Third Sunday of Easter, May 4, 2025

2025 May 4 SUN: THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER
Acts 5: 27-32. 40b-41/ Ps 30: 2. 4. 5-6. 11-12. 13 (2a)/ Rv 5: 11-14/ Jn 21: 1-19

Many people look upon the Book of Revelation as a rather forbidding sort of writing, full of things that can cause terror in people's hearts. But today we have an utterly joyful passage from Revelation. We have a description of heaven itself. And there is mention of the creatures of earth, all creatures, on land and in the sea. And in the center of it all is the Lamb that was slain. We need to think about this. The reason for the great joy is that the Lamb, who is Jesus, was slain, but has overcome death and lives forever. So this is the joyful image of heaven which we receive from the Book of Revelation. 

And as we turn to the other readings today, we see further cause for joy. In the Gospel we find Peter in some sense wishing that he could just disappear. And we're familiar with how he feels. He demonstrates embarrassment when John says it is the Lord. Peter is embarrassed. He says he needs to tuck in his garment. And it says also that he jumped into the water. Now, if he wanted to obscure his presence, he could have done one thing or the other. But he does both. And all of us who are familiar with our own embarrassment can recognize that we can have an exaggerated response to our sense of embarrassment.

Now, embarrassment is particularly tough because we feel powerless when we feel it. And we also feel its connection with shame. And we need to know that shame does not do us any good, whatever. If we feel guilt, we are saying to ourselves, "I did something wrong." But when it's shame that we feel, the message is, "I am something wrong." And that, of course, is something that we must allow to die within us.

Although we've heard that many times, it's not true. And if we experience embarrassment, it's uncomfortable just to feel that way. But we can also kind of torture ourselves by anticipating that we might be embarrassed somehow. And that keeps us in a state of tension which is definitely not creative tension. It is tension which damages us, really. And then we think of Jesus asking Peter three times, "Do you love me?" This is for Peter an occasion for embarrassment because he is remembering the three times he denied even knowing Jesus at the time of his arrest and his passion.

But Jesus is setting Peter free. He is telling him, "You can go forward and you can proclaim the good news of my death and resurrection." It's expressed in somewhat forbidding terms here that there will come a time, Jesus says, when you will be led where you do not want to go. And it's fitting for us at this time when the See of Peter is vacant that we consider what Peter did in laying down his life. And by tradition we understand that this was around between the years 64 and 67 on the Vatican Hill in Rome that Peter was crucified. And this was during the cruel reign of the Emperor Nero. And every successor of Peter, including the one we will probably receive later this week, every one of the successors of Peter is a human being with faults and sins.

Nevertheless, because of the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we as a church have been able to carry on and not go completely wrong. And we see that Peter goes on in the Acts of the Apostles today to say, "We will obey God rather than men." They received their warning and they said, "We have to keep doing what we've been doing, proclaiming the good news of Jesus." So that was quite a step forward from wanting to sort of hide himself. He and the other apostles were happy to witness and we benefit from their witness. And in this season of Easter, we banish shame from our hearts and we embrace the joy of all that has been won by the Lamb who was slain, but who lives.