Sun Kwak, “Secondsies”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UCovZY59FE

TEXT: John 21:1-19

[1] After this Jesus revealed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, and he revealed himself in this way. [2] Simon Peter, Thomas (called the Twin), Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples were together. [3] Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

[4] Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. [5] Jesus said to them, “Children, do you have any fish?” They answered him, “No.” [6] He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, because of the quantity of fish. [7] That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and threw himself into the sea. [8] The other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, but about a hundred yards off.

[9] When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place, with fish laid out on it, and bread. [10] Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” [11] So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn. [12] Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. [13] Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish. [14] This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.

[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.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” [16] He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” [17] He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved 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. [18] Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” [19] (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after saying this he said to him, “Follow me.”

SERMON: “Secondsies”

I’m going to begin this Easter Sunday with a massive spoiler. Which, just so you know, isn’t the norm here. But massive spoiler today, which is fitting for Easter. Because — surprise, he’s not in the tomb! Anyway, this has to do with another, a fictitious one, but one of my favorites. So, if you haven’t read through the Harry Potter books and intend to, cover your ears for the next few minutes. In The Half Blood Prince, there’s this moment where Snape — known as Professor Snape to some, Severus to others. He’s in this tense situation, where it looks like Dumbledore — the only wizard that Voldemortever really feared. He’s in a near death situation. And there, Dumbledore looks over and says to Snape— Severus, please. And at that moment, Snape kills Dumbledore. And if you don’t know who Dumbledore is, he’s like the Gandalf or the Yoda of the Harry Potter stories. And so, you have to understand that when Snape kills Dumbledore here, it doesn’t just look like he’s killing off a favorite character. But it looks like he’s turning against good itself. And so, to that point, all the wicked things you perceived about Snape that made you hate him are amplified. But then, the story unravels, and you start to see other details and back stories that color that moment differently. You find out that Snapehas always loved Harry’s mother Lily. And the moment Voldemort killed Lily back when Harry was a baby, he committed to this unwavering loyalty to Dumbledore and to the cause of stopping Voldemort, even going in as an undercover Death Eater, the group of the loyalest of Voldemort’s followers. And that he and Dumbledore had hatched a plan years before that at the opportune moment, Snape would have to kill Dumbledore in order to give Harry Potter the opportunity to defeat Voldemort once and for all. And so, after collecting these details, you look back again at that those words from Dumbledore— Severus, please. And you realize that these weren’t words from Dumbledore asking for Snape to spare him. But rather, asking him to stay true to his word, in order that their mission could be fulfilled.

For some of us, we may have written off Christianity years ago — because of something that happened or something that didn’t happen that you thought might. For others of us, we’re wondering and questioning and considering, trying to make sense of it all. And for many of us, it’s a regular struggle to believe and to trust. Maybe there’s been church hurt or you see the hypocrisy of Christians. And I get all that — because I’m a part of that. Because just like you and the many who are questioning Christianity, I know for myself — God’s not done with my story. And I guess that’s what I’m asking all of us to reflect upon today. That we keep an open mind — Because God’s not done with your story. That Severus, please you might be thinking and feeling regarding Jesus and the church may, at this moment, be leading you to unbelief. But my conviction is that it would look a whole lot different when you know the whole story, the other details. Because God’s not done with your story. But in order for us to understand ours, we need to understand his. And I want to invite us into the movements of our resurrected Savior Jesus this Easter Sunday and how he redeems and reverses narratives that are otherwise broken and hopeless and seemingly irreversible.

Today, we get this glimpse, this peak into this life-changing moment between Jesus and the apostle Peter. And we have to understand what happened before this moment occurs. Peter was not just one of the twelve, he was one of the three. There were twelve disciples. But then, there were these inner three disciples — Peter, James, and John. And they had inner access into some of Jesus’ most intimate and personal moments. And of course, Peter saw the cosmic king for these three years — the powers and the miracles of Jesus. He’d seen bread and fish multiplied and storms stilled and lepers healed and the dead people raised. But as one of the inner three, he also got a personal and closeup of who Jesus was. You see, Jesus let him in — not just into his powers but into his heart. Peter saw Jesuscry and agonize in pain. He saw Jesus tired, exhausted, and completely wrung out. He saw Jesus face rejection and isolation. And I don’t know if you’ve ever shared something deeply personal with someone. But after, you say or think something along the lines of — Well, now you’ve seen who I really am. You see, Jesus let Peter in. And so, this was his friend, and he shared some really special and intimate moments with him. And what did Peter do? The night before Jesus was crucified, Peter stuck his chest out. And he announced to Jesus and to everyone else in that room — Even if all of these leave you, I will never leave you. And it was just a matter of hours before he abandoned, betrayed, left his teacher, his king, his friend. His friend who let him in. And in Jesus’ most desperate hour of need, what does Peter do? He pushes him out. When asked if he knew who Jesus was, saying three times over — I don’t know him. That’s not my friend. What do you do with that, if you’re Jesus? Here’s somebody you let in, and they betray your trust and your loyalty — not just one time but three times in the same night.

Well, something that we need to know about this passage is that there are some uncanny details. Because Jesus is the perfect playwright. And here, some days have passed since that moment when Jesus was left to hang alone on the cross, to die in the place of sinners. And at that moment of betrayal, Peter didn’t draw near but rather fled — out of instinct. He created distance, and he just ran. Commentaries say that the first time Jesus finds these scattering and fleeing disciples, they’re seventy miles north of Jerusalem within a matter of days. They’re running away from Jesus and creating distance as fast as they can. Because they fear that proximity to Jesus might endanger their lives. Well, it’s in this place of fleeing that Jesus re-enters the plot. And he bridges the chasm created by these disciples. And some time passes before this moment in John 21. But what we read today is that this is the third time that Jesus comes to his disciples after the resurrection. Which I think is significant, considering the three questions that Jesus asks Peter in the latter portions of our passage, not unrelated to the three times Peter had betrayed his friend. Because you think about what Jesus is doing here. Most everyone says that the key to understanding and believing in what Jesus said and claimed hinges on the validity of the resurrection. The apostle Paul would say in 1 Corinthians 15:14that if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead in a real and historical way, then all his preaching is in vain — meaning what he was doing, what I’m doing right now, what churches have been doing for millennia. That all of this is completely weightless and meaningless. Hear what Tim Keller says about the resurrection as the hinge that holds everything together. He writes —

If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.

And so, this is clearly at the heart of what Jesus is doing when proving his bodily resurrection which has been validated in not just experiential but historical ways and recordings. But let’s come back to something that we noted just now. This is, according to verse 14, the third time that Jesus was revealing himself to the disciples after he was raised from the dead. Which is the verse right beforeJesus’ intimate conversation with Peter about whether Peter loves him or not. Because the first time he revealed himself post-resurrection, Jesus showed and proved to all the disciples in the room that he was real, he had flesh, that he was risen bodily, that he wasn’t a ghost. This was to validate all their beliefs about Jesus and everything he claimed. And the second time was with Thomas, known to us as doubting Thomas. He wasn’t there in the room. And so, Jesus comes to confront his doubts with the evidences of his bodily resurrection. And so, he’s already shown his disciples that the resurrection is real. What’s he doing here? What’s he trying to prove? Well, he’s going to ask Peter if Peter loves him. And what he’s doing here is showing Peter not just that he’s real and that the resurrection is real, but he’s here proving his love to Peter. That he didn’t and wouldn’t leave Peter, even if Peter had left him. That Peter’s love for him had a deeper source than Peter’s own commitment to loving Jesus. That it was and will forever be grounded in Jesus’ commitment to love and to never leave his bewildered disciple. For Peter and for all of us this morning, he’s using specific moments, words, and parallels to give him a new and lasting narrative about our relationship to Jesus.

