Can't Get Right - 3rd Sunday of Easter 2019

5 May 2019 – 3^rd Sunday of Easter

Psalm 30; Acts 9:1-6; John 21:1-19

Peter is one of the most interesting of the New Testament characters because many of us can relate to him.  He is zealous for whatever he believes in at any given moment; and what he says, he seems to mean.  Yet this Scripture portion seems to open with Peter at perhaps one of his lowest moments.  The other Gospel accounts portray the apostles as afraid, but John’s account seems to show them all at a point of surrender in the midst of a profound loss.  It is almost as if Peter says, “I’m going fishing”, to which the others respond, “Might as well”.

Jesus had appeared to them once, but that Visit may have only further confused them.  There is nothing to indicate they were not still afraid of the fallout for having been associated with Jesus, but they still had to work.  So maybe with the idea of strength in numbers, they all went out together to get back to their lives – as if nothing had happened.

This happens for many of us.  We have those exciting, fulfilling, spiritual moments when we feel more alive than we ever have, when we come to know The Lord has touched us in an unmistakable way; the problem often is we don’t really know what to do with it.  Without further instruction, without some definitive sense of direction, without some measure of accountability, we do what we know how to do: we revert.  We go back to some sense of normal, and we get on with our lives.

It is easy for us to say that if we had been there when the Resurrected Jesus came into the room, there would be no way we could ever go back to the way things once were.  What we may be witnessing, however, is the simple reality: it is far easier to submit to impulse or habit than it is to break away from what was once normal and live as though we really have had a brush with the Eternal.

Maybe there’s a bone in the back of our heads that just “can’t get right”.  Maybe we are such creatures of habit and routine that we are incapable of thinking beyond what is normal.  Maybe we are such tortured souls that we are, more often than not, left twisting in the wind with no real sense of direction, no real sense of community purpose (unless it suits us), and no idea of whether those things even matter.

When Jesus first appeared to the women, there was not much offered except to tell everyone to gather, but John’s Gospel does not offer even that.  When Jesus appeared to them all later, they were given the Holy Spirit and were told, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 21:23).  However, they are not told (at least by John’s account) what to do with this new authority or what it meant for them.

There is still a sticking point in all this, especially for Peter.  Most of the disciples abandoned Jesus when things got dangerous; but by all accounts, they simply ran.  Peter tried to stick around, it seems, which put him in a position to either stand with Jesus as he said he would - or revert to his normal self and do whatever would be necessary to survive having been accused of being one of “them”. 

It is Luke’s Gospel which points out that after the rooster had crowed and Jesus had turned to look squarely at Peter, “Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how He had said to him, ‘Before the cock crows today, you will have denied Me three times’ … after which Peter “went out and wept bitterly” (Luke 22:61-62).  This seems odd, however, since it is Peter named in John’s Gospel who had drawn a sword to defend Jesus from being arrested (John 18:10).

What went wrong?  How is it that Peter was willing to risk fighting armed soldiers for Jesus’ sake but was unwilling to simply be counted among Jesus’ followers when so accused?  I think that was Peter’s natural state.  I think Peter believed he was doing the right thing by being willing to defend Jesus, violently if necessary. 

When he was called down by Jesus for having done so, he became confused.  In the end, being so uncertain about what it was he needed to do, there was nothing left but to deny that better part of himself which knew Jesus, had loved Jesus, and had professed Jesus.

It’s never that easy, though.  We “can’t get right” because we pay more attention to our impulses, our desires, our habits, our own agendas than we do to The Word.  And it will always be so as long as religion, faith, and being fully connected are less important to us than are the things we would rather do, the things we are more comfortable doing, the things we have always been taught to do.

We need to hear from Jesus.  We need The Word to heal us, to exonerate us, to forgive us for being human.  We need The Word to teach us how to rise above all that so we can be who we really are.  Apart from The Word, we can’t get right.  We can’t be who we really are; we can only be what our impulses, our habits, our routines, even our culture allows us to be.

It is more than simply being absolved, however.  Notice the cost of loving Jesus as Peter had professed: “Feed My lambs”; “Tend My sheep”; “Feed My sheep”.  It cannot be a simple “I forgive you” – not when so much is at stake.  It is never true to The Word that we are simply forgiven so we can feel less guilty about our failures.  It is never true to The Word that we are simply forgiven but not transformed.  And it is not true to The Word that forgiveness stands in perpetuity only in that single moment.

As long as we allow that single moment to speak for us but not to inform us, we can’t get right.  As long as Jesus is our “co-pilot” and not our Shepherd, we can’t get right.  As long as Jesus is an after-thought and not our forethought, we can’t get right. 

Yet we gather regularly to pray, to study, to worship, and to be fed so we can be Made Right.  We are invited to His Table to be Made Right.  We are called to confess so we can be Made Right.  So we must make this decision not once but constantly; because, like Peter, we can so easily be drawn back into our former selves and lose all sense of the One Thing that is always Right: our Lord, our Shepherd, our Savior, our very Life.

He can only be Ours if we are always His.  For now, and forever.  Amen.