the deep places we flee to when we fail.  And he knows how to build the fire and prepare the meal that will beckon us back to shore.  

Jesus’s appearance to Peter — like all of the post-resurrection appearances the Gospels record — speaks volumes about God’s priorities. 

In the days following the resurrection, Jesus doesn’t waste a moment on revenge or retribution.  He doesn’t storm Pilate’s house, or avenge himself on Rome, or punish the soldiers whose hands drove nails into his.  Instead, according to the gospels he spends his remaining time on earth, feeding, restoring, and strengthening his friends.  He calls Mary Magdalene by name as she cries. He offers his wounds to the skeptical Thomas.  He grills bread and fish for his hungry disciples.  He heals what’s wounded and festering between his heart and Peter’s.

In other words, Jesus focuses on relationship.  On reconciliation.  On love.  He spends the last days before his ascension delivering his children from fear, despair, self-hatred, and paralysis.  He wastes no time on triumphalism or smugness.  Even at the height of his power, he chooses humility.  He chooses to linger on a lonely beach till dawn, waiting for his hungry children to realize how much they need him.  He chooses to ask Peter an honest and vulnerable-making question about denial, even though the answer might hurt.  He chooses to feed and tend his sheep.  

Peter’s shame meets Jesus’s grace, and Jesus’s grace wins.  That’s the Gospel story in a nutshell.  As writer and research professor Brené Brown puts it, Shame cannot survive being spoken. Meaning, shame cannot survive the living Word.  Shame cannot tolerate the resurrection.  When shame encounters the God who is Love, it burns to ash and scatters.

In all the gospels, Jesus’ resurrection is more about what the disciples are to do than what Jesus is doing. In each of the three accounts the disciples are left to continue the story, or to not. The gospel writers leave the story open-ended with something left to do, something more to happen. 

And that makes me wonder, what if the resurrection event isn’t the end of the story but a new beginning? What if the resurrection event isn’t an answer but a question? What if the resurrection event is a call awaiting a response, an insistence awaiting existence, a longing and desire awaiting fulfillment? 

That call, that insistence, that longing and desire are about more life; baptism, empowerment, peace, good news. Resurrection means more life and more life is the only proper response to resurrection. After all isn’t that the reason Jesus came? I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly, Jesus says (Jn. 10:10). More life. That’s what Jesus is about and that’s what resurrection is about. 

Jesus’ resurrection is a call insisting you and I give existence to more life, whether for ourselves or another. We are the ones to continue the story of resurrection. We are the ones to give concrete existence to resurrection.

That sure seems to be the way St. John describes it in today’s gospel. It’s Jesus’ third appearance following his resurrection on Easter Sunday and it ends with Jesus saying, Follow me. St. John leaves the resurrection as a story to be continued just like Matthew, Mark, and Luke do.

There’s something about resurrection, about following Jesus, that asks us to get up and move: to do something; to cast our net on the other side of the boat and do things differently; to come and have breakfast and begin a brand new day, a new life; to give existence to more life. And it’s not limited to the end when Jesus says, Follow me. It’s the same insistence and calling that began St. John’s account of the gospel when Jesus says, Come and see. Resurrection is God’s continuing insistence and call for more life.

There’s also something unknown, unknowable, and unforeseeable about this insistence and calling. Jesus does not say where they will go, what they will do, what they will see, or even what it means to follow him. We often understand following Jesus as imitating him, being copy cats, and asking ourselves, What would Jesus do?

How are we supposed to know what Jesus would do in our time and place? There are so many different interpretations and meanings of what he did in his earthly life and what he would do today. We are seeing many different ways of following him today in this country. And today is a very different time and context from when Jesus walked the earth. Maybe we don’t need the one right answer….maybe what we do need is a life giving answer. That’s what Jesus would do. Jesus would give life and more life. That’s the thread that runs through each of the gospels. What does that mean for us today?

It means we must listen, and listen deeply, to the hopes, needs, and pain of our lives, the lives of others, and the life of the world. Instead of asking what would Jesus do, maybe we need to ask what would bring more life, more healing, more love, more compassion to whatever we are facing. We must discern the possibility for more life in each particular situation and then do something to give existence to that more life. We don’t need a literal reproduction of what Jesus did. We need a creative reproduction, a creative repetition of Jesus but with a difference so it fits our life and world. 

What might more life look like for you today and for those you love? For those who have hurt you and those you have hurt? For those who frighten you? For those who are just like you and for those who are your exact opposite? In what ways can you give existence to more life for yourself, others, the world? How will you answer the resurrection question? 

As you ponder the resurrection question….. May your path be blessed by the One who is your love, your purpose, and your life!