Mass readings for the 3rd Sunday of Easter:
Acts 5.28-32, 40b-41 Psalm 30.1, 3-5, 10, 11a, 12b Revelation 5.11-14 John 21.1-19
The gospel passage today is one of the most touching scenes in all of literature, sacred and profane. We have the reconciliation of Peter with our Lord, there on the beach, by a campfire (as Canadians, I’m sure many have had this experience at the cottage, on a camping vacation). There’s a sense of intimacy about it that draws us in, as surely as the other disciples were drawn in to listen intently to this conversation. They had a stake in it too. Although Peter was probably the most fraught with guilt over his cowardice on the night of Jesus’s trial, his threefold denial of Christ before the cock crow nagging him; they all had failed their master.
So, when we read this story, it’s not just about Peter. We often read the name “Peter” as standing for the church leadership, the Pope himself, with regard to the authority Christ confers. In this instance it really is about us all as the Church, as a people meant to share in the work of the Church; because while Peter has his particular mandate of leadership, we all have our responsibilities. We all are to feed and tend the faithful. The pastor, his parish; the father, his household; the mother her children; the teacher, his students; the politician, the public, and so on. Of course, the greater weight of responsibility for sound teaching rests on the shoulders of the successors of the apostles, the bishops, but as the body of Christ, head to toe, we are all engaged in the work of care, nurture, feeding and increasing of God’s family.
Three things stand out for me. Peter’s guilt, and so, a sense of unworthiness to be whom Jesus calls him to be. This leads to the second, Peter’s lack of confidence; that he will fail again, that he’s just not up to the job. Lastly, perhaps as a result of this internal personal crisis, there’s Peter’s apparent obliviousness to the significance of the resurrection. He’s seen the risen Lord, and yet he’s strangely quiet about it; and keeps himself and the other apostles busy, not in sharing this tremendous news, but instead he takes them fishing!
Christ calls each and every one of us to something more than being passive recipients of his grace in sacrament and word. These are to activate us, and propel us into the world. Here we are in “mass” – do you know why it’s called the Mass? It’s a word derived from the final words of the old Latin liturgy: ite, missa est – “go, you are sent out.” The Church takes from this is an apostolic mandate: go, out into the world, you who have been filled with the Holy Spirit, fed the body and blood of Christ, formed by God’s Holy Word; you’ve work to do.
This time here is not merely for personal spiritual sustenance, but is meant to enable us to do God’s work, in small things and in big ways. To be kind to the stranger, loving to friends and family, but also to share the Good News through word and deed, and so spread the gospel, and offer the chance of salvation to others.
This gospel story opens with a miraculous catch of fish. Jesus, unrecognized by the apostles, calls to them to let their nets down, and at a place too close to shore to have any chance of catching anything. Yet, the net is filled. And we might remember that this is what happened the first time Peter met Jesus. Then known as Simon, Jesus told him to let down the nets after a night years before when they were coming in empty. A huge catch of fish was the result then. Simon Peter fell at our Lord’s feet and begged, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.” Yet Jesus tells him to get up, that he will teach him to be a catcher of people. Swept up in the moment, Simon Peter leaves his fishing business behind and spends years following our Lord.
In today’s story we find Peter back where he started. Now, he has been told, along with the other disciples, to go to the Galilee, to wait for the Lord. He has seen Jesus risen from the dead; yet we don’t see him spreading this news around the lakeshore. Jesus never swore him to silence about the resurrection. And yet, all he can think to do is to go back to fishing, back to his life before he knew Jesus. We see this reversion in the encounter on the shore, who takes the lead in hospitality? – Jesus. He invites the disciples to breakfast; they stand around muttering, and they don’t protest. Remember when Jesus went to wash their feet the night of his betrayal, Peter protested: no Lord, I’ll wash your feet! Don’t hear any offers from them to do the cooking. He gathers them around the fire; and he begins the work of rebuilding them as true disciples, starting with Peter. Just as Peter denied Jesus three times, Christ three times asks him this question: do you love me more than everything else? To which Peter, replies, each time, “yes, Lord, I do.” Yet in the last instance, we hear that Peter feels hurt! Really, after all that happened, Peter is the aggrieved party. I caution us when reading these accounts, we’re getting the highlights from a longer conversation in which Jesus finds it necessary to bring Peter back to this question again and again. What are they talking about? Not sure, but Jesus’ insistence that Peter affirm his commitment seems a test of the apostle; and its more for Peter’s sake than anything to do with Jesus having doubts. Peter needs to be convinced that he can tend and feed the flock.
Now this conversation in part is about Peter, but still, it applies to us. Yes, Jesus addresses Peter personally, telling him something of how he will die, how he will be led by others to where he does not want to go. As most of us come to our eventual end; leaving our homes to go someplace, a nursing facility, a geriatric ward, a hospice, it too will be a place we’d rather not go. Now, I would think that not so ominous for us, yet it’s similar enough to give us pause to consider what time we have to discharge our duty to God, if not in beginning or increasing now a real devotion to his Word, his Sacraments, but also in his ministries in which we are all called to share: those of worship, prayer, teaching, and serving, of hospitality and catechism, of material and spiritual works of mercy.
Do we love Christ? Yes? Then let us tend the sheep, let us feed the little lambs and the grown sheep too. That is the proof of our love. Jesus said, “follow me.” And we most assuredly do, in first our worship together where we say to God, but also to ourselves, “yes, Lord, I love you above all else,” then in teaching the faith to the children and the adults of our parish, in offering hospitality and fellowship as a community of faith and as individuals, all from our love of Christ, in the power of the resurrection, abiding in the Holy Spirit.
Amen.