Grace, Mercy, and Peace to you from
God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ,
This morning’s readings bring us a picture of the fullness
of God – the extent of his creation and his generosity. John, the author of
Revelation, describes the thousands and thousands of angels encircling the
throne of grace singing and rejoicing and praising God. Just before this
passage, John mentions a great multitude of resurrected believers, too numerous
for anyone but God to count, standing before the throne and the lamb, crying in
loud voices in praise of God.
The Lord is not a miser; heaven will be full on the Day of
Judgement. He fills the world with love, and creation responds in praise. He
spreads the gospel lavishly. Absolutely everyone who believes in Christ is
saved. All sins are forgiven. Jesus’ blood washes us clean. The Father’s loving
arms are wide open. He breaks down barriers, too, so that reluctant hearts and
sluggish minds can take hold of him with the joy of faith.
We see God’s generosity, as well, in his concern for earthly
things. He provides abundantly. The disciples had been fishing all night and
had caught nothing. The Lord knew about their struggles and provided more fish
than they could have hoped for. He rewards effort. He blesses folks who strive
in faith. He frequently makes us wait, but he does provide, and often with
surprising abundance.
We should remember, as well, that he has been generous
toward his church in this world of turmoil. He has kept the church going, even
though she has numerous critics and despite the many flaws of the faithful that
result from sinful flesh and contact with the turbulent world that surrounds
God’s kingdom. He provides servants, and St. Peter’s has a few of those. He
brings together people from various backgrounds and with different personalities
and he makes us into a community. He changes us and stretches us. We see three
examples in our readings this morning.
Paul, for one, was a dynamo, a greatly gifted man. He had a
powerful brain; he knew how to discipline himself. He wasn’t afraid of work or
sacrifice or unpopularity. If he didn’t serve the church, he would have been as
productive public servant, a cabinet minister, say, who did a lot for his
country. But the Lord gave him a new personality and the ability to devote his
talents to the gospel. He turned him into a gift to the church.
Peter was a different sort of person, strong and impulsive.
He worked by intuition and liked to get his way. He knew how to look out for
himself and loved to be at the center of things. Somebody said about Peter that
his impulses were generous, but he followed them as much because they were his
own feelings as they were generous ones. He chose his own path and walked
wherever he wanted. This would change, though, as the years passed, so the Lord
said to him, “When you are old, you will stretch out your hands and someone
else will…bring you where you do not wish to go.” This is often the way. We’re
free when we’re young, but responsibilities mount with the years and God’s
people find that we make a sacrifice of ourselves and live for others. Peter
became this kind of servant. – a gift from the Lord to the church. Like the
Lord, according to church tradition, Peter, too, was crucified. An old story
tells how Peter escaped from his prison in Rome the night before his death. As
he was coming along one of the Roman roads, a familiar figure bearing as cross
came to him. “Lord, where are you going?” Peter asked.
“I’m going to Rome to be crucified again.”
Peter turned and went back to his prison. The guards found
him in his cell when they came for him the next morning. So an old church
legend tells us that the Savior used Peter and gave him a new self, but he
didn’t change Peter’s nature. He battled with sin and selfishness just like the
rest of us. Peter is a source of encouragement, then. His weaknesses were
obvious, but the Lord claimed him as a friend and servant and gave him a
position of leadership in the kingdom. By his generosity, God doesn’t despise
the imperfect, but he molds us and uses us as vessels of his glory. We each in
our own way are gifts to the church.
John’s story was unique, too. Where Peter and Paul would
have done well at whatever they turned to, John’s qualities could shine only in
the church, for his great gift was the capacity to love. He was an expert at
loving. He loved the Lord and his fellow believers; he loved the Christian
community. “Beloved, let us love one another,” he wrote, “for love is from God.
And everyone who loves is born of God and knows God…In this is love, not that
we love God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for
our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another…if we
love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us…God is love
and the one who abides in love abides in God.”
John was especially sensitive to the value of love among
Christians, for when we love our brothers and sisters in Christ, we imitate
God’s love. The love in the Christian family is a sign to outsiders that God is
working among us. John recorded this saying of our Lord’s, “By this, all men
will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.”
All the apostles, like our Savior, emphasize the importance
of Christian love, but for John it’s a special quality, the direction of his
soul. He knew how to subordinate his own self, to bury his ego, in service to
the Lord. For John, Christ was great and he was very small. Church tradition
has it that John worked at Ephesus in Turkey for many decades and that he lived
to be very old. Near the end of his days, he needed to be carried to worship
and even then he could say again and again, almost like a motto, “Little
children, love one another.” The more we Christians love each other, the
stronger our community becomes. As John suggested, the love among Christians
acts like a magnet. It draws seekers to the church and causes people to wonder
about what we have and how they can claim it for themselves.
Anyway, the church is God’s community, where different kinds
of people are brought together to flourish and find their destinies. Christians
aren’t all the same. We each have our own talents and our own contributions to
make. The church uses many kinds of people. Jesus uses everyone he draws to him
in faith. There’s more freedom in the church than in the materialistic society
that surrounds us. The church has room for all of us.
God is generous. St. Peter’s people respond with praise and
thanksgiving. We’re something like Paul in our loyalty to God’s word and our
willingness to bring the gospel to others. We’re like Peter in persistence and
our ability, under God, to look out for ourselves. And we’re also like John,
loyal to the truth, who possessed the gift that is unique to the church – the
art of Christian love. He surrendered his will to the Saviour and lived in
love.
Somebody said that Christians show their love for
unbelievers by spreading the gospel in works of evangelism and by patiently
enduring misunderstanding and ignorance. The love among sisters and brothers in
Christ is different. Christians encourage one another and offer moral support.
We’re kind and forbearing and unselfish. We don’t remember wrongs. The Holy
Spirit forms us into a community where sinners may lay down their burdens at
the foot of the cross and receive the hope to carry on. We help one another to
follow the Lord.
A time is coming when we’ll join millions of other believers
at the throne of grace singing eternal praises to our God. Right now, though,
we live in the same uncertain world as the disciples, who fished all night without
catching anything – and probably not for the first time. We know what it means
to be unsure about employment. We know about illness, loss, the misbehavior of
others. We know what it means to sin and need forgiveness. We know the blessed
relief of absolution. Whatever it means to be human, both good and bad, sin and
righteousness touches us. We have the advantage of faith and the trust that the
Savior will provide abundantly. He sent the disciples 153 fish, many more than
they needed, and then invited them to breakfast. He fed them from a single fish
burning on charcoal, just as he once turned a few loaves and fish into enough
food for many thousands. How often he provides for us! His promise to keep on
providing is an invitation to be content and at peace. His generosity won’t
fail.
One of the things he generously provides is the fellowship of
our worshipping community. As we meet the world each day, it makes a difference
to us that we have a community of Christian friends, who think as we do about
God and the world, who want the best for us and who encourage us to strive for
what’s good and who offer moral support, not just in good times but day after
day.
What a blessing it is to know other Christians who can offer
us an understanding shoulder t lean on or a piece of advice at a timely moment.
Our Heavenly Father, out of the fullness of his generosity, plans it that way.
St. Peter’s is a result of his wise provision.
The love among Christians, sturdy, faithful, not drawing
attention to itself, is a foretaste of the joys of heaven. The Lord prepares us
now for greater joys to come. We thank him for his generosity toward us. We rejoice
that he includes us, along with his first disciples, among his beloved people.
In Jesus’ Name, AMEN.
The peace of God that passes all understanding
keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge of Christ Jesus. AMEN.
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