Service for May 4 Third Sunday of Easter

Sermon for May 4, 2025 Third Sunday of Easter Pastor Val Metropoulos

The disciples, at this point in the Easter story have already seen the risen Jesus but we get the sense that they didn’t know what to do with that experience. They had no way to integrate the Jesus they had seen die on a cross with the Jesus who appeared to them in a locked room. They had no framework that could accommodate both of those events into anything that made sense.

From all they had seen, they expected Jesus would conquer their enemies in a spectacular way, “the coming of a comet”: the mighty empire Rome defeated, and the faith of Abraham, Isaac and Moses redeemed for all the world to see. But what they got was Jesus, the one who had died, now apparently alive again. Not a god of power, not even a man of steel. Jesus is a man marked by his suffering, bearing the scars of the nails in his hands and feet and the piercing of his side. He is alive but he is flesh and bone: changed, now able to appear in a locked room, but still much the same as the Jesus they knew.

They were floundering and so they return to what they know. They go fishing.

And Jesus meets them there on the seashore, on the beach, offering some fishing advice, cooking up the fish they caught thanks to his encouragement. He serves them and he shows them the way forward. He offers them truth not triumph. Hope not the hallelujahs of the crowds.

Following Jesus, for those first disciples and for us, there will be no military victories. There will be food enough for everyone. With Jesus as our teacher there will be time with each other. There will be real conversation that does not ignore past pain. Conversation that strengthens relationships that had been damaged.

Peter who betrayed Jesus three times is given three chances to proclaim his loyalty to Jesus. Peter was already forgiven. Jesus had accomplished that on the cross. But now Peter knows it, deeply. He was lost but now he’s found. He was broken and now he’s whole. The church that still follows Jesus to this day, began then and there on that quiet beach.

We might think that forgiveness for Peter’s sin was not that big a deal. But, that “real” sinners, people who have committed crimes, or maybe even for us, if we admit our own sins, surely God requires real repentance, proof of regret, before real sinners can be forgiven?

I return again and again to the Biblical story and find reasons to trust it, not only because it is a beautiful story about God’s love for humanity and for all of creation – which it is! What won’t let me go, what I find compelling is the truth it tells about humanity, the truth that the Biblical story tells about me. That truth-telling compels me to return to it again and again and to trust it.

Before we give in to the temptation to think some people’s sins require greater repentance than others, we return to this truth-telling book that gives us the story of Saul, transformed as we heard in the first reading today into Paul. But, remember that wasn’t the first time we heard of Saul. Earlier on in the book of Acts we heard that Saul was hunting down Christians, dedicated to keeping the purity of his Jewish faith intact when he comes upon Stephen who has been speaking truth to the powerful Jewish leaders, forcing them to face the truth of how badly they had been leading the people.

Let’s hear a bit of that story from the book of Acts:

When the [Jewish leaders] heard [Stephen saying] these things, they became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen.[j] 55 But filled with the Holy Spirit, he [Stephen] gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 “Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” 57 But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him. 58 Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. (Saul, the one who organized the mob to hunt down the Jesus followers!)

59 While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60 Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he died.”

Now, Saul is on his way to Damascus to hunt down more Christians, when the forgiveness that Stephen prayed for is realizedin the “sudden appearance of a light from heaven” around Saul. Even this man, Saul, who was responsible for the torture and death of so many people who were guilty only of following Jesus, even this man is forgiven before he even thinks to ask for forgiveness! Robert Wall says, “The real climax of the story is not Saul’s conversion from moral morass to virtuous living or from Judaism to Christianity; … Saul’s turn to Jesus rights him for a future scripted by God as “a chosen instrument to bring [Jesus’] name to the Gentiles and .. the people of Israel…” (9: 15-16).

Saul becomes Paul and spreads the message of Jesus across 10,000 miles before dying a martyr's death in Rome. He experienced Jesus in a flash of light and a voice, and his life was changed so that he could tell the story of God’s love in Jesus and that changed the world, all without a word of repentance from Saul.

Those fishermen after eating breakfast on the beach with Jesus, will never go back to their old lives. The resurrection of Jesus was their resurrection as well, a resurrection from a life of desperation, fear, and hopelessness to one of abundance: abundant hope, abundant community, abundant grace. They had experienced a conversion, a turning from the old way of life and toward the abundance and grace of God’s love. Like Saul, the disciples turn toward Jesus who “rights them for a future scripted by God as a chosen instrument to bring” God’s name wherever it is needed.

Here on the beach around a few fish and a charcoal fire Jesus shows them how to live. Jesus uses words and actions to tell them: “Don’t try to do it on your own. I am with you. Ask for my help and I will help you find what you seek. Begin where you are with what is right in front of you: Your friends are hungry so feed them. The sheep are wandering, so guide them home. There is shame and disappointment over past mistakes. Face it head on to restore that relationship. Then eat, and laugh and relish the goodness of life.”

Those fishermen will go out and tell the world about Jesus, one small group at a time, always beginning with one person just as we tell the story one person at a time. You tell your story. Your conversion, your understanding that you are God’s beloved that you have been forgiven of everything; that you are worthy and beautiful just as you are, no matter what you have done or left undone; all of that is for a purpose. God’s love is for a purpose! Each of us is beloved and saved not just for ourselves; but “for a future scripted by God as a chosen instrument to bring” God’s name wherever it is needed.

This is hard work! Forgiveness is hard work! In her poem, Phase One, Dilruba Ahmed writes, “forgiving myself is the “first phase” of spiritual maturity. It’s a necessary beginning. Compassion towards myself liberates me to love others.” In the last four lines of her poem, Ahmed even forgives herself for not forgiving herself. She writes, I forgive you “For being unable / to forgive yourself first so you / could then forgive others and / at last find a way to become / the love that you want in this world.”

You’ve probably heard about the Japanese technique of Kitsugi, where damaged pottery is repaired by fusing the pieces together with gold. In kintsugi, instead of hiding the flaw in a piece of broken pottery, the artist highlights and even celebrates the damage by repairing it with gold. The restoration is more beautiful than the original precisely because of, rather than in spite of, its repaired brokenness.

Kintsugi is a philosophy that understands that breakage and repair are normal parts of life. Instead of denying or hiding our faults and failures, we embrace our imperfections. We tell the truth that the wear, and tear, and damage are marks of beauty to treasure and honor, not a reason to discard what is broken.

Kitsugi is truth telling that gives us life. Like a gold-dusted piece of repaired pottery, like Saul and Peter, and every other human being, we learn that there can be beauty in brokenness. We are already forgiven. We are already loved.

As those who love Jesus, we have been forgiven and given our purpose in this life just as he gave it to Peter: feed, tend, follow. Feed the hungry. Tend to the needy. Follow Jesus in Jesus’ way for the sake of a future scripted by God. Amen.