I have a friend Sam. And his testimony is one of those testimonies that you kind of need evidence for, because it almost seems too good to be true. But he has all the evidences, which I’ll get into. Well, he had this moment in his middle school years where at a youth group retreat, Jesus grabbed a hold of him. And there, Sam gave his life to Jesus and started believing. At that retreat, the speaker gave every student a nail about this long. And it was to show what had pierced the palms and the feet of Jesus in more graphic form. And this just compelled Sam. Well, the rest of his middle school years and his early high school years weren’t good. His dad died, his mom couldn’t get off the bottle, and his sister was bringing home someone different every night. Sam himself got mixed up in the wrong crowd. And so, one night, he decides that he’s had enough and wants to call it quits. There were some railroad tracksnear his home. And he was getting ready to lay there and end it all. But on the other side of the tracks, there looked to be what looked like a church gathering. And you know how church people can be sometimes. They chatter, and their conversations carry into the parking lot. We call that loitering time. Well, that’s what they were doing. And so, Sam tells God — If you’re, and if you care about me, you’ll send someone from this church to come and talk me out of ending my life. But he’s watching these people — and one by one, they’re leaving. He waits until the very last person leaves, and he’s at that point convinced that God either isn’t real or doesn’t care about him anymore. So, he turns, and he’s getting ready to lay on the tracks. But then, he steps on something awkwardly, and he turns his ankle. He looks down to see that what he stepped on was a nail about this big. As if God was saying to him — I know times have been hard, but I’ve always been the same. And I’ve never left you. When Saminvited me into his apartment for the first time, it was the first thing he showed me. On his desk, two nails that looked exactly the same, as a regular reminder that Jesus gave up his life for him. That in between the first nail and the second nail, a whole lot had happened in his life. But God remains the same, and that Jesus would never leave him but was with him every step of the way.

When John was writing down this story, it must have sent shivers down his spine. Because there are these motifs and these reoccurring elements everywhere. It begins with a bad day at sea. Just not catching any fish. And then, a stranger comes along and tells them to hurl the net onto the other side. And what happens? We read here in verse 11 — 153 fish caught. And immediately, John recognizes that this was eerily similar to this story way back in Luke 5, when Jesus first called his disciples. Same miracle, same place. But different. And what was different was not just the timing. But it starts with Peter’s response. Because in Luke 5, before he embarked on the greatest three year friendship he could have ever imagined, to Peter, Jesus was not his friend at that moment but just a miracle worker. And because his power was so astounding, he exclaimed back in Luke 5:8 — Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord! He asks for distance, because he understood this chasm that separated himself as a sinner and this man who just gathered this multitude of fish into the nets. And so, the same thing happens here, with Jesus bringing these 153 fish into the net. But this time, Peter doesn’t ask for distance. The moment John puts together the details and exclaims — It’s the Lord! — there, Peter jumps straight into the water and starts swimming toward Jesus. Not away from, not to create distance from. But swimming toward and moving toward. Because this was his friend. And you don’t move away from your best friend. You move toward him. Because even before he was swimming toward and moving toward Jesus, you see, Jesus had first come to him. That he had closed the gap and moved toward him first. Because he had run away from Jesus, wanting nothing to do with him, creating distance from him in fear and cowardice. As we noted earlier, seventy miles north of where Jesus was hung. And here, he’s back again — for the third time. Not to prove to Peter that he’s been raised but to prove his love for Peter.

