Sermon from May 4, 2025

Third Sunday after Easter    

John 21:1-19

“Follow Me and Tend My Sheep”

Let us pray: Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen (Psalm 19:14).

The text for our meditation is the Gospel lesson for today, from John 21:1-19. Scholars who are critical of the Bible and its reliability have often questioned whether Chapter 21 belongs to John’s Gospel. And some say that some other author, not John, must have added it later on. They have one big problem. Every single one of the ancient Greek manuscripts of the Bible has all 21 chapters, and early translations into other languages have the same 21 chapters preserved for us by our Lord, in His wisdom and guidance for Biblical writers.

And there’s good reason that Chapter 21 was included by John, inspired by God. It is a strong encouragement to the disciples to carry out the ministry to which they had been called by Jesus, when He said, Easter evening, “As the Father has sent Me, even so I am sending you” (John 20:21).

The disciples did go back to Galilee as Jesus had told them (Matthew 28:10), but they don’t seem to be preparing for their mission. Instead, led by Peter, along with James and John, seven of them are out fishing, all night, as they used to do. And even as expert fishermen, their night’s fishing was a failure. No fish! One Lutheran commentator (Dr. V.C. Pfitzner) wonders if they were forgetting already what their mission now was to be - to be fishers of men. Matthew tells us that some of the disciples, probably not these seven, but others, were still doubting about all this with Jesus (Matthew 28:17). And later on, even at the Ascension of Jesus into heaven, Luke tells us that at least some of the disciples were still asking: “Lord, will You at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel? - as if the goal of all this was really to set up an earthly kingdom with Israel as the top nation, instead of taking the Gospel of Christ Jesus and His love and forgiveness to all nations and peoples in the world.

The Pentecost event and the special coming of the Holy Spirit with power helped greatly in affirming the right focus for ministry (Acts 2), but as you read on in the Book of Acts, you discover that it’s not until Acts 8, when believers in Jerusalem were being persecuted by fellow Jews, that the believers began to scatter to other places to tell of Jesus. And Peter himself had never set foot in a non-Jewish home until Acts 10.

So, these early events of John 21, while Jesus was still appearing to His disciples on earth, visibly, were very important. The disciples were still in their boat, with no fish, on the Sea of Galilee, when Jesus called to them from the shore. They did not recognize Him at first, but put the net where He said and caught a huge number of fish.

Early in His ministry, in Luke 5, Jesus helped Peter catch many fish in the same way. Peter’s reaction was to fall at the knees of Jesus and say, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” And Jesus said to him, “Do not be afraid; from now on, you will be catching men” (Luke 5:1-10).

This time, in our text, in very similar circumstances, when John said, “It is the Lord” calling to us, Peter quickly jumped out of the boat and headed toward land. He wanted to be in the presence of his Living and forgiving Lord.

When he and the others reached the shore, they found a charcoal fire and a breakfast prepared for them by Jesus, with bread and fish. Jesus asked them to bring some of the fish just caught, and Peter went and found and counted 153 large fish in the net, a tremendous catch! And yet the net was not torn or broken, as it had been in the earlier great catch of fish.

Clearly, Jesus was doing miraculous things again for the seven chosen disciples in our text. He was providing a net full of fish for these supposedly expert fishermen, who could catch nothing. He was providing a wonderful breakfast meal of bread and fish (like the feeding of the 5,000 earlier in His ministry, Mark 6:30-44), provided in love and mercy and forgiveness for these disciples who had been so weak and fearful just recently and couldn’t seem to understand Jesus’ clear words about suffering and dying and rising again. And in this way, Jesus was reminding His disciples once again that their primary mission now was not be to fishermen for fish, but fishermen for people, telling people the Good News described in Revelation, Chapter 5, our Epistle lesson, of Jesus, the Lamb, who was slain and by His blood (and His resurrection) ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation (Revelation 5:9). And through their Word and proclamation of Jesus, the Holy Spirit could work and bring more people to forgiveness and faith and baptism and salvation through Christ Jesus.

But even these chosen disciples needed to be reminded of their calling and the forgiveness of Jesus, who died and rose for them, too, as did so many followers of the Lord before and after them. In the psalm for today, Psalm 30, we hear that King David, as strong as he was, could also be very weak, at times. In the psalm, he knows that he has done wrong (and this is not the Bathsheba story, but another failure) and has to say, “To You, O Lord, I cry and plead for mercy; be merciful to me, O Lord; be my Helper.” And the Lord turned David’s mourning into gladness and thankfulness through His forgiveness for him.

