April 18, 2010
The Third Sunday of Easter (Year C)
Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 30; Revelation 5:11-14;
John 21:1-19
I became aware this week of something I had done that I should not have, something that might impact the life of a dear friend of mine. Obviously it was not something terrible or deliberate, but it was a callousness in the middle of chaos that has been my life of late. And when I realized how what I had done might be perceived, I went to my friend and apologized. She smiled and forgave me, just like that. So I apologized again, and again, and again; and she kept smiling and forgiving me. “We have too much history to allow this little thing to separate us,” she said.
And as a few tears came to my eyes, as I realized she really meant it, that I was forgiven. And I knew that I had learned something very profound about forgiveness from her, not only about my own humanity and the truth, yet again, that I make mistakes, like everyone else of course, but that like everyone else’s, my mistakes are forgivable.
Indeed they are forgiven before I ask.
I would imagine that is the way Peter felt that morning on the sea of Tiberius. He recognized Jesus – finally (this non-recognition of the risen Christ by his friends on first sight is the topic of a whole other sermon, of course, but worth noting in case this is where you want to start daydreaming!)
Anyway, Peter recognized Jesus, put on his clothes – a metaphor in and of itself I think – and went to greet the risen Lord.
And Peter who had denied Jesus three times a few days before now, in shame and distress, had to meet his friend, his mentor, his Lord, again face to face. He knew that Jesus knew he had denied him, so I can imagine that his feelings were running through many confusing and varying tones.
I imagine that he was distressed that Jesus would, rightly and justly, chew him out for being so weak and for doing what he said he would not do that night in the courtyard when they kept identifying him as one of the followers. Shame and guilt were probably part of what he was feeling. I know those feelings, don’t you?
And then, too, I am sure he felt joy at being with his friend, at recognizing him alive and not gone forever. So with the shame and the guilt was joy.
And, I imagine, wonder ––
How can this be? Dinner in the upper room, then breakfast on the shore, breakfast of fish not caught until ordained to be caught by Jesus, fish prepared by Jesus, fish to nurture cold wet bodies after an exhausting night, imagine the comfort in that! So no doubt Peter felt comforted, cared for, nourished, beloved of the one he had lost.
And then, I imagine, Peter felt a little dread as Jesus asked him to walk with him apart from the others for a moment or two. I can imagine Peter thinking, “Oh, yeah! Now it’s coming! I am going to be chewed out royally.” But instead Jesus asked him, “Simon (using the formal name, not the familiar nick name Jesus had given him, Peter), Simon, do you love me?” Warily, I imagine warily anyway, Peter, noting the formality of the name used and still very wary, said, “Yes, Lord, you know I love you.” And if I were to guess, he was likely thinking all the while, “Oh, man! He used the Simon card! Oh, man! Now it’s coming. Oh, man! Of course I love him. But he knows I betrayed him. What kind of love is that? I am in such trouble.”
“Yes, Lord, you know that I do” is what he said, however.
And then Jesus asked Peter twice more, “Simon, do you love me?” Each time Peter said, “Yes, Lord.” And each time Jesus responded with “feed my lambs,” “tend my sheep,” “feed my sheep.” Three times Peter had denied Jesus in the courtyard and three times Peter affirmed his love for Jesus on the shore. Each time Peter’s inner thoughts – I imagine – become more confused, more grateful, more hopeful; each time he began to see that Jesus was going to trust him with the care of the followers, Jesus’ followers. Each time Peter responded, Jesus more gently and more generously invited him deeper into the inner circle. Each time Jesus affirmed that love and being together was what mattered, not mistakes in the past.
That is what forgiveness is like. It takes our darkest moments and transforms them into our most profound moments of revelation and opportunity.
That is what happened for Saul/Paul in the lesson from Acts that was read this morning. He went from persecutor to apostle because he saw the light of forgiveness radiating from Christ, not in the same way that Peter did on the shore and not the same way that I did this past week from my friend, but for certain it was the same light and the same forgiveness.
It is never too late for God’s forgiveness. But as human beings we sometimes miss the opportunity to forgive or ask forgiveness in life. Circumstances cause that, a person dies, moves on, we are divorced, any number of things can happen in life that prevent us from finding and asking for forgiveness or giving it. Probably even more things happen that prevent us from forgiving when we are asked. Humans like to carry grudges.
In this Eastertide, when we celebrate the risen Christ alive and present among us, let us each think about forgiveness and the need for it, both to give it and to ask for it in our own lives. Being human, each and every one of us, I can positively say there is not a person sitting here this morning that does not need to contemplate where and how forgiveness might be necessary in his or her own life. There is not a person here who does not either or both need to seek forgiveness or to grant it. There are even some who need to look in a mirror and forgive themselves.
It we were to be a people who are not blinded, as Paul was, by rage and what we think is the rightness of our position, and can like Paul be sighted by the light of God’s forgiveness, then like both Paul and Peter we can become the disciples that God intends us to be.
We can profoundly change not only our own lives but the lives of everyone we encounter – and finally change the world.
I know that sounds pretty “pie in the sky,” “Pollyannaish.” But it is true, forgiveness is the currency of transformation for the world. It is the currency of relationship, love, and life.
So my dear friends, open your hearts and pull out the currency of forgiveness. Spend it wildly, freely as I say in my blessing. Forgive with wild abandonment, that the world might be a place of holy peace where everyone knows the kind of love Jesus showed Peter that day on the shore, that Ananias made known to Paul through Christ in Jerusalem, that my friend made known to me just this week. That is my hope for us, for this parish, for the world. For that kind of forgiveness is also the stuff of the “peace that passes understanding,” and in this Eastertide I remind us all that is what we Christians are all about.
Amen.
The Reverend Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd