3rd Sunday of Easter: Cycle C 21-22
THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER
Acts 5:27-32, 40b-41 | Revelation 5:11-14 | John 21:1-19 or 21:1-14
May your people exalt forever, oh God, in renewed youthfulness of spirit so that, rejoicing now in the restored glory of our adoption, we may look forward in confident hope to the rejoicing of the day of resurrection. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.
Last Sunday we began the journey of these men that came to know Jesus so intimately. They spent three years with him, and in all that time they were struggling constantly with what they were taking in. They were listening to things that Jesus said. They watched him do miracles. They watched him do things that were extraordinary. They watched also a direction that seemed to be creeping into their work, that is this awesome power of the temple resisting over and over again the teaching of Jesus. So I don’t know what those three years must have been like, but they must have been extraordinarily confusing, I think. And so what we’re now in is we’ve seen the fullness of the revelation of Jesus on Easter and the whole notion of what he had come to establish, a kingdom inside the hearts of human beings in a way that we could live out a life like Jesus lived. The disciples were the ones called to be the first teachers of that life. And so remember, last week it was Jesus coming to the disciples, and where were they? They were terrified. They were locked in a room, and they were afraid of being destroyed by the same people that destroyed Jesus, by the temple. And Jesus came into that fear and calmed it and talked to them about what he was wanting them to become and what he wanted them to do. And the biggest thing he wanted them to realize was there was nothing in Jesus that held anything against them, that all he felt for them was love and an anticipation and an excitement for what he was going to invite them into. They were moving from being disciples to becoming apostles. What’s the difference? A disciple is a student, one who listens and integrates whatever they’re listening to and growing and changing, and then the word apostle means to be sent. So the apostle is the teacher. So these next few weeks, we’re going to be looking at this incredible interesting shift from a confusing, frightened part of the disciples’ life into this extraordinarily powerful, confident apostolic mission.
Now, one of the things I love about the Responsorial Psalms, because they often fit very beautifully, but there is something in this Responsorial Psalm that I really love. And that is it talks about the times when we might feel that God is angry with us and we struggle with our failures and our disappointments, and yet we’re told over and over again that God is not a judge but a helper, that he has care and intense desire to bring us into life. He has rescued us. I love that line. He has rescued us. So let’s think about then the relationship that God has with the disciples, that he’s come into their life to move them to a new level of understanding who they are and what they’re here for, and he’s calling them to be apostles. And he’s appeared to them. Let’s just take it from the chronological way in which we’re listening to the gospels during this seasons of Easter. But he’s already proven to them that he’s not angry with them, not resentful to them, and he wants nothing other than to be with them and for them to know that he loves them. And he gave them the most beautiful gift last Sunday when he said, “I want you to understand forgiveness. When you forgive someone, their sin disappears. If you hold that sin against them, they live in shame and guilt. I don’t want you to live in shame and guilt.” That’s the heart of the message of Jesus to these disciples who felt so bad that they weren’t able to be who they wanted to be for him. So now we have another beautiful experience for the disciples, and don’t take these post-resurrection experiences so literally. They do happen. Don’t get me wrong, but the chronology of it, it’s all about these are the things that happened to them in this process of growing and becoming who they were called to be. So they were — first they knew that this God loved them in spite of their failures, and he forgave them. Now he finds them being — they find Jesus now being the instructor, so to speak, the main teacher who is saying, “Now I’m turning my work over to you.”
So let’s look at this beautiful image of Jesus on the shore, inviting the disciples — I love this image — inviting them to breakfast, the beginning of a work day, breakfast. So they go out, and they’re fishing, and they’re not being successful. So what I like to think about, when I think about that, I think about the times that we are called into a new life by God, not necessarily a radical change of occupations but perhaps a different perspective, and oftentimes the old perspective might have given us a certain sense of satisfaction. It created something for us, but we grow into something greater, something more, let’s say, designed to be a source of life for other people. Once you begin to experience that, the old job, the old work of maybe trying to be the best you can doesn’t hold nearly its attraction. So they’re going back to their old work, and they’re going to see something about that work that is more about their new work than what it was in the past. And so Jesus is on the shore. He looks — he sees them. They don’t recognize him, as you just heard the story, and he gives them some advice. And the advice is to place your nets in a different place, shift your attention, go to this side over here where I’m telling you. It’s a different side of things. And so they do that, and you know they have this abundant, abundance of success, and they bring all these fish ashore. And as soon as the miraculous sense of what is happening takes place, the one disciple that knew Jesus the best, even though no one recognized him before that moment, John said, “Oh my God, it’s Jesus.” And then Peter, the one who’s being called to lead the others, takes his leadership role, dives into the water and comes to Jesus. And what they do, what does Jesus do for them, which I love? He sits them down, and he said, “Let me feed you. Let me feed you.”
