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!)
Some of you may have read, as my mother and I read, this past Thursday’s Portals of Prayer devotion, written by Mrs. Heather J. Weber of Moline, Illinois, on a portion of today’s Gospel Reading. She mainly focused on the number of large fish that miraculously filled the disciples net, 153, which total she reported that Biblical-numbers experts explained means abundance, and she said, “abundance is the real story”. Perhaps “abundance” was “the real story” for that short personal or family devotion, but focusing on abundance alone may be, as it were, missing the sea for the fish! In the full Gospel Reading, the Divinely-inspired St. John introduces the account by saying that “Jesus revealed Himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias”, and similarly he concludes the account by saying that “This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after He was raised from the dead.” Those statements certainly seem to indicate that the “real story” is the resurrected Jesus’s revealing Himself to His disciples. And, as we consider primarily the Gospel Reading, this morning we realize that “The Resurrected Jesus reveals Himself to you”.
As we heard in last week’s Gospel Reading (John 20:19-31), the resurrected Jesus had already come and stood among His disciples twice: on the evening of that first day of the week when Jesus rose and again eight days later, which two occasions arguably were sufficient as St. John called for you to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing have life in His Name. Yet, St. John still tells of this third revelation of Jesus to seven disciples and the interactions that Jesus had with St. Peter, one of which we heard as part of the Gospel Reading (confer John 21:20-23), and that is before the Gospel account ends with a final statement about the truth of St. John’s testimony and a final suggestion that the world might not be able to contain the books if every one of the things that Jesus did were to be written (John 21:24-25).
In today’s Gospel Reading, just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore, yet the disciples in the boat did not know that it was Jesus; they needed Him to reveal Himself to them. Whatever the reason for their not knowing Jesus on that particular occasion, their not knowing Jesus reminds us that by nature none of us knows Jesus but needs Him to reveal Himself to us. Likewise Saul in today’s First Reading (Acts 9:1-22) did not know the Resurrected Jesus when He first appeared to Saul on his way to Damascus, and, to St. John in today’s Second Reading (Revelation 5:1-14), the Lion of the tribe of Judah was revealed as a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain (confer Genesis 49:9; Dargatz, CPR 29:2, p.34). We by nature do not know Jesus and need Him to reveal Himself to us because the original sin that we inherit and the actual sins that we commit as a result leave us estranged from God and hostile to Him, deserving of nothing but death here and now and torment in hell for eternity.
When Simon son of John had confessed Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus pronounced Simon blessed, for flesh and blood had not revealed Jesus’s identity to Simon but Jesus’s Father in heaven had revealed Jesus’s identity to Simon (Matthew 16:16-17). Of course, the Heavenly Father works through means, and in today’s Gospel Reading, the miraculous catch of fish, similar to one that had happened years earlier (Luke 5:1-11), led his sometimes rival St. John to tell Simon Peter that it was the Lord on the shore (confer John 20:4; 21:20-23). And so, instead of Simon’s telling Jesus, as he had the first time, to depart from him, a sinner, Simon son of Jonah threw himself into the sea, perhaps like his namesake, the prophet Jonah, who was thrown into the sea when caught fleeing from the presence of the Lord (Jonah 1:10, 15).
The Heavenly Father through the means of His read and preached Word confronts you and me over our sin, and He calls and so enables us to repent. By the power of the Holy Spirit, the Father reveals His and the Virgin Mary’s Son to us as resurrected from the dead—dead because early on a different morning all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put Him to death (Matthew 27:1). Yet, Jesus was crucified for your sins, my sins, and the sins of the whole world. God loved the world by giving His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). The Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29, 36) truly was slain but now stands again, and by His blood He ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. He reveals Himself as resurrected, and, as with His miracles (confer John 2:11), His people put their faith in Him, and God forgives them their sinful natures and all of their actual sin. He reveals Himself as resurrected and forgives us through His ministry of Word and Sacraments.
Some time on Easter Day the resurrected Jesus reportedly appeared apparently privately to Simon Peter (Luke 24:34; 1 Corinthians 15:5), in all likelihood privately absolving him then for his threefold denial on the night when Jesus was betrayed (for example, John 18:15-18, 25-27). In today’s Gospel Reading, on the occasion of the third revelation of Himself as risen, with the threefold repetition of a question, answer, and charge, Jesus perhaps publicly forgives Peter and, perhaps as a representative of the other apostles, reinstates Peter and the other apostles in the apostolic ministry that they share. All of them, and eventually also their successors, pastors today, were commissioned both to feed and tend Jesus’s lambs and sheep, pasturing them on His Word and to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that Jesus had commanded them (Matthew 28:19-20), including His Holy Supper (Matthew 26:26-29). And so in today’s First Reading Saul, having risen, was baptized and, having taken food, was strengthened. If that food and the breakfast of today’s Gospel Reading were not the Sacrament of the Altar, they certainly can point us to the Sacrament of the Altar, where bread and wine are Christ’s Body and Blood and give forgiveness, life, and salvation. Early Christian art depicted the Eucharist with seven people eating bread and fish (Brown, ad loc Jn 21:1-14, 1100), and later Leonardo Da Vinci’s popular “Last Supper” may also have had not only bread but also fish on the table. Regardless, as the Lord set apart the meal of the Gospel Reading by His presence and there abundantly provided for His disciples (confer Acts 10:41), so in the Sacrament of the Altar He is present with and abundantly provides for you and me.
As you and I are forgiven by God through His Word and Sacraments, we love God by doing good works in keeping with our various vocations. Recently in a session of youth catechesis, the catechumen and I read today’s Gospel Reading and discussed it as an example of love’s leading to good works (1991 Brief Explanation see under #24, p.61). In the case of Peter and nearly all of the other apostles, including St. Paul in today’s First Reading and in what follows in Acts, their good works according to their vocations led to their suffering and even death for God’s Name, as our good works according to our vocations may lead to our suffering and even death for God’s Name. As described in the Second Reading, we glorify God in the worship of His Church, and we may glorify God with our deaths as martyrs (confer John 12:33; 17:1; 18:32)—either way, we glorify God.
The “real story” of the Gospel Reading is that “The Resurrected Jesus reveals Himself to you”. Through His Word and Sacraments we are forgiven and led to do good works. As we prayed in the Collect of the Day, God grants to His faithful people, rescued from the perils of everlasting death, perpetual gladness and eternal joys.
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 + + +