Valley Covenant Church: Recent Episodes
Valley Covenant Church
Luke 24:44-53 “Staying Power” May 29, 2022 - Ascension Sunday Staying is a trick we often teach to dogs. When his master points at him and firmly says “Stay!” Fido needs to learn not to jump on your house guest or go snarf up a tasty crumb that fell under the table or chase off after the squirrel that just ran down a tree. For his own good and the good of others, Fido must learn staying power.
Staying was a difficult lesson for Jesus’ disciples. Their failure at it was embarrassingly revealed as Jesus drew near the Cross. Peter, James and John could not stay awake in the Garden of Gethsemane. And after the Last Supper, when Jesus predicted they would all desert Him and run away, Peter vehemently denied that he would do that. But when the time came, he did. Mark 15:50 says simply, “All of them deserted him and fled.”
Yet our Lord Jesus Christ is the Lord of second chances, often more. We read from the Gospel of John a few weeks ago how Jesus forgave Peter his desertion and brought him back into relationship with Him. Now, for the Sunday on which we remember Jesus ascending into heaven, we hear Jesus offer them all another chance to obey His command to stay, to remain where He wanted them to be for as long as needed. In verse 49 he said, “so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” In Acts 1 we read verse 4, “he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father.”
Perhaps you realize there is a small Gospel harmony problem in that command to stay. In Matthew and Mark, the disciples were told to meet the risen Jesus in Galilee, far from Jerusalem. That reconciling conversation with Peter in John 21 was part of how they met the risen Jesus along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. So why do the other Gospels talk about going to Galilee, when in Luke they’re supposed to stay where they are in Jerusalem?
Luke makes that disparity feel even greater by the way he tells the story. Chapter 24 goes from one episode to the next, with just the little word, two letters in Greek, “then,” to move on to the next scene. It leaves us with the feeling it all happened on the same day, including the Ascension, on Easter.
Yet Luke could not have meant that narrative, with Jesus rising, then meeting the disciples, then telling them many things about the Scriptures, then telling them to stay, then being carried up to heaven, all happening one thing right after other, to mean everything occurred in 24 hours or even just a few days. Luke wrote Acts too. H told us himself in what we heard today that Jesus’ time on earth after the Resurrection was forty days. That’s why Ascension Day, this past Thursday actually, is forty days after Easter. So it’s likely there are a number of days, maybe a few weeks between verses 43 and 44 in the last chapter of Luke.
That larger span of time makes it possible to give a pretty simple explanation of why Matthew, Mark and John talk about the disciples going to meet Jesus in Galilee, while Luke has Jesus telling them to stay in Jerusalem. That command to stay put came only after they had gone, as commanded by the angels, to Galilee and then come back to the vicinity of Jerusalem. That’s when Jesus told them to stay and wait there, then ascended to heaven.
That last event in Jesus’ time on earth resulted in the somewhat strange Christian celebration of the Ascension. “Jesus is gone, hurray!” is a pretty awkward thing to even say, much less get excited about. A new Facebook meme for this year puts it as “The Feast of the Ascension: celebrating the day that Jesus began working from home.” We like to talk about the presence of Jesus with us. Why do we have a day to remember His absence?
I thought about that question, “Why was Jesus flying off to heaven a good thing?” and realized that His direction for the disciples to stay points us toward the answer. The reason Jesus gave for the disciples to stay and wait is also the reason for His departure. Jesus said it in John 16:7, “it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate [the Holy Spirit] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”
Jesus went away so that His disciples could stay and wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. We will celebrate that glorious event next Sunday on Pentecost. He needed to go and they needed to stay, in order for Pentecost to happen, in order for the Holy Spirit to show up and make them ready then to go all over the world.
The Ascension, especially this year, makes me think about the stayings and the goings in my own life, and yours. Here I am getting ready to go away from serving as your pastor, after 29 years. Yet, just saying that, I realize that I’ve stayed a long time, and that staying has been a good thing. It was time enough for the Holy Spirit to show up in many wonderful and good ways, both for me and for you.
Next week you all will share in the rite of Confirmation for two young people who’ve grown up in our church. I’m glad I could stay long enough to have them in a Confirmation class and hear each Sunday a little of what is happening in their lives. I won’t be here when those two start thinking about things like college or getting married or careers, but staying here long enough has blessed me with the privilege of seeing other, older students do all those things, like Alison there who followed the leading of the Holy Spirit to Haiti. That was worth staying for.
