I wanted to share my first Easter sermon here. It took me an entire day to write... I toiled and toiled, and called a friend, and even after it was done I didn't feel that good about it. BUT GOD showed up on Sunday morning - and low and behold, His Spirit did a big work, and I knew it, and it somehow became a great message. So here you go. He is Risen! He is Risen, indeed!
~Sally
Greenfield Presbyterian Easter, April 8, 2012
As I began reading today’s text my first thought was, “Wow, the last thing I read about Peter this last week was how he denied knowing Jesus!”
How did Peter go from denying he even knew Jesus to preaching to a Roman soldier and his family?
What do we know about Peter’s experiences with Jesus...?
First and foremost we know that Peter loved Jesus immensely.
When I think of Peter I always think of him as a big, lunky kind of guy. He was a fisherman, like with nets, so he had to have some muscle...and when you start reading about some of the things he did and said you start getting this picture... yeah, Peter (aka the Rock)... kind of an appropriate name for him!
Some have said that Peter was a model disciple...and I think they say that because we get to see a lot of Peter’s humanity. A lot of times Peter opened his mouth and spoke before he thought, and I think, in a way, that makes us like him more - because he wasn’t perfect!
We read in the Gospels how Peter tended to be a bit more outspoken, as well as the one who would just jump in to things. When he saw Jesus walking on the water, he hopped right out of the boat and just started walking towards Jesus on the water as well!
Then his humanity kicked in, he looked down at what he was doing and he realized he was walking on water, and he started going down. Oh, yeah, gotta keep the eyes on Jesus!
When Jesus asked his disciples what people were saying about him, he wanted to know who people thought he was.
So after sharing how some thought he was John the Baptist and others said Elijah, Jesus asked the disciples, “But what about you guys? Who do you say I am?”
Right away Simon Peter piped up and answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus blessed him and told him that he was “Peter,” (the Rock), “and on this rock I will build my church...” Wow, what an honor. Peter must have felt pretty special...
And then without even turning a page, within the very same chapter of Matthew, as Jesus is foretelling his death, Peter opens his mouth and tries to shut Jesus down.
Jesus was telling the disciples how he’d have to go to Jerusalem and suffer and be killed, but Peter didn’t want to have any of it and told Jesus, “Never, Lord! This shall never happen to you!”
To which Jesus replied, “Get behind me Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you don’t have in mind the things of God, you’re thinking of the things of men.” (Matt. 16:23)
Wow. From one extreme to the other! Peter could be so dense! Poor guy, but that’s why I like him so much. I think I relate a little too closely!
And it just doesn’t quit. At the last supper, Jesus starts washing the disciples’ feet and once again Peter tried to stop him. After Jesus told him He had to wash them, He’s showing the disciples the way of servanthood... of course Peter says then why don’t you go ahead and wash my hands and head as well!
Peter. Peter. Not much later Jesus informs Peter that he, (Peter), will deny that he knows him three times. It had to kill Peter to hear it, and of course, he adamantly argued that he would never deny Jesus, he loves him...
But later on, when confronted and accused of being one of Jesus’ followers, Peter was insistent, and denied knowing Jesus at all. Isn’t it funny that the disciple who identified Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, denied knowing Him at all when it came right down to it?
Oh the guilt and pain he must have felt when he heard the rooster crow that third time...
Peter failed Jesus miserably...we all fail Jesus miserably.
Have you ever said something that you wish you could’ve taken back? Have you ever done something that you wish you wouldn’t have done?
Thankfully, for Peter and for us, that’s not the end of the story, is it?
It’s not the end of the story because if we had to live perfectly, do everything perfectly, and work to make everything right, then we’d never please God.
More often than not we find ourselves in need of more patience, more kindness, more self-control.
We raise our kids to be nice to one another as we yell at them to hurry up and get in the car so we can go to church and worship Jesus!
We complain about the lady at the register being curt with us or our neighbors never acknowledging us, but how many times have we gone out of our way to truly ask how someone is doing or made the effort to build a relationship?
Yes, we all fail miserably, and no matter how hard we try we’re never going to be perfect. We can never do enough, work enough, or earn enough to please God.
But that’s why we’re here! And that’s the Good News that Peter was exuberantly telling Cornelius and his household!
In the death of Jesus, God has made the way for us to be perfect in His sight. In the death of Jesus the price for our sin was paid in full, and we no longer have sin coming between ourselves and God.
By the power of the resurrected Christ we can approach God with confidence because our sins are forgiven!
The very core of the Good News centers on Jesus’ victory over sin, death and judgment.
On Easter morning, Resurrection Day, Jesus Christ beat death and hell when he came back to life!