Now, think how important this is as a symbol of what it is that God is asking his disciples to do through the words of Jesus. He’s saying, “I want you to be my teachers. I want you to be the ones that establish this kingdom, and I want you to go to different parts of the world. I want you to reach everyone eventually.” But you know how the disciples did it. They spread out, and they went to different churches, and they began their teaching. And this is the moment when they were, in a sense, commissioned to do that, and what the commission is about is so essential, I think. When you listen to the images carefully, they’ll give you a real — they’ll give you a beautiful image of the heart of what it means to be an apostle, a teacher.
So the first thing that Jesus does after he feeds them, he calls Peter, and he says, “Peter, I want you to let me know something. Do you love me? Do you really — do you really understand who I am, and do you understand that God is in me? And do you understand what the God that created you is doing for you, how he’s forgiven all your failures, and he wants you to do something wonderful for him? Are you open to that? Do you love this message? Do you accept it?” “Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Yes, I do.” And then he asks him to do something, and it’s the asking of what he’s wanting from Peter that I want you to play close attention to. It’s the nature of what it means to be an apostle. We’re all called to teach, to preach, and I love the words of St. Francis when he told his disciples — he said, “You need to teach and preach constantly, and only when necessary, use words.” So what Peter is being challenged to do is to understand from the words of Jesus in this moment that there’s a ministry that’s so essential and so critical, and if he deviates from it, it will not work. And it’s in the questions he asked him when he said, “Do you love me?” “Yes.” “Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to feed my lambs.” And when something’s repeated, you know it’s really important, so he does it again. “Do you love me?” “Yes.” “Tend my sheep.” He changed it, not feed lambs but tend sheep, and then he says once again, “Do you love me?” And he said, “Tend my sheep.” Now, what does that mean? Well, let’s first look at the — one of the things that’s interesting is one is sheep and one is lambs. What’s a lamb? A lamb is a baby sheep. So it’s like, “I want you to go and bring this message to people who are children, who don’t understand it, whose minds are hopefully open, but they need to be taught.” Children need to be shown things. They need to be taught.
What is the thing that Jesus came to give the world? The truth. He’s the food of life. When you imagine the image of Eucharist — we’ve just gone through that through this whole wonderful Easter week, and we know that Jesus said, “This is my body. Take it in. I am with you. I am your nurturing life.” And if you look at John’s gospel, what does he say? That nurturing quality of Jesus inside of you, it’s the truth incarnate. It’s the truth, to see the world as it is, who you are in it, who God is, why we’re here. That’s what an apostle needs to do, to awaken people when they’re young, when they’re impressionable, and that has nothing to do with age but when their heart is finally broken open and they want to know the truth. Teach them.
Then he changes it. He then says, “Do you love me?” “Yes.” “Well, tend my sheep.” Now, this is really important. Why is one feed with the truth and the other is tend? What does it mean to tend? Well, if you look it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, to tend means to pay attention to, to listen to, to bend your ear toward. What’s so beautiful about that is there’s one thing about bringing somebody into a new way of life when you’re giving them direction and you’re asking them to try this new life and to live it as abundantly as they can, and if you just give them that message and walk away from them, you’re not really an apostle. What you want to do is stay with them, tend them, pay attention to their struggles, to their weaknesses, to their need to be encouraged, to facing their failures. It’s the most essential thing in any relationship if you want it to grow. You can share who you are with someone. They share who they are with you, and you find out about each other, and there’s knowledge in that. The truth of each of us comes through in a relationship, and you want the other to be basically there for you, and you want to be there for them. All of that’s important, but if you’re not tending each other, listening to each other, paying attention to what’s below the surface, you can’t be a good teacher. And then he goes back in the third question and says, “But feed my sheep.” So he’s saying, “Feed them when they’re young. Tend them as they’re growing, and then continue. If you’re tending them well, you can continue to add new insight after new insight, and they will understand, and they will grow. What an incredible promise. That’s the challenge of not only being an apostle, but that’s the challenge of being in a role that God wants us to be in and to receive it, tending.
There’s a moment in the Garden of Gethsemane that I just want to mention really quickly, and it was when the soldiers from the temple came, and Jesus was there. And someone — they were going to take Jesus, and then one of the disciples cut off one of the ears of the people from the temple. And one of the things that’s so interesting about that is it might have been a sign that the temple was notorious for not listening, not tending, not caring, and nothing is further from the one — the church that God wants for us to teach and to learn about. Amen.
Father, your longing, your desire is to open us to all that you have revealed to us through your life on this planet, and we have a hard time so often discerning it all. What we need to keep remembering is your desire was not just fulfilled in any way, shape or form through the scriptures, but it’s your desire to be in our life now, feeding us with information, feeding us with insight and tending us so that we continue to grow without fearing our mistakes and fearing our weaknesses. Bless us with this food and this care for it is our inheritance, and without it we are lost. And we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.