I probably first learned the power of listening to Jesus tell me to stay in my first church. I was only three or four years in to serving there and it got hard. There were many wonderful and gracious members of that congregation, but there were also a few recalcitrant but vocal folks who seemed to feel nothing should change in their nearly hundred-year-old church. I began to wonder if I should even be a pastor, much less stay there.
Back then I had an almost freshly printed Ph.D. in hand and I loved to teach. So I quietly freshened up an academic vita and sent it off to three or four different colleges and seminaries with open positions. The answers I got were all polite notifications that they were considering other people, with more teaching experience. When I read them I heard another voice, the voice of Jesus and His Spirit, telling me to stay where I was, to stay in ministry, to wait for His power, the blessing of the Holy Spirit, to arrive.
So I did. I stayed there another few years and saw many good things happen. I got to celebrate that church’s 100th anniversary with them and the fact that they had stayed, stayed to serve that community for a century. Now they are going on 130 years, and a young man, one of my Confirmation students there because I stayed longer, recently became their pastor. That was worth staying for, worth remaining in pastoral ministry.
Now even though I’m going soon from this church, then, I’d like to urge on you today the power of staying. Several of you have lived in this community as long or longer than I have. You probably realize that’s a rarity in today’s world. It may in fact be a privilege that younger people will not have as often, as the need to move for employment and economic reasons grows.
Yet, if you have stayed a while somewhere, in some job or type of work, maybe in a marriage for a long time, like Marlon and Kathleen, then you also have seen some of that power which arrives when you stay. It may not be the rushing wind or bright flames of Pentecost, but it is the gracious gift of the Father, the gentle filling and sustaining of the Holy Spirit.
One reason to stay in place, particularly as a Christian among other Christians, is that what Luke says in just a few words here takes time, a lot of time. In verse 44 Jesus told them “everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Verse 45 goes on, “Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.”
That opening of their minds to the Scriptures did not happen in a moment or a day or two. As we read about the early church in Acts and look at the first centuries of the church, it’s clear that a more complete understanding of what God taught them about Jesus took decades and even centuries to unfold.
Our Confirmation students just heard how it took 300 years for the Council of Nicaea to happen and for Christians to fully get a grasp on the fact that Jesus is both God and human. Followers of Jesus had to stay and think about Him a long time, stay with the truths they had received and process them, in order to receive the Spirit’s guidance to express that truth in a clear way.
That need to have our minds opened to the Scriptures is a reason for you and I to stay with our faith and with a community of people where God’s Word is opened and studied and discussed regularly. We are waiting for the Holy Spirit to arrive in those discussions and show us what God is saying to us for the present time.
Yes, I know, in the very near future, I’m going rather than staying. So where do I get off preaching this today? Part of my answer to that, for myself as much as for anyone else, is that the staying Jesus asked of His disciples was not meant to be forever. They were told to stay in Jerusalem until “you have been clothed with power from on high,” until that glorious baptism of the Holy Spirit came upon them. Once that happened, many of them went out in all directions, guided and directed by the Holy Spirit, sharing the Gospel of Jesus with the world.
My own going after staying here at Valley Covenant for many years is not at all like the apostolic mission out into the world, but I can say that I’ve felt the Holy Spirit say it is time to go, giving me permission to lay down ministry here and find whatever He has in store for Beth and me next. Which brings me to another answer for why I’m talking about staying even as I prepare to leave.
I’m stepping away from being your pastor, but Beth and I are not immediately leaving Eugene. We’ve thought about a move, maybe to the coast, but that seems less likely in the current economic situation. So we are following advice given by our friend and your friend Mike Fargo. We’re not making any really big plans or decisions for the future in the next year. We’re going to simply stay here in Eugene and wait for God to show us what He has in store. We’re going, but in another way we are staying, waiting once again for the Spirit to arrive and guide us.
I probably have no right, but I would ask that same willingness to stay from each of you. Just this past week, we completed the last membership class I will share here. I don’t know when I started the practice, but for years, near the end of every class, with tongue-in-cheek, I’ve offered what you might call a “disclaimer” about joining Valley Covenant Church. What I’ve said is, “Sooner or later, I or someone else in this congregation will disappoint you. We are Christians saved by grace, but we are still sinful human beings.” Perhaps you yourself remember hearing something like that.