And we heard of Saul, who was so strongly anti-Christian and a persecutor of Christians until the Risen Lord Jesus appeared to him and turned his life around and brought Him to faith and baptism and forgiveness and made him the Apostle Paul, who could proclaim, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” But Paul still had to, the Scriptures say, “increase all the more in strength in the Lord to be able to proclaim that Jesus was the Christ” (Acts 9:1-22).

The Lord also had to work with the Christian, Ananias, who was supposed to go and witness to Saul, but was afraid for his own life and said, “Lord, I have heard… how much evil Saul has done to Your saints of Jerusalem.” The Lord finally just had to say to Ananias, “Go!” and he went, and the Holy Spirit brought Saul to faith.

Everyone needed encouragement in Christ, including Peter, in our text. He could be so strong, being the first disciple to say clearly of Jesus, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” But very quickly, he could think that he knew better than Jesus, and argue with Him, and tell Him never to talk about suffering and dying and rising again, though that was the central work of Jesus (Matthew 16:15-23).

Peter was trusting too much in himself and his wisdom and thinking and abilities. When Jesus predicted, “You will all fall away,” Peter emphatically said, “Even though they all fall away, I will not… If I must die with You, I will not deny you” (Mark 14:29,31). Again, Peter had said to Jesus, “I will lay down my life for you.” Jesus answered, “Will you?… Truly, truly I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times” (John 13:37-38). And that is exactly what Peter did. And then he went out and wept bitterly at his sin and failure. He was in sorrow and fear until the Risen Lord Jesus appeared to him and the others.

Now, at His third resurrection appearance to the disciples, Jesus talks particularly to Peter, to remind him of his weaknesses, but also to let him know that he was forgiven and still called to his ministry for Christ. The charcoal fire may have reminded Peter of where he had stood just a few weeks before, warming himself and then denying, three times, that he ever knew Jesus or had ever been His disciple. And three times, Jesus calls him Simon, and asks if he loves Him. Jesus had given him an extra name, Peter, a name which sounds like a word for a kind of rock. But Peter had not been the rock-man he thought he was. But he is realizing that and is truly repentant, and that comes out in some of the words that you can’t see in English, but in the original Greek.

Two times, Jesus asks, “Simon, do you love me?” And Jesus uses the special word, agape, which means the great, sacrificial love that Jesus had in giving up everything, and finally even His life, in order to pay for Peter’s sins, and ours, too. Peter responds two times, “Yes, Lord, You know that I love you.” But he uses a different word for love, which means more like brotherly, friendship love. Peter is realizing that his love will never measure up to Jesus’ perfect, sacrificial love, and that he needs to trust Jesus, His Savior, instead of his own wisdom and strength and abilities and imperfect love.

And the third time that Jesus asks, “Simon, do you love me?” He uses the same word for love that Peter has been using. Jesus knows that Peter’s love is weak and imperfect, compared with His perfect, sacrificial love, but He still loves and forgives Peter, and knows that He and the Holy Spirit can still work through Peter as a shepherd for sheep, with people of all ages and types, as we heard in the children’s sermon - all of whom Jesus loves. (Jesus had used several words for lambs and sheep of different ages in this text and called Peter to feed and tend to them all. Earlier, the disciples had tried to say that Jesus couldn’t be bothered with little children. Jesus corrects Peter and the others, as He had done before (Mark 10:13-16, Mark 9:33-36). How comforting it is that the Lord Jesus loves us all, no matter our age.

And as our text ends, Jesus says, in effect, to Peter, "Don’t follow yourself and your ideas and ways. Follow Me,” and My Word, and “tend to My sheep,” even if it means great sacrifice for you, as it eventually did for Peter.

We are not apostles, but we have a mission in our lives, too, where Christ has placed us, as baptized believers in Him. But we are shaky, too, and we have room to grow, too, in trust in our Savior, in confidence in him and His forgiveness, in spite of our own sins and weaknesses. We can be a blessing to our fellow sheep, as we hear Jesus say to us, too, “Follow Me and my Word, in your family and your church and with others God places around you, too.”

We pray, as the writer to the Hebrews says, “Now may the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the Great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good that you may do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to Whom be glory forever and ever." Amen (Hebrews 13:20-21).