Sermon of the Week
When God Breaks (Open) Your Heart
A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on May 12, 2019.
#pcusa
Keywords: Good Shepherd, Retribution, Reconciliation, Feed my Sheep
Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Psalm 23
and John 21:15-19
It should be no secret that I like to linger with these so called post-resurrection stories.
They’re the handful of episodes that the gospels record
about Jesus interacting with his friends and loved ones
after Easter morning, after the tomb is discovered open and Jesus himself not there.
There aren’t many of these stories. Not enough of them.
You get the stories of Easter morning
with all that frenetic energy and running back and forth.
John tells us about the closed and locked room
and Jesus coming back to fill Thomas in on the story.
Luke tells us about Jesus visiting some of his followers
when they’re on the highway out of town.
Both of them have a version of Jesus making a meal for them.
Luke and Matthew share with us Jesus’ final goodbye and ascension back to God.
Just a handful of stories.
They leave me wanting more.
The fourth Sunday of Easter is always Good Shepherd Sunday.
We read from the 23rd Psalm
and often from the 10th Chapter of John
where Jesus says “I am the good shepherd.”
When Jesus says that, that he is the Good Shepherd,
he explains that other voices claim to guide us, but they inevitably fail,
either because they’re not reliable, or they’re easily distracted,
or because they cannot give us the protection and care we actually need.
Jesus, on the other hand, is different.
Jesus offers healing when others say it’s the wrong time or place to heal.
Jesus offers welcome to those who are kept out.
Jesus offers forgiveness to those who are judged unforgivable.
Jesus offers peace for the troubled, and disrupted.
Unlike any other, Jesus’ compassion is steadfast and sure.
It is reliable.
And for those who stumble and search for direction,
as we all invariably do, Jesus is a safe and trustworthy leader.
That’s what Jesus means when he says he’s the good shepherd. And we the sheep.
///
I know we don’t really like to be called sheep.
Not this type-a, pull ourselves up by our boot-straps, driven and self-reliant culture.
But maybe we make too much of that metaphor in this regard.
Jesus seems to ask a lot of his sheep.
I’ve always liked how John offers a continuation of this theme
at the end of his Gospel
in one of those rare post-resurrection stories.
Jesus pass along this work, this responsibility,
this work of healing and feeding and tending and welcoming
to Peter, and through Peter, to all of us.
Listen for God’s word to us this morning
as I read the scripture lesson from the Gospel According to John.
15 When they had finished breakfast,
Jesus said to Simon Peter,
‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’
He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’
Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’
16A second time he said to him,
‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’
He said to him,
‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’
Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’
17He said to him the third time,
‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’
Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time,
‘Do you love me?’
And he said to him,
‘Lord, you know everything;
you know that I love you.’
Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.
18Very truly, I tell you,
when you were younger,
you used to fasten your own belt
and to go wherever you wished.
But when you grow old,
you will stretch out your hands,
and someone else will fasten a belt around you
and take you where you do not wish to go.’
19(He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.)
After this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’
And may God bless to us our reading, and our understanding, and applying of this word, to how we live our lives. Amen.
///
We spend Six Sundays in the Season of Easter.
We might be forgiven if the experience of this year’s Easter proclamation
feels like it is fading a bit into memory.
Before that happens, lets reflect a bit on something
that often goes unnoticed.
One of the things about Jesus that I’ve found remarkable
is his lack of vengeance, or retribution.
Nowhere does it suggest that, when Jesus rose from the dead,
that he had revenge in his heart.
I think this is one of the yardsticks
I use to measure what someone is saying about God:
is the God they offer a wrathful, vengeful God?
Is the path they offer based on joy, because of God’s gracious gifts and protection,
an experience that life and love will win?
or is it based on fear, founded on worry that God is angry at you?
