Listen to the sermon with the player below, or, download the audio.
+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The Third Sunday of Easter this year gives us both the third time that St. John records Jesus’s being revealed to a group of His disciples after He was raised from the dead and the exchange between Jesus and Simon Peter on that occasion, which exchange, regardless of any intended differences between the Greek words used, itself included essentially the same three questions, three answers, and three charges. The third revelation of the resurrected Lord can be said to serve as a third witness, leaving us fully certain of the fact that Jesus rose from the dead, and the threefold questioning, answering, and charging can be said to show us that the Lord’s ministry is complete, finished, and definitive (Delling, TDNT 8:222). Together, the two parts of the Gospel Reading combine to show us that “The Resurrected Lord feeds us”.
There is some important background to today’s Gospel Reading that helps us realize that “The Resurrected Lord feeds us”, some of which background some of you may already know. First is that Jesus’s some three years earlier calling Simon Peter and the sons of Zebedee to follow Him and eventually catch people included a miraculous catch of fish from an unlikely place on that same body of water, which catch of fish left their nets breaking and Simon Peter falling down at Jesus’s knees politely requesting, if not ordering, Jesus to depart from Simon Peter for he was a sinful man (Luke 5:1-11). Second is that perhaps just more than one week earlier Simon Peter had both claimed that he would be more faithful than the other disciples (Matthew 26:33) and said that he even would lay down his life for Jesus, but Jesus had said that Simon Peter would deny Him three times (John 8:37-38), as, in fact, Simon Peter did, gathered around a different charcoal fire, in the courtyard of the high priest’s house, as the Lord Jesus spoke faithfully inside (John 18:15-27).
Peter did not live up to his promises in relationship to the Lord, and neither do we live up to our promises in relationship to the Lord. We may not scatter from Jesus as all the disciples did in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:56; Mark 14:50), and we may not deny even knowing Jesus in the dramatic fashion that Simon Peter did, but we scatter from Him and deny Him in our own ways. We fail to fear, love, and trust in Him above all things. So, we fail to use His Name as we should and to let His Word and Sacraments work in us as we should. We also fail to love our neighbors as ourselves, in regards to human authority, God’s gift of life, sexual purity, possessions, reputations, and being content with what God has given us. For as many times as we have sinned in those ways, Jesus could question us, whether we love Him more than anyone else or even love Him at all. Jesus’s repeated questions grieved Peter, perhaps as after his denials themselves Peter had gone out and wept bitterly (Luke 22:62). And, likewise we should grieve and weep over our sinful nature and all our sin, which merit death here in time and eternal torment in hell, unless we repent.
God truly calls and so enables us to repent. God’s law certainly shows us our sin, and His law may even produce in us sorrow over our sin, but God’s Gospel reveals to us our Savior from sin. What we inherit from our human parents is sinful and brings death, but He Whom our Heavenly Father reveals to us, His Son, the Christ, brings life (Matthew 16:16-17). When we turn in sorrow from our sin, trust Him to forgive our sin, and want to do better than to keep on sinning, then all of our sins “full and free forgiveness find” (Lutheran Service Book 485).
We find that full and free forgiveness because, in the words of today’s First Reading (Revelation 5:1-14), the Lamb of God was slain, and by His blood He ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. By the God-man Jesus’s death on the cross, He conquered sin, death, and the power of the devil for us. His resurrection from the dead declares that victory. He was slain but stands again. We can only speculate why Saul in the First Reading (Acts 9:1-22) and the disciples in the Gospel Reading did not at first recognize the resurrected Lord, but, as He was miraculously revealed to them, so He is revealed to us, and, like them, we love Him through faith (Stahlin, TDNT 9:133, with reference to John 16:27, and Scaer, CLD VIII, 75). Through that faith, we graciously receive forgiveness of our sinful nature and of our sin: of our not living up to our promises in relationship to the Lord, and of all our sin, whatever our sin might be. We receive that forgiveness through God’s Word and Sacraments.
The only other time that St. John reports the disciples’ being by the same body of water was when Jesus miraculously fed at least five‑thousand men with five loaves and two fish, having taken the loaves, and when He had given thanks, distributed them to those who were seated, and so also the fish, as much as they wanted (John 6:1-11). Then, as in the events of the Gospel Reading today, the bread was the main course, the fish a relish or side-dish, something to “go with” the bread. In the Sacrament of the Altar, what “goes with” the bread is the Body of Christ, as what “goes with” the wine is the Blood of Christ, given and shed for us, for the forgiveness of our sins. God’s chosen witnesses of the appearances of the resurrected Lord ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead (Acts 10:41), and similarly we eat and drink with Him here. In the First Reading, the Lord sent Ananias to Saul, and, after Saul was baptized, he took food and was strengthened. So also we who are baptized take this food and are strengthened and preserved in body and soul to life everlasting. By sending Simon Peter and the other disciples and their successors who all have a common commission (Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, 22, 30) “The Resurrected Lord feeds us”, His sheep, with real food that gives us the forgiveness of sins, and so also life and salvation.
We cannot help but notice that, as a result of his faithfully feeding, on the Resurrected Lord’s behalf, the sheep that were entrusted to him, St. Peter is usually held to have died a martyr’s death, as Jesus prophesied in today’s Gospel Reading, a martyr’s death that glorified God, somewhat like Jesus’s own death that death glorified God (John 12:23‑32). Traditionally all the other disciples with the exception of St. John are held to have been martyred, and others of the Lord’s ministers and all of His people similarly can glorify God in their suffering, if not also in their deaths (1 Peter 4:16). In His wisdom, God permits all our suffering, whether or not the suffering is specifically for His sake. And, God gives us the grace that we need in order to get through that suffering, whatever form it may take. And, when we fail to bear it as we should, with repentance and faith we live in His forgiveness of sins, as we do for all of our not living up to our promises in relationship to the Lord.
“The Resurrected Lord feeds us”. We do not depend on ourselves, but we depend on Him. Out of His great love for us, He has done all things necessary for our salvation: dying and rising for us and even giving us the faith that trusts that death in our place. Today’s Gospel Reading can leave us fully certain of the facts both that Jesus rose from the dead and that the Lord’s ministry is complete, finished, and definitive for our benefit. So, now, as we will for eternity, we join in the responsive song revealed to St. John: “Worthy is the lamb Who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.” “To Him Who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever.”
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +