Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter, May 4, 2025

Nicole Saldarriaga Coggins,
Guest Preacher

Acts 9:1-20+Psalm 30+Revelation 5:11-14+John 21:1-19

I have never been known to do things in half measures. So I guess I’m going to dive into the deep end for my first ever sermon and tell you all about how I struggle with shame. Almost ten years ago now, when I graduated from college, I moved back into my mom’s apartment—which happened to be just down the street from a tiny Episcopal church. I had grown up driving past the little cream-yellow facade practically my whole life, but had never attended a service. That year after graduation, though, when I was struggling to figure out who I was and what I really wanted to do with my life, I was desperate for some sort of solid ground. So one Sunday, on a total whim, I walked over and gave it a try. (I love how God can work with something as simple as the proximity of a church to your home, by the way, but that’s a topic for a different sermon). 

I loved the small, tight-knit community I found in this little church. Many of you know that a big part of my faith journey has been the process of finding my way to the Episcopal Church after being raised Roman Catholic, and in many ways, this tiny church on a busy suburban street was a first turning point for me—that thrill of exploring something new and a little scary, and finding only warmth and welcome. 

I wish this was the story of how I found a place in that church, but it isn’t. That Easter, I signed up to read one of the lessons. Easter that year was around that time I sometimes call “the pollening,” and I was struggling with a combination of bad allergies and stress-induced insomnia from a new teaching job I was still trying to get the hang of. Desperate to sleep and breathe through my nose, I took a couple of Benadryl the night before Easter and—some of you may see where this is going—slept right through my alarm and woke up in a sweaty panic sometime in the middle of the offertory hymn. I did still make it to church that day—I think I slunk in right before communion—but I was completely mortified. 

I know a lot of you are thinking well, that’s embarrassing, but not that big a deal! I’m sure they just found someone to cover for her and moved on with their lives—and you’re probably right; but I struggle, especially back then, with the kind of perfectionism that turns minor mistakes into agonizing proof of just how unworthy I am. And so I never went back. I just stopped going. For some time I was nervous to even walk down that street on a Sunday morning (by the way, if you catch me after church today, ask me how many alarms I set this morning—we’ll have a laugh). I look back on that younger me with a lot of tenderness and a healthy bit of humor; but here is the truth: I will never know what my faith journey may have looked like, the relationships I may have built or the community I may have been a part of, if I had just let go of my shame long enough to stay. 

These are the feelings and the questions I want to take into our discussion of today’s Gospel. We meet the disciples in the days after the crucifixion and resurrection—they have just spent years participating in work that was once beyond their wildest imagining. They have sat at the Messiah’s feet, witnessed his signs and miracles, learned from him, broken bread with him. You can picture them following Jesus through his ministry, all of them idealistic and energetic, dreaming of the better future that Jesus was ushering in. Then, the worst happens—their beloved friend and teacher, the Son of God himself, is brutally killed and their movement is targeted, persecuted, chased out of Jerusalem. What do they do, in the wake of this? Well, they do the only thing they can think to do—they go back to their lives, back to the Sea of Tiberius, back to fishing for plain old fish, not people. I see something so true and so human in this—the way after a massive disappointment or upheaval, sometimes the only thing we can think to do is bury ourselves in the everyday tasks and routines we know we can handle. When we are lost, we look for the familiar. We look for what feels easy and safe—and maybe sometimes we hide in that safe place, even if it’s not precisely where we’re meant to be. That’s what I picture the disciples doing that night—but every time they cast their net, it comes up empty. Until, at the break of dawn, the risen Jesus shows up on the shore. He tells them to cast their net on the other side of the boat, and suddenly, the net is so full they can’t even haul it up. That’s when they recognize him—and Peter, being Peter, doesn’t even wait for them to bring the boat back into shore. He jumps straight into the water and swims, if only it means getting to Jesus faster. 

I say “Peter being Peter” because I think our friend has a touch of the perfectionist about him too. Peter is one of the first disciples to join Jesus’s ministry, and he pops up throughout the Gospels—usually the first to volunteer for something like walking on water, the first to call Jesus the Messiah, the one who doesn’t want Jesus to wash his feet at the last supper and then, after being rebuked by Jesus for refusing, says go for it, Lord, “not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” It’s at this same supper that Peter says “I will lay down my life for you,” and Jesus responds “Will you lay down your life for me? Very truly I tell you, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times.” 

And this is exactly what happens. After Jesus’s arrest, in a moment of fear, Peter denies that he is a follower of Jesus—denies Jesus—three times. 

We don’t get much about Peter’s reaction to this in the text. We don’t hear how his heart must have sunk into his stomach the moment he heard the cock crow, and realized what he had done. We don’t hear about how he must have felt like a failure, like the worst kind of friend, to have professed his love and loyalty for Jesus over and over, only to deny even knowing him when it really counted. We don’t hear about how this denial, and Jesus’s prediction of it, must have weighed on him as he watched his friend actually do what he had promised to do—lay down his life for his friends. We don’t hear about any of this, but I’m certain we can imagine it. Researcher and public speaker Brené Brown, who has basically written the book on shame, often says that “to feel shame is to be human.” It’s a crippling, pervasive feeling that we can all relate to. But knowing precisely what that feels like is what should make this gospel passage so life-giving for us. Because even though Peter must be struggling with these feelings, even though he runs back to his old life to hide—Jesus doesn’t let Peter drown in his shame. On that beach, sharing a meal around a fire, Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?” Three times. You can almost see Peter’s face reddening as he realizes what Jesus is doing. But Jesus isn’t making Peter repeat his response to make a point, or make him feel bad. Each repetition of the question and Peter’s response in the affirmative is a chance at restoration, a chance at redemption. Peter is facing his biggest mistake and Jesus is showing him a way through it. “Feed my lambs,” Jesus tells him. “Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. Follow me.” Don’t get stuck in your shame. Don’t get stuck in the way this ministry ended—because it hasn’t actually ended. It has only just begun, and to love me, to follow me, is to take care of my people. To keep doing the work. In this very simple moment, Jesus shows Peter, and us, that we are more than our mistakes or shortcomings. We are more than our shame, our doubt, our fears. There is always an opportunity for redemption, and there is so much good we can do in the world if we will only accept the redemption on offer. 

A little while after this scene, in Acts of the Apostles, we see Peter receive the Holy Spirit as Jesus promised, and his preaching on that day inspires three thousand people to follow Jesus’ way. Peter goes on to play a major role in the growth of the early church. Sometimes I wonder how different the history of our faith would look if Peter had just gone back to fishing—if, after messing up, he had considered himself unworthy of continuing the work Jesus asked him to do. How many people may not have been fed? How many people may not have been tended to? 

But this is the transformative power of mercy—and today’s lessons show us that it is on offer to everyone, no matter who they are or what they’ve done. Even Paul, who we met in the first lesson when he was still persecuting early Christians—in many cases rather violently—is able to accept God’s mercy and his call to action, and becomes a major figure in the early church in his own right. Our histories are full of people who have messed up in horrible ways and are not only still worthy of God’s mercy, but also still worthy of God’s love and commissioning. All they have to do is respond. All we have to do is respond. Amen.