Sunday the 4th of May 2025 - Third Sunday of Easter

Acts 5:27b-32, 40b-41/ Ps 30(29)/ Revelation 5:11-14/ John 21:1-19

There are  craftspeople who can take the most delipidated and damaged item and restore it to new when others would throw the item away. These people put their time, skill, and love into bringing back to life things that have long passed their usefulness or pleasing appearance. Grime covered paintings, smashed pottery figurines, old broken clocks, in fact anything that was once a treasured possession can be brought back from the recycle bin given sufficient work and a belief in what can be achieved.

In the gospel account today Jesus is restoring his disciples who are broken and dejected characters. After all that has happened in Jerusalem they seem to have split up and some have returned to their homes near the Sea of Galilee and gone fishing, returning to a familiar way of life that they can find some comfort in. Even so they caught nothing all night, perhaps their hearts were just not in it. Returning to shore they encountered a stranger who told them to cast their nets again. They might not have recognised the stranger immediately but something about him persuaded them to try for some fish one last time. They did as they were told and caught a large number of fish, we are even given the number of fish they caught.

In our previous translation Jesus calls out to the disciples calling them friends. The actual word used in the Greek text is closer to children or those who need teaching. Jesus recognises the disciples as being vulnerable and hurting in need of his love and support. He calls them his children in recognition of how they need his love, protection and instruction. Jesus is calling his disciples again, as he did three years previously, after the trauma of his passion and death, after they had scattered in fear, after they had given up all hope and returned to their old lives. Jesus found them again, and as with any good shepherd, he called them back to himself and invited them again to follow him. As Jesus always does, he forgives the disciples for their lack of faith and their failure to trust in him and he calls them back to start again. Jesus forgives us as he forgave his first disciples, time and time again if necessary. We are called to start again and again, Jesus will never give up on us even if we give up on him and ourselves, he will never stop calling us back to himself.

When they recognised Jesus standing on the shore Peter, in his impulsive nature, jumped out of the boat and waded ashore to join Jesus near the fire that had been prepared on the beach. Peter was about to encounter the limitless compassion and love of Jesus. Just as Peter denied Jesus three times as he sat around another fire the night before Jesus suffered and died, he was now about to pledge his love for Jesus three times as he sat around another fire. Three times Jesus asked Peter if he loved him, and three times Peter answered that he did.

Although Jesus had prepared a breakfast meal of fish and bread for his disciples he asked them to bring some of the fish they had caught to add to it. Although Jesus was perfectly capable of providing what was needed he took some of what the disciples had brought and used that to provide their meal. It is with God’s help that we achieve anything, Jesus will take the results of our efforts, and use them to multiply them feeding back to us something that is greatly enhanced for our benefit. In the Eucharist we offer back to God all that he provides for us through creation and in return we receive the author of all creation, the body and blood of Jesus, in the appearance of bread and wine.

When we respond to the restorative action Jesus works on us the results can be outstanding. The readings from the Acts of the Apostles, show us how God will work through our weak feebleness to achieve his aims. Only a short time after their failure to recognise the resurrected Jesus the Apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit, were teaching openly about the risen Lord, in defiance of the religious authorities of the day. In the face of torture and even death they declare that they must obey God rather than worldly authority. They rejoiced in having been punished and dishonoured for the sake of Jesus and his teaching and the church flourished. Regardless of years of persecution, the death of many martyrs, the establishment of secular states, belief in the risen Lord, Jesus, has continued down the ages and will continue until he returns in glory.

Jesus, the master craftsman through whom all things were made, continues to restore us from our damaged nature into the people he desires us to be. We are the masterpieces of God’s creation, created in perfection but damaged by original sin, worn down by a lack of faith in God and what God knows we can be. We see ourselves and others as we and they appear to us in this life. Damaged by sin, the hardships of life, the rough and tumble of our situations, scarred by the daily battles life throws at us. We have difficulty in seeing ourselves as God sees us. God is able to see us in the perfection he meant us to be, the perfection he created us in, the perfection that we are destined to achieve. God sees us as he meant us to be and how we will be when we reach our true destiny in union with God in heaven for eternity.

We must offer to God the meagre offerings we have produced with his help so that he can use them to produce something of perfection. We must become active witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus so that the work seen in the Acts of the Apostles can, through the Holy Spirit, continue in our time.

God Bless Brendan