"New Beginnings" ** a sermon for 4 Easter C on 4 May 2025**

            Winter gives way to Spring.  Graduation from High School or College.  A new job or a promotion.  A well-earned retirement.  The birth of children or grandchildren.  Life-saving heart surgery or cancer treatment.  Life gives you and me many opportunities for new beginnings.  An opportunity to start new and fresh.

This morning Simon Peter begins to live in to his name—the Rock.  Peter previously denies knowing Jesus during Jesus’ trials.  You remember that Peter is outside, in the courtyard keeping warm.  Three times Peter is asked about his relationship to Jesus.  Each time Peter denies having any kind of relationship with Jesus.

Jesus appears to Peter and the others several times after the resurrection.  Today we hear about the disciples encountering Jesus by the Sea.  After a breakfast of fish, Jesus gets real with Peter.  “Peter, do you love Me?’ Jesus asks.  Not once, but three times.  One time for each time Peter had denied his connection to Jesus.

One of the next times we see Peter is in the book of Acts.  There we will see Peter teaching and healing.  I mentioned last week how even Pater’s shadow worked miracles.  Many were healed and brought into relationship with Jesus on account of Peter.  On Pentecost alone, Peter’s words lead 3,000 people to be baptized (Acts 2:41).

I think the Apostle Paul can relate.  Before he became Paul, he was Saul.  Saul was a zealous persecutor of Jesus’ followers in his younger years.  Here is Paul, in his own words, talking about when he was known as Saul.  This is as Paul tells his testimony to the followers of Jesus in Philippi:

You know my pedigree: a legitimate birth, circumcised on the eighth day; an Israelite from the elite tribe of Benjamin; a strict and devout adherent to God’s law; a fiery defender of the purity of my religion, even to the point of persecuting the church; a meticulous observer of everything set down in God’s law Book.”

                        Philippians 3:6 (MSG)

            In other words, Paul says he is from an elite, privileged background.  Saul, as he was, and his family are ultra-religious.  They strive to follow the Torah and live rightly (and faithfully) before God.  They regularly fast and pray.  Paul was the protégé and likely successor of the great Jewish leader Gamaliel (see Acts 5:34).

            As Paul, however, he counts that all as nothing.  None of that now matters.  The life-changing encounter with the Risen Jesus renders that illustrious background as nothing.  You could say that Saul saw the light, quite literally!  Now, all Paul longs to know is Jesus and the power of the Resurrection (see Philippians 3:10).

No one, absolutely no one, is beyond the love and grace of God.  If God can transform Simon into Peter and Saul into Paul, then (surely) there is hope for you and me.  We are not bound by our pasts or our backgrounds.  You and I are only bound by the limitless love of God. That is the power of Peter and Paul’s witness for us.

And there are others in the Bible, too.  Hebrews Chapter 11 reminds us that God uses David, Rahab, Moses, and Sarah (11:23, 32).  All human individuals with flaws and faults.  Just like you and me.  God loves them despite their humanness and uses each of them to do incredible thing.  God can use us, too, as we are and where we are.

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