Jonathan Edwards, that titan of early American Christianity
famously preached a colonial-era sermon entitled
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
which, apparently, so-stirred a guilt-ridden puritan population
during the great awakening, that they passed out in the pews
and called out to the preacher: “what can I do to be saved?”
It was a different time.
But the street corner preachers of Chicago, where I went to graduate school,
sometimes offered a version of this theology.
I think it persists a lot in fearful corners of the church, even today,
to my great sadness.
But look closely: Jesus did not bring violence, anger or retribution
upon those who plotted to kill him.
He, instead, brought forgiveness, reconciliation and peace.
It’s something we take for granted, (don’t we?)
without ever really thinking much about it.
But it is really something worth thinking and talking about.
By embracing Jesus’ resurrection,
we are granted forgiveness and new life.
It’s a sheer gift of God.
Importantly, it’s a gift that applies to how it is we forgive ourselves
as much as we forgive others
a gift that should inform how we live our lives as Jesus’ disciples.
To give just one example
I read this week about a friend who helps new pastor candidates
work through the process of becoming credentialed
over on the east coast.
He says that work always leads to really good conversations
and one recent candidate, a practicing nurse,
in her conversation with that committee, shared with them
the ‘sentence prayer’ that she uses
in times of stress and difficulty.
She repeats these words, slowly, three times over,
breathing deep and steady between each line:
“I am a child of God,”
“I am a child of God,”
“I am a child of God – and so are you.”
Now, nurses often deal with unruly patients,
disrupted by pain or medication or resignation,
they also sometimes have to manage grumpy family members,
demanding doctors,
the difficulties of institutionalized medicine
all during some incredibly stressful and challenging moments.
As she talked about it,
she explained that her work required a lot of patience, and forgiveness.
In order to accept and forgive others, she said,
you first need to accept and forgive yourself –
and even before doing that-
you need to know who it is you really are.
Therefore, that simple sentence “I am a child of God”
is a much more profound statement than it sounds.
It is a way to recognize that we are not self-made,
that we belong to someone else,
greater than ourselves-
and, in that way, we are like everyone else in the world;
we are loved, and we are equally loved.
It’s a very simple and extremely powerful statement,
at once personally affirming and challenging;
that to accept myself fully,
I need to accept you, also, because you – just like me, are a child of God.
This is a prayer we can all say and share as those loved and embraced by Jesus.
“I am a child of God,”
“I am a child of God,”
“I am a child of God – and so are you.”
///
Our scripture reading this morning contributes to the conversation
about how it is we are loved and brought together to live in Christ-
perhaps in a way we haven’t considered before.
This is the last story of those post-Easter appearances in John’s gospel.
The only thing left for Jesus to do in the gospel
is to ascend back into heaven.
To return to God. To hand the reins over to the church.
This story is the continuation of our reading from last week
where the disciples are back fishing again,
returning to the tried and the true,
fishing for food and for friendship and for some emotional rest.
You may remember how,
while out on the lake at dawn,
before any fish are caught,
they catch a glimpse of a stranger standing on the shore.
He calls to them, “Have you caught any fish?” –
They answer, in unison, a resounding ‘no.’
The stranger yells out to them to toss the net on the other side of the boat,
and almost immediately the net is filled with fish eager to be caught.
Simon Peter, sharp and impulsive as ever-
gets what’s going on.
It’s Jesus there on the shore!
Then John notes that Simon Peter puts on a garment,
because he had not been clothed while fishing,
and then jumps in the water to swim to shore to be the first to see Jesus.
The others come in, dragging all those fish,
wondering what in the world is going on.
And then, when ashore with Jesus,
while they’re all sitting at a charcoal fire,
with fish on it and bread on the side,
that’s when the conversation between Jesus and Simon Peter happens:
Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?
Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.
Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.”
A second time: “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
“Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.”
A third time,
“Simon son of John, do you love me?”
Peter, hurt because he asked three times, said to him
Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.
Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.”
///
Notice two things that happen here,
before the conversation even begins.