Can’t you just picture Peter? When the women came back from the tomb and told the disciples that it was empty, Peter took off like a shot. On the one hand he had to be grief-stricken thinking that maybe someone had stolen Jesus’ body.
But on the other hand, there had to be a thread of hope, a hope that would eventually grow believing that Jesus had overcome death itself, and that in that victory he - and we all - can have victory in our own lives.
In our scripture today Peter recognized that God brought him to the house of Cornelius so he could share with him the Good New of Jesus - even though Cornelius wasn’t a Jew.
Peter realized that God was showing him a new thing! God was showing him that the message of peace through Jesus Christ - the message that every person can be reconciled with God - is for everyone...
God’s love and forgiveness in Christ is for Jew and Greek, men and women, natives and illegal immigrants, gays and straights, married and single, black and white! God wants to be reconciled to all of His creation.
God showed us in Peter that He can and will use anyone to share the Gospel, to share the Good News of freedom in Christ with the world.
Peter, who usually acted first and thought later.
Peter, who one minute could be tracking right along with Jesus and the next minute be speaking out of his own selfish desires.
Sound familiar?
Every one of the disciples were imperfect, and look what God did with them!
When we follow Jesus, he empowers us to both turn away from the shameful and sinful things that seem to trap us, and to embrace an amazing quality of life. The Bible calls it “zoe” in Greek, abundant life or life to the full!
And a big part of that abundant life is made up of hope, and it’s the hope that comes from the reality of the resurrection. It’s the hope that helps us to live every morning as Easter morning!
I have to believe it was the first time Peter saw Jesus after the resurrection... Peter and some of the other disciples had been out on the Sea of Galilee fishing all night and they’d had no luck.
Then from the shoreline someone calls out to them and tells them to try throwing the net to the other side of the boat, which they do, and they haul in a huge amount of fish.
Then John recognizes that it’s Jesus and tells Peter, “Look, it’s the Lord!” and as soon as Peter heard him he grabbed his clothes and jumped off the boat to swim to Jesus.
I keep picturing the movie Forrest Gump. You know, when Forrest has his own shrimp boat and he’s out on it and see’s Lt. Dan, his good friend from the war, sitting at the dock in his wheelchair, and Forrest is so excited to see Lt. Dan that he takes a running leap off the boat and swims like all get-out...the boat’s still going out to sea, but Forrest doesn’t care! It’s Lt. Dan!!!
That’s how I see Peter. He can’t wait for the boat to get to shore - it’s Jesus - and he’s alive and right there on the beach!
Jesus, whom he’d denied, yet loved so much, is right there. Alive.
God went to great lengths to restore His relationship with His creation, His creatures, you and me. He sacrificed the life of His own son so that we wouldn’t have to pay the price ourselves.
As Peter tells the story of Jesus to the household of Cornelius he gets to the part about Jesus’ death. He says, “They killed him by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen.”
“They killed him by hanging him on a tree...BUT GOD raised Him”
Those words, “but God” are the church’s only good answer to the trials and problems that we all have to deal with.
A pastor wrote about a tv documentary that he once watched that traced the lives of some of the world’s religious leaders.
They were personal looks at the lives of people like the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Pope, the Dalai Lama, the chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, the President of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Rev. Mark Hanson, Bishop of the ELCA and President of the Lutheran World Federation.
The pastor wrote, “One of the most moving parts of the show was when Mark Hanson sat at his kitchen table and talked about his family’s struggle with his son’s drug addiction.
He said that the most difficult day of his life was the day he left his 14 year old son at a treatment center; feeling as if he had failed as a parent; not knowing if this would work, not knowing if he had lost his son forever; not knowing what else to do.
He then talked about how faith had carried him through when nothing else would. It was for the Hanson family, a deeply personal “but God” moment.
Trying to reason our way through grief and loss, trying to make sense of the senseless, trying to convince a world gone crazy with the desire for more of everything and anything - that that desire is deadly of both body and soul; these things are, at the end of the day, pointless.
There is no reason which can assuage our grief, there is no sense to be made of the raging evil we see around us, there is no way to divert the addicted and bloated from seeking their fix, be it oil or drugs. The only answer we have to offer to these things, (that Luther summed up as Sin, Death and the Devil), is those two words, “but God!”
At Easter we celebrate the ultimate “but God” moment, the raising of Jesus from the dead. It is both the proof and the promise of our faith. It reminds us of what God HAS done in the past while promising to us what God will do in the future.” 1
Peter had much to witness to, and thanks be to God that he did! We are an imperfect people, but God loves us and wants to give meaning and purpose to our lives, and He will - because nothing is impossible with Him. Amen.
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