SERMON FOR MAY 1, 2022. TEXTS: ACTS 9:1-20, JOHN 21:1-19

“Talk about your call.” Seminary students had to file a report on that subject every year, in the form of both a written essay and a face-to-face interview with the candidacy committee of their synod. Throughout my teaching career I was the faculty representative to one or another of those committees. I heard a lot of call stories over the years, some dramatic like Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus, others poignant like Peter’s encounter with the risen Jesus. The Lord calling people to account with challenging questions like: “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” “Saul, why do you persecute me?” Or enlisting them in his service with a disconcerting command akin to “Ananias, get up . . . and go look for a man named Saul.” “The man who has done such great harm to our people in Jerusalem?” “The very one.” And they get up and go, or turn from their former ways in a blaze of repentance, or simply say “yes.”

Peter and Paul are both surprising choices in some respects, and in others ways they are quite well suited to the work to which Jesus summons them. A fisherman, an undistinguished Galilean on one hand; an accomplished Pharisee and Roman citizen on the other. Both opinionated and ardent in their own way. But the experience they have in common, the foundation of their respective vocations is forgiveness and an honest willingness to amend their lives.

Peter loved the Lord but was not ready to accept his ministry on his terms. When Jesus speaks of his imminent rejection and suffering, Peter is quick to push back. “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” He expects Jesus to take another path, a more glorious one, and with his urgent plea, Peter unwittingly aligns himself with the tempter, who put Jesus to the test in the wilderness. Jesus responds by denouncing his friend in no uncertain terms, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine but on human things.” After the Lord is arrested, Peter denies him. A woman asks, “You are not also one of this man’s disciples, are you?” In John’s account Peter replies, “I am not,” whereas in Matthew, Mark and Luke, he insists, “I do no know the man.” In both cases Peter speaks falsely and yet at the same time accurately. For he does not yet know Jesus rightly. And he is not yet the disciple Jesus needs him to be. It is after the resurrection, in their meeting on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, that his transformation becomes clear. This time when questioned, Peter answers in the affirmative, “You know that I love you,” and Jesus confirms his call. Not once but three times he entrusts to Peter’s care those for whom he has died: “Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.”

Paul’s opposition to the way of Jesus was one of brutal hostility. According to the Book of Acts, “[t]hat day a severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria . . . . Saul was ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison.” He approved the stoning of Stephen. It is no wonder that Ananias is puzzled and alarmed when God speaks to him of Saul. Still, Ananias trusts God and carries out the work to which he is called. And Paul, like Peter, is reconciled to the Lord and spends the rest of his life becoming the disciple Jesus requires in the face of new challenges and opportunities. As he writes to the Philippians: “. . . this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Jesus forewarns Peter, “Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” These cautionary words could apply equally to Paul. They speak to the circumstances of their lives in the wake of Jesus’ call as well as to the martyr’s death that each will ultimately face. The Lord has claimed them. They are no longer independent agents, free to do whatever they please. They are tethered to Jesus, and what binds them now makes them free, free to do God’s work in the world. Even when the call takes them to places unknown and unwelcome, places where they do it wish to go, they will go.

So talk about your call. As the old Gospel hymn proclaims:

“Hark, the voice of Jesus crying,’Who will go and work today?

Fields are ripe and harvests waiting; who will bear the sheaves away?’

Loud and long the Master calleth; rich reward he offers thee.

Who will answer, gladly saying, ‘Here am I, send me, send me’?

If you cannot speak like angels, if you cannot preach like Paul,

you can tell the love of Jesus, you can say he died for all.

If you cannot rouse the wicked with the judgment's dread alarms,

you can lead the little children to the Savior's waiting arms.”

Or better still, this kinder, gentler contemporary variation on the theme:

A NEW HEART

Words & Music by Michael W. Smith & Mike Hudson,

ASCAP, administered by the Meadowgreen Group

		I see my brother standin' like an oak tree. 
		I see my sister lovely as a queen. 
		I look and see so many gifted people. 
		Then I see the weaknesses in me. 
		
		I sometimes wish that I was more important. 
		I see a thousand ways I'd rather be. 
		But when I turn from fantasies of wishin'. 
		God reveals His greatest gift to me. 
		
	Chorus 
		And I may not sing like the angels. 
		And I may not preach like Paul. 
		But I know God has given me 
		The greatest gift of all... 
		A new heart.
		
		The world is saying beauty's on the outside
		And mеaning only comes from what you do
		But God reveals His glory on thе inside
		In His new creation deep in you
		
		You may not sing like the angels
		And you may not preach like Paul
		But I know God has given you
		The greatest gift of all
		A new heart.

You don’t have to harmonize like the heavenly hosts or proclaim the Gospel with an Apostle’s skill to change lives. You only have to share the love God has poured into your heart: “Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep.

Feed my sheep.” Listen; the Lord is calling you. Amen.      