Two points that bring drama and detail to its telling.
First, why did John find it important
to tell us about Peter putting back on some clothes
before jumping in the water to get to Jesus?
We left that out, last week, as we jumped ahead a few verses,
but it’s there, and it’s not irrelevant.
Our bible study spent some time wondering what in the world was going on with that.
John is known among the gospel writers for his details, these rhetorical flourishes
to make a story more vibrant and alive in our reading of it.
If a story needs 10 verses to be told,
I always say that Mark will tell it in 6, and John will tell it in 20.
But those extra details matter to John.
This entire Gospel seeks to draw in the full scope of the story in the Old Testament
to suggest that God is bringing to fruition a cosmic plan
of such significance and scope
that everything in all creation should stop and take note.
You remember, maybe, the very first lines of the gospel:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word as with God, and the Word was God.
With this, he evokes the book of Genesis,
which also starts out: “In the beginning….”
And here, in our story, John alludes to the nakedness that Adam experienced
in the Garden of Eden, hiding from God.
Perhaps John is somehow re-imagining
the significance of the resurrection as the undoing of the shame of Adam.
That is, Simon Peter doesn’t allow the shame of his being unclothed
to stop him from moving toward Christ- the fulfillment of all creation.
Peter doesn’t hide, (as Adam is said to have done)
but instead leaps forward-
just as he is, to the one he already knows loves and accepts him.
There is no sign of shame,
but instead total acceptance.
Peter is being called to fully acknowledge Jesus
as the one who accepts and sends him to further adventures,
and Jesus is ready both to welcome and challenge him.
///
There’s another point: that fire, where Jesus cooked them breakfast
where the disciples gathered around and talked and rested after a long night’s work.
The last charcoal fire that was referred to in John’s Gospel
is the very one at which Peter made his threefold denial of Jesus,
after the Lord’s arrest and trial,
back in the courtyard of the high priest.
At that time Peter denied Jesus, three times
answering a direct question about his being a follower of Jesus
with the words, “I am not.”
And now, just a week or so later,
here’s another charcoal fire,
this time not meant to provide warmth against the cold of the night
but the stovetop upon which Jesus cooks breakfast at the dawn of a new day.
What a whirlwind for Peter.
Here is Jesus, back from death’s closed door
cooking breakfast over a charcoal fire.
Maybe Peter was afraid that his earlier denials excluded him from the Kingdom,
were too much, even for Jesus.
When Peter finally reaches shore
and sees this charcoal fire
and remembers the last time he was near one;
suddenly his heart drops,
and he braces himself for Jesus to deny him.
It would be fitting-
one denial in exchange for another- right?
But that’s not what happens!
Instead we get our reading for the day,
Jesus re-enacting the three fold denial
with three affirmations, three welcomes, three assurances.
Jesus transforms Peter’s lingering discouragement and forgives his past denials.
Peter is accepted and loved-
unconditionally, to be sure,
but not quite ‘no questions asked’.
Jesus indeed has a few questions for Peter.
It will be some time before we see the effects of this conversation
take hold in Peter’s life.
Before we see Peter become the Rock that the church depends upon.
For now, the best we can do is put ourselves in Peter’s shoes.
Peter is accepted, but in order to be sent, there will be questions.
“Do you love me?”
Jesus asks three times,
each with a slight variation for emphasis.
At these questions
Peter is as positive in his affirming
as he was absolute in his denials after Jesus’ arrest.
Jesus needs positive confirmation this time around,
because the next phase of Jesus’ work hangs in the balance;
with Peter holding the keys to the kingdom to continue to follow in Jesus’ name.
Jesus phrases his words to Peter as new commands…
“feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep.”
It’s as if Jesus is saying to Peter,
“Inasmuch as you care for others, I will care for you.”
“Inasmuch as you care for others, I will care for you.”
That’s the bottom line of the Gospel message from Jesus.