You might wonder why I would say such a thing to a new person, excited enough about our church to explore being a member. The reason is what I go on to ask. “When that disappointment happens,” I say, “please don’t just pack up and quietly leave. Stay and talk with us. Talk with the pastor or a church council member. Wait and see if the Holy Spirit might guide us together through this, help us make it right or at least better for you.” So again I’m asking for staying power, for the power which comes when you and I are willing to remain in place and wait on the Lord and on His Spirit.
Please don’t think that I think or would suggest that my retirement is anything like or comparable to Jesus’ great ascension to glory on high. I’m just fumbling around to find what that event might teach us about staying and going, both for myself and for you.
Thus I’d like to reiterate that membership class “disclaimer” for all of you. At least some of you may be disappointed that I am retiring. I am so sorry to disappoint you. But please let me gently ask you to stay. It will be especially important now. And I have complete confidence that our Lord watches over you from on high, just as He did that little band of disciples who stood looking up at the soles of His feet disappearing into the clouds. They too wondered, “What happens now?” But they stayed as Jesus asked and He sent them His Holy Spirit, just as He will continue to pour out His Spirit here on you.
It wasn’t all gloom and moping around after Jesus was gone. The last couple verses of our text, 52 and 53, give us a picture of people who aren’t just sitting quietly in a dark room waiting for something to happen. Luke tells us, “And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.” That’s no disheartened, hopeless little community which has lost its leader. Those are hopeful, joyful people who knew that the Lord in whom they believed had promised wonderful blessings to come. That’s true for you all too.
When I came here in 1993, I heard the story about what happened in the interim period, a period between pastors, like you are about to begin. Valley Covenant was then about the size it is now, but in the interim, without a full-time pastor, it had grown. The people of that congregation themselves offered a membership class and welcomed several new members who joined the church during that time. They continued with a worship team who met each week with interim preachers and prepared joyful, wonderful music. They recorded a video-tape that celebrated the blessings of living in Eugene and of being part of this church. During that time, most of them stayed and worshipped and waited for the Holy Spirit to come and show them their new pastor; and this church flourished in that interim. That is exactly what I prayerfully trust will happen once again.
I invite you to stay as Jesus directs you and discover the power of staying. Whether it’s in this church, or in your neighborhood, or in your family, staying and waiting on God is often how we find God coming to us in His time. It doesn’t mean you won’t go sometimes. As I said, the disciples did not stay put for that long. By all means, if the Spirit says, “Go!” then go. But please try also to stay when that is what He asks. Jesus’ first followers learned to stay when their Master said “Stay.” May you and I learn that lesson as well.
Amen.
Valley Covenant Church Eugene/Springfield, Oregon Copyright © 2022 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
Revelation 21:10, 22 – 22:5 “Healing of the Nations” May 22, 2022 - Sixth Sunday of Easter
The first time Revelation 22:2 registered on my young mind was in junior high. At the end of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, his protagonist, reformed book-burning fireman Guy Montag, remembers these words, “And on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”
At the conclusion of Bradbury’s story, Montag leaves a city just before it is destroyed by nuclear bombs, following a river downstream. After the catastrophe, he and his companions turn and go back upstream to offer help to any survivors. Those gorgeous words from Revelation, which he has memorized, are what he selects to share with his friends on the way. That sudden appearance of Christian hope, at the end of a terribly bleak story of dystopian ignorance and violence, lodged itself in my mind. I don’t know where I got the picture, but I imagine that verse blazed across a crimson sky with a mushroom cloud rising in the background.
The larger context here is John’s vision of the holy, spiritual city of Jerusalem, as we heard from chapter 21, verse 10, “coming down out of heaven from God.” I’ll stop right here and remind you of something I’ve preached for years. This is the true Christian hope that John sees, not that we will go up to heaven and stay there for eternity, but that heaven, that God, will come down to us.
Our Christian story is not about some great escape from our poor doomed planet. Instead, the story starts with God walking with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden on earth, and continues with God meeting Moses in a burning bush and then traveling with all Israel in a tent they carried through an earthly wilderness. The center of it all is God coming down to earth as one of us, a fully divine but fully human Savior. Jesus came preaching that He was bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth with Him, giving it to us right now, right here.