And as we noted earlier, John sets the table for us in verse 14, where we read — This was the third time that Jesus was revealed to his disciples after he was raised from the dead. And that word third appears again and again, to rewrite the narrative that Peter had with his relationship to Jesus. And what had happened the third time that Peter betrayed Jesus, saying that he wasn’t his friend? The rooster crowed, and Luke’s Gospel tells us that Jesus and Peter locked eyes. And something about that look made Peter weep bitterly. As a dad to one of my sons that I’ll leave unnamed, I get his reactions to when there’s true contrition. And there are times where he’s just afraid of the consequencefor his wrongdoings. But then, there are times when he’s genuinely sorrowful because of how he’s hurt my heart. And in those moments, he doesn’t come in for a hug. But he runs away and weeps. And as his dad, those are the moments I know I have to run after him, to tell him that I love him. I’d imagine that for Jesus, this moment never left him. He saw Peter weep bitterly. And he would havre to run after Peter. And so, Jesus takes him back to this moment. Because that charcoal fire that he’s cooking fish on in verse 9. Do you know the only other place that word surfaces in the New Testament? Yeah, it’s John 18:18, right after Peter had denied Jesus a third time right by the charcoal fire. Jesus here doing two things at the same time. Not just bringing back to remembrance the moment of Peter’s sin. But to reclaim and to redeem this memory for Peter. That what would cover over Peter’s betrayal was a new narrative — the narrative of Jesus’ undying love for his disciple.

Do you remember when Peter told Jesus — Even if all of these leave you, I will never leave you. That was Matthew 26:33. And what does Jesus do? He brings Peter back to these particular moments. Note how he asks Peter in verse 15 — Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?Highlighting that moment — Peter, remember when you said you would never leave me, even if all these left? And here, Jesus is bringing back these moments for Peter to vividly recall. Not to shame him, because Peter has already felt the shame. But to bring him out of that shame. To give a new narrative that will anchor him in every season. The latter verses tell us about the way that Jesus tells Peter he’s going to be killed. And it’s spelled out for us here, but history also tells us that Peter died as he was crucified upside down. And Jesus needed Peter to know that even when that happened, he would never leave Peter, even if Peter had left him. Because his promise is forever for eternal life and everlasting friendship with him — no matter what happens on this side of glory. That because Jesustook the ultimate cross, in dying for our sins, Peter and all of us who lock eyes with him, can take any cross that’s pinned upon us. Early church father Clement of Alexandria records that before Peter died for his faith, his dear wife did. And as she was being lead to her death, Peter was walking next to first whisper, then speaking, then yelling as she was taken further and further from him — Remember the Lord, remember the Lord. That Jesus was with her, even when things seemed dark. Because Jesushad put a new color on those words in the end of our passage — Follow me. Because Jesus had first pursued him and would never leave him.

Because as we bring our time to a close, here’s something that gets overlooked with Easter. Sure, it is finished. But Jesus is not done moving into the lives of his people. Easter is not just to provide verifiable and tangible evidences of the resurrection. But every Easter, I know that there are those that Jesus locks eyes with. And because of things we’ve said, things we’ve done, it’s discolored our view of him and how we see our relationship with him. Because of the distance we’ve created from him, because of the ways we’ve denounced him and left him, maybe we’re in some way or form weeping bitterly. And that’s something Jesus will not forget. So, back to that moment of Severus, please. Wherever you are today, God’s not done with your story. We all have a story, we all have a past. Christianity is not about Christians doing our best to follow after Jesus. No, first and foremost, Christianity is about God sending his best in order to reclaim and restore us. And so, as we’re lead to the Table, I want us to consider the concluding words from a song written by Tenielle Neda and Jon Guerra titled The Invitation —

Lord, you know me well

How much I doubt Your love

Are you inviting me

Even after all I've done?

My child, your brokenness

Runs deeper than you know

But I love you more

Than you'd ever dare to hope

There's a place at My table where your name is written down

Enter through the narrow door where unending love is found

There's a place at the table where the servant wears the crown

And he welcomes through the door all who lay their burdens down

You can lay your burdens down

Come and lay your burdens down

Because I know, friends, how heavy shame and discolored past narratives can be. Bring them to Jesus today and be met by incredible love and grace.