We are loved, but we are never alone.
“You are loved- but you need to love others, too.”
“You are given mercy- that is to be shared.”
“You are forgiven- in the same way that you forgive others.”
“I will save you”- says Jesus-
“and I’ll save others too;
even sheep who are not of your fold.”
“Inasmuch as you care for others, I will care for you.”
///
The 23rd Psalm that we also read this morning
is a beloved reminder of this care of God.
I shall not want.
the Lord maketh me to lie down,
in green pastures, beside still waters, restoring my soul.
Even though we read from the NRSV today
we often return to the King James language.
Maybe the only time we’re still permitted a thou or a wilt in contemporary discourse.
What is noteworthy today, maybe,
is how the ending speaks about goodness and mercy following us all our days.
The story around here is how a church member once named their dogs
“Goodness” and “Mercy.”
Clay apparently liked to remind everyone of that in a sermon from time to time.
But that Hebrew verb ‘to follow’ is way too passive, it seems to me.
It doesn’t just mean it comes gently to us.
It means ‘to pursue’ or ‘to chase after.’
It won’t let us go.
As one commentator put it:
“The goodness and mercy of God
don’t [just] follow us like a good little puppy dog.
They gallop after us like a celestial stallion.
They chase us down labyrinthine paths like the hound of heaven.
They stay hot on our heels.
The goodness and mercy of our Shepherd [pursues] us
all the way [into the arms of our loving God.]”[i]
///
The title of the sermon today came from a reflection
I read in the Religion News Service
about the life and ministry of Jean Vanier.
Vanier died this week at age 90.
He was a Canadian theologian and humanitarian that most people didn’t know.
He founded L’Arche,
which is an international network of small communities
where adults with intellectual and physical disabilities
and those without them
live and work and care for each other.
Vanier’s life work was to teach people to say “I am a child of God, and so are you.”
The Religion News Service piece was written by Cathleen Falsani,
who used to work for the Chicago Sun Times
and who was tasked with covering a speech Vanier gave back in 2006.
That speech took some interesting twists and turns, apparently
exploring the work Vanier was doing,
along with his preaching compassion for everyone,
the pious, and the profane,
the abled, and the less abled,
even those convicted of horrible acts of violence against others.
Fulsani leaned forward to listen, and found herself transformed
by Vanier’s simple premise that everyone deserves compassion.
That every one deserves compassion.
Just because they are people.
Even if they stumble.
Even if they are vicious.
Even if they can’t do what others do.
Even if they turn away from the disabled, or away from God.
Every. Single. One.
“It was as if Vanier’s radical compassion broke something
in my soul that needed to be broken.
It widened the aperture of my heart,
making room to accommodate a love more expansive
than I thought myself capable of feeling or giving.”
On that lakeshore, Jesus turns to Peter
and asks him if he loves him.
Yes Lord, I do.
Then tend my sheep, feed my lambs, care for my people,
all my people.
It enabled the early church to be known as the group
that would tend to the sick
feed the hungry
care for the orphans and the widows
do what needed to be done so that the least
would have what they needed
for their bodies and their spirits.
When we feel that acceptance, for ourselves, it breaks our heart, in the best of ways.
When we feel that for others, it breaks open our heart,
to accommodate a love
more expansive than we might think we are capable of.
Jesus, the Good Shepherd,
reminds us of Gods care for us,
leads us beside still waters
comforts us in the presence of those seeking ill toward us
and chases us down with goodness and mercy forever.
So that we can say, with conviction:
“I am a child of God,”
“I am a child of God,”
“I am a child of God – and so are you.”
May we know it, deep in our bones,
and may we live it with joy and with trust.
May it be so. Amen.
—–
[i] Credited to Chad Bird, on a facebook post by Paul Rowland, Jr. to the group “Happy to be a Presbyterian” https://www.facebook.com/groups/56387121170/permalink/10157140177386171/
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