Of course, our planet, as beautiful and wonderful as it can often be, is hardly the Garden of Eden. There is much about it and about us that can make you feel that God is nowhere in sight. That is why the story is not over, not for us, not for planet earth. There are last scenes still to play out, the kingdom to be fully realized, the presence of God to be made absolutely and completely visible.
That Holy City, the new Jerusalem, is John’s visionary symbol of how it is all fulfilled, how God finally appears on earth to be among us without leaving. That’s why verse 22 of chapter 21 tells us there is no temple in the city, no particular, single building like our own sanctuary, where people go to meet God. Instead, God will be throughout His city.
I’ve preached this text several times before, focusing then on that “river of the water of life” in chapter 22 verse 1. It is an image which flows through Scripture, hinted at in Genesis, called the “river of God” in Psalms, wonderfully envisioned in Ezekiel, and mentioned by Jesus Himself. Yet today, in these times, I feel drawn to the “tree of life” whose leaves promise healing for the nations.
The whole text is full of images on which we could dwell. At the end of chapter 21, John reflects on the light of the presence of God in the City. It makes other illumination, even the sun and moon, unnecessary. The “lamp” of that city, says verse 23, “is the Lamb.” That same thought reappears in verse 5 of chapter 22 as we read that those who dwell there “need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light.”
Yet today, right now, the nations. God help the nations. God help our nation of course, but God also help Ukraine and Syria and Taiwan and Afghanistan and Colombia and Myanmar and the countless troubled and warring tribes of this earth. As the old Pete Seeger song goes, “Oh, when will they ever learn?” According to our text, the answer is when that Holy City arrives, when God comes down to earth to stay.
The nations are mentioned several times here. In verse 24, we’re told that “The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.” That bright illumination of the Lord’s presence will attract and draw the nations of the world. Verse 26 repeats it, “People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.”
It’s the same inclusive vision we heard in the Revelation 7 text for Mother’s Day, an uncountable multitude from every nation, every people on earth, coming together around God, around the Lamb of God who is Jesus Christ. It’s the blessing of peace for the world at which Jesus hints in our Gospel lesson for today, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives.” The peace Jesus gives will not disappear when a treaty is broken or a border is violated. It’s a peace more lasting and deeper than anything humans can create by negotiation or compromise.
Speaking Friday on the third anniversary of his inauguration, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that only “diplomacy” can end the war in Ukraine. But he also insisted that Russia should be made to pay for every home, school, hospital, and business it destroys, that allies of Ukraine should seize Russian property and use it “to create a fund for Ukrainian victims of the war.”[1]
Zelenskyy also called a Russian strike on a cultural center Friday “absolute evil.” By “diplomacy” he doesn’t mean compromising with such evil. And when Scripture here tells us that the Holy City will be open to “the nations,” God will not compromise with evil. Verse 27 ends chapter 21, “But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” When heaven comes to earth, God will include people from the whole world, but He will also exclude all the evil which the world generates. It will be taken away, like cancer from an otherwise healthy body. God will not negotiate with evil. He will root it out. God intends to heal the nations, heal our world.
So today, instead of that brilliant light, instead of that incredible river, instead even of that amazing City with its gemstone walls and pearly gates, I’m focusing on the tree which will grow there. It’s an amazing tree which somehow grows on both sides of the river, says verse 2 of chapter 22.
In that vision of a tree somehow growing over a river, John expanded another prophet’s vision found in Ezekiel 47:12. Ezekiel too was shown a great river. It flowed from a rebuilt and purified temple. Its water healed the broken, ruined land of Israel after Babylon’s destruction. Its waters even made the Dead Sea into fresh water. And on its banks there were trees which grew all sorts of fruits which are for food and “their leaves for healing.” John drew out that idea to the “healing of the nations.”
The Tree of Life itself is there at the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis 2:9, in the middle of the Garden of Eden and then again in 3:23 as God removes Adam and Eve’s access to its healing fruit and leaves. Yet in Revelation it is returned, restored along the River which was also present in Eden. Verse 2 says that tree will bear “twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month.” It’s a never-ending supply of life-giving sustenance, another splendid symbol of how God plans to care for us on this earth forever.
