Petrified

Preikestolen, Lysefjorden

Propers: The Third Sunday of Easter, AD 2022 C.

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Simon is a fisherman: tall, strong, skin bronzed by the sun, hands calloused from years casting nets into the Lake of Galilee. He’s a family man: works with his brother Andrew, has a good relationship with his mother-in-law, likely has a couple of kids. There are traditions about his children, and families claim descent from Simon to this very day.

He’s religious as well—though everyone is to some extent, especially back then. His brother Andrew is a follower of the prophet John the Baptist, a wild and woolly desert preacher proclaiming the imminent arrival of the Messiah. And when he points Him out—when John shakes his bony finger at Jesus and cries, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!”—the first person whom Andrew tells about this is Simon. And together they seek Jesus out.

Thus when Christ calls them to leave their nets and become “fishers of men,” it isn’t a bolt from the blue. They know who He is, and who they hope Him to be. For a rabbi to call a disciple is a rare and weighty honor, given to the gifted few. It’s not something that happens to fisherfolk, to grown men who spend their days at common labor. So of course they leave their nets to follow Jesus.

Simon’s defining characteristic in the Gospels is his impulsivity. He leaps before he looks—sometimes to his credit; other times, not so much. It’s Simon, recall, who first jumps from the boat when he sees Jesus walk on water. But as soon as he realizes just what he’s done, he calls out for help and begins to sink.

It is Simon who first proclaims, among the apostles, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, thus earning Jesus’ praise. Way to go, Simon. You win a gold star. But then he immediately squanders these brownie points by scolding Jesus for talking about how the Christ must suffer and die. So Jesus rebukes Simon as firmly as He’d just praised him. Easy come, easy go, I suppose.

Most famously, of course, Jesus gives to Simon a new name: Cephas, He calls him, Aramaic for “the Rock”—which in Latin is Petrus, and so then St Peter. “On this Rock,” says Jesus, “I will build My Church.” And that sounds pretty great, right? But keep in mind that Jesus also told us a parable about how some people accept His Word enthusiastically, only then to fall away when things get rough. “Such people are like rocky soil,” He said, having just named someone Rocky.

And this is no coincidence, for that’s precisely what Peter does. At the Last Supper, at the Passover meal before Jesus’ Crucifixion, Peter had been as enthusiastic and eager as ever. When Jesus stooped to wash his feet—a servant’s task and not a master’s—Peter pointedly refuses. “You shall never wash my feet, Lord!” But then Jesus says, “If I don’t wash you, you have no place with me.” And so unsubtle Peter turns on a dime: “Not my feet only, Lord, but my hands and my head!”

Then Jesus again speaks of how the Christ must suffer and die, and how all His friends shall abandon Him, and Peter sputters: “I will never abandon You, Lord! Everyone else might, but I won’t. I would lay down my life for You!” “Is that right, Peter?” replies Jesus. “Truly I tell you, before the cock crows this morning, you will deny Me no less than three times.” But Peter’s not buying it.

You know the story from here: the betrayal, the arrest, the garden of Gethsemane. When the guards come, Peter draws his sword and strikes off an ear—only to have Jesus rebuke him for it, and heal the man he has harmed. Peter then flees into the night; but not too far, it seems. He follows behind, along with John, as Jesus is arrested and beaten and taken to the palace of the High Priest. They’re able to get in the door, into the courtyard, because John has connections.

And there Peter gathers at a charcoal fire, trying to hear what’s happening while maintaining a low profile. Yet people start to recognize him; people start to wonder. “You,” someone says, “don’t I know you? Weren’t you with him?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Peter says. “Sure you do,” they say: “You’re a Galilean, one of his disciples.” “I don’t even know the guy,” Peter protests.

“Really?” they press. “Because you sure look like the nutjob who pulled out a sword and cut off my cousin’s ear.” And now Peter’s really scared, and he starts to fume and curse and swear: “I do not even know this man!” And just then the rooster crows. And Jesus turns to look at him, out there in the courtyard, and Peter realizes what he’s done, and in shame and anguish he runs away, breaks down and weeps.

It might not have been a literal rooster, mind you. Cockcrow was one of the hours of the night recognized by Romans, right around 3:00 a.m. It might have been a horn announcing the time, like church bells in the dark. But it hardly matters. Peter had been so sure that he would die for faith in Jesus. Yet when the time came, he scattered like the rest—and denied even that he knew the name of Jesus Christ his Lord. Rocky soil, my dear Christians. Rocky soil, every one of us.

But this of course is not the end of the story, neither of Jesus’ nor of Peter’s. We know now the Easter dawn that follows Friday’s night: the life that outlives death, the love that staunches hate, the open tomb and empty cross proclaiming death has died. Jesus Christ is risen! —and thereby saves us all.

And so it is that in the days after the Resurrection, Simon Peter finds himself once more on familiar ground, here at the Sea of Tiberias, the Lake of Galilee. And he does what he knows best; he does what he has been called to do. He goes fishing. And through the night they cast their nets until the break of dawn, having no luck, catching no catch, fishing no fish—until they see a figure calling to them from the shore, there in the predawn light, some hundred yards away.

“You’ve nothing to eat, now have you?” He calls across the waters. “Why not try the other side of the boat?” And this should sound familiar. For this is an incident also reported at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, when He first called to Peter. And just like that first time, this time they cast their nets, as they had all night, but now with Jesus’ word—and they reap a superabundance, the nets fairly bursting with fish! “It’s Him!” Peter hears. “It’s the Lord!”

So he leaps straight off the prow, leaving the others to haul in the fish, and he splashes and he clambers and he flounders up the shore; he simply cannot get to Jesus fast enough. And after they had eaten a breakfast, Jesus says to Peter: “Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?” And Peter says, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” And Jesus replies, “Feed My lambs.”

Then again, a moment later, Jesus asks, “Simon, do you love Me?” “Yes, Lord,” says Peter, “you know that I love you.” And Jesus says again, “Tend My sheep.” Yet once more, a third and final time, Jesus says, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me?” And Peter, now distressed, says: “Lord, You know everything. You know that I love You!” And Jesus says: “Feed My sheep.”

Only twice in the New Testament, in John’s Gospel, is a charcoal fire mentioned: first before the Crucifixion, and now after the Resurrection. That charcoal fire was Peter’s shame, the site of his threefold denial. But now it is his absolution, his restoration: thrice he denied Jesus; thrice now he is redeemed. And Jesus calls Peter to tend His sheep. The only other shepherd talk in all of John’s Gospel is when Jesus says that He is our Good Shepherd.

Peter’s calling now is to do as Jesus did, in fact to be who Jesus is: to be the Good Shepherd, to tend His flock, to feed His lambs, to love others in the very way that Christ has first loved us. Oh, and he will. Peter in time will go to Rome. He will convert the city that crucified Christ; thereby fulfilling the prophecy of Daniel, that a Rock from heaven would turn over the fourth empire to the saints of God. Peter will follow Jesus at the last, to die as Jesus died, as he promised he would.

Peter was broken, flawed, impulsive, at turns both courageous and cowardly. And he failed. He failed Jesus. But that didn’t stop Jesus from loving Him, from forgiving Him, from making him the Rock whom he was always meant to be. There is always forgiveness, my brothers and sisters, always resurrection, always new life. There is no limit to grace. Jesus is not done with you, not done with any of us, until the world at last has been remade and we are all brought home Him.

And until that day, we feed His sheep.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.