There’s No Going Back – Br. Geoffrey Tristram

Br. Geoffrey Tristram

Acts 9:1-9 | John 21:1-14

There’s no going back. There’s no going back.  Once you have said ‘yes’ to Jesus, once you have met the Risen Lord and said YES to his invitation to ‘follow me,’ nothing is the same again.  For, as Saint Paul says in 2 Corinthians: “If you are in Christ, you are a new creation. Everything has passed away, see everything has become new.”[i]

In our readings today there are two wonderful accounts of how the greatest leaders of the church – Peter and Paul – each had to learn, in a way which was both humbling and painful, that to follow Jesus, first meant a real death to the life which they had lived until then. They had to become a new creation. They had to be born anew before God could use them for the work of the Kingdom.

So when, in our Gospel today, Peter says, ‘I am going fishing’ – I’m going back to the old life – that was no longer possible. He was a good fisherman, his strong hands were skilled with the ropes and the nets. But although he toiled all through the night, he caught nothing.  Something had changed. What had changed was that Jesus had called him to follow him, and he had said YES. But what he was yet to learn was that he could not follow Jesus on his own terms, in his own strength, in the old way. That had died.

These skilled hands of the fisherman would be used by Jesus, but first Peter had to come to Jesus empty handed. And perhaps there is no more poignant moment in all the gospels than when Peter comes ashore, and sees Jesus sitting beside a charcoal fire. That word ‘charcoal’ is only used twice in the New Testament: here and in the courtyard of the High Priest Caiaphas, where Peter stood warming himself, and where he denied knowing Jesus three times.

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Sermon for Friday in Easter Week – Br. David Allen

davidallen_1

Jn 21:1-14

The time was several days after Jesus’ second appearance to his disciples in that upper room in Jerusalem.  The Place was somewhere on the Western Shore of the Sea of Galilee.  Seven of Jesus’ disciples were gathered there, waiting to see what would happen next.

Peter said to the others, “I’m going fishing”.  It was only natural that he should think of doing what he had done before Jesus called him. Read More