But John adds that phrase, “and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” My wife Beth taught this Revelation text in elementary Sunday School a few weeks ago. She asked me why John used that image. “Why are leaves from the Tree of Life for the healing of the nations?” I didn’t have a good answer for her then, other than that it is imagery showing God’s care and restoration of our world.
The beginning of an answer for Beth and for understanding those healing leaves comes to us in the way Christians have imagined and pictured that eternal Tree of Life in relation to what is at the center of our Christian faith. Most fundamentally, they have said down through the ages that Jesus is the Tree of Life. The great Bible translator Jerome riffs on that and says the Bible has two banks like God’s River, the Old and New Testaments, and both banks show us Jesus. Our Savior is the Tree of Life which appears on both sides of Holy Scripture.[2]
Christians have also said that the object which we use more than any other to symbolize Jesus and what He has done for us, can be seen as God’s “Tree of Life.” An ancient Christian writer named Caesarius wrote, “There is no tree that bears fruit in every season except the cross…”[3] That ancient Roman instrument of death became, for you and me and all who believe in Jesus, the Tree of Life.
In our own community, long ago now, Christian artist Dan Chen created a beautiful sculpture. Beth and I first saw it one year at the Asian Festival at the fairgrounds. Dan superimposed a vine upon a cross to show us life springing from it, to show us the Tree of Life growing from Jesus’ sacrifice of His Body upon that wood.
Which brings me back around to those healing leaves and to Ray Bradbury’s story and to what this all might mean for you and me right now, not just in the glorious future which awaits us in the new Jerusalem by the banks of that mighty River. I mentioned Bradbury’s character Montag. He was a “fireman” whose job was to light fires, to burn books…, not just banned books, but all books. Bradbury was depicting a terrible time when knowledge would be feared and authoritarian despots would try to eradicate it. It makes me grimly smile at the fact that Bradbury could not imagine our own time when so many people would voluntarily give up books and reading.
At any rate, in Fahrenheit 451, books were being lost, put to the flames. Bradbury wrote before anyone really imagined the vast digital storage libraries we have now. So in his imagination, the only way to preserve the books as they were burned was for people to store them in their own minds, to memorize them. Montag meets a community of people who tell him that each of them is a book or an author. “I am Plato’s Republic,” says one. There are also those who are books of the Bible, a person who is Matthew or Mark or Luke or John. Montag himself has memorized Ecclesiastes and some of Revelation.
It is that community of “Book People” which left the city before it was bombed. It is those people who at the end of the novel turn back toward it to help. They don’t just plan to do hospice care for the injured and dying. They actually intend to rebuild, to restart civilization, and to bring an end to war. They intend to use the only tools they have, the books, the words, the knowledge they carry in their hearts and minds.
Yes, I know it sounds farfetched. Bradbury’s stories are as much fantasy as they are science fiction, but read it for yourself. Or, ironically, see the Francois Truffaut film of it made in 1966. I suggest you skip the HBO remake from 2018. When I saw the first movie, still in junior high, I was disappointed that it did not quite end like Bradbury’s book. There was no return to the city to help. There was no quotation from the Book of Revelation. But there was an incredibly powerful scene where you see the Book People walking back and forth along the banks of a river as the first snow of winter falls. In many different languages, they are reciting to themselves the books they have each memorized, a little ragged band carrying the history and hope of humanity within themselves.
What does that Bradbury book and its move adaptation have to do with the Bible and the Tree of Life and you and me? Just this, which an ancient church father understood long ago. Oecumenius in his commentary on Revelation wrote, “The leaves of life are those who hang from Christ and cling to him.”[4] He went on to say that all those who “now heal souls,” “every righteous person” are leaves on the Tree of Life and live for the healing of the nations.
The Gospel text for today comes right before Jesus declares Himself the vine and we the branches in John 15. There at the beginning of this morning’s reading, chapter 14 verse 23, He says, “Those who love me will keep my word.” Go two verses further in Revelation to verse 7 of chapter 22 and we read, “See, I am coming soon! Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.” The leaves which heal are those who keep the words, keep His Word.
Yes, there is a grand, glorious, almost unimaginable day when God’s City will come down, when God’s River will burst forth, when God’s Tree grows abundantly and our world is completely healed. In the meantime, though, our Lord’s tree still sprouts, still puts forth shining green and healing leaves. Those leaves are you and I. We carry His words, His Word, in our hearts and minds and share it however we can with the hurting world around us. We are the Book People, with a Book of Life to open and give to whoever will hear and read it with us.
It’s impossible to track down the origin of it, but in our own denomination’s history Covenant people have often referred to themselves as “people of the Book.” We mean to say that we are people whose lives are centered in and around this Book, the Holy Bible, in which we find the Tree of Life who is Jesus and His Words which can bring healing to the nations of the world. That is what we’ve sought to be here at Valley Covenant Church. It’s why Bible study has always been at the heart of who we are.
Yet it’s not just words. Those Book People in Fahrenheit 451 intended to do practical, good things with the words they carried. So do we. When we teach how Jesus loves children and take actual steps to protect them, we are keeping Jesus’ word. When we make peace with a neighbor next door or support a peace initiative in the Middle East we keep Jesus’ word to love our enemies. And when we feed the hungry or lead someone to salvation or help someone find counseling or plant a tree in a barren spot, we are still keeping the word of Jesus to love and care for each other and for our world. We are being healing leaves on the Tree of Life.
The nations need the Lord’s healing. You and I are the leaves on His Tree, perhaps the leaves in His Book, which will bring such healing. Let us stay connected to the Tree and flourish as we find there our own healing as well.
Amen.
Valley Covenant Church Eugene/Springfield, Oregon Copyright © 2022 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
[1] See USA Today, May 21, 2022.
[2] Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament XII (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2005), p. 389.
[3] Ibid., p. 390.
[4] Ibid., p. 391.
Guest preacher Rev. Dawn Taloyo, associate superintendent of our Pacific Northwest Conference of Covenant churches, brings us a timely word as we stand as a congregation at a crossroads in the life of our church.
Acts 9:36-43 “Good Woman” May 8, 2022 - Fourth Sunday of Easter
“Who can find a virtuous woman?” That’s the question asked by Proverbs 31:10, making it sound as if such people are scarce. It’s not one of our texts today, but it often appears on Mother’s Day cards, followed by verse 29 of the same chapter, “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.” It’s a sweet thing to say to your wife or mother today as we remember our mothers or other women in our lives who have blessed and guided us.
That Proverbs chapter celebrates the character of a truly good woman, wife, and mother, but if you turn there and look it over, she seems almost too good to be true. I know I can get a rise out of my wife by suggesting she too ought to rise early to prepare food for our household or spend all night working at a money-making small business (I’m not sure how those two activities fit together). Yet some of the qualities celebrated in that ideal feminine figure of Proverbs are the very characteristics we find in the person at the center of our reading from Acts 9. Tabitha, Dorcas, is a diligent seamstress who cares for the poor and lives a faithful life in fear of the Lord and service to others.
So I propose we take a closer look at this real, historical good woman, whom Peter helped in Joppa, and consider the example she might be for us. Of course, the focus of the text is the miracle which was done for Tabitha, her restoration to life. It’s in our readings during the Easter season for just that reason, another demonstration of our Lord’s power over death and the gift of life we received in His own resurrection.
Yet before we spend too much time on the miracle, let’s consider the woman. Luke takes the time to tell us a bit about her. Reflect on the portrait he paints of her. The first thing we’re told is that she is a “disciple.” That is notable. We have a tendency, even millennia later, to think of the biblical disciples as men. We focus so much on the male followers of Jesus that we forget that women received the very same designations as the men did, not only “disciple,” but in at least one case, at the end of Romans, also “apostle.”
Over and over we find in the Bible that the story is not just about what men said and did. That’s especially true with the arrival of Jesus and the constant place important women had in His life and ministry. Egalitarian roles in Jesus’ church are not a modern innovation. They were there from the beginning.
The second thing we’re told about Tabitha is that she lived a cross-cultural life. She apparently was known both by her Jewish name in Aramaic, Tabitha, and by the Greek name Dorcas. They both mean the same, “gazelle.” As the story of Acts unfolds, one of its major themes is how the Gospel bridges Jewish and Greek culture, bringing together people who existed side-by-side in cities around the Mediterranean, but who spoke different languages and viewed the world in different ways.
So we find Tabitha, like the apostle Paul, with both a Jewish name and a Greek name. She is one of the early Christians who stood at the cultural crossroads and demonstrated that our faith is meant, from its inception, to be multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic. As I mentioned two weeks ago, the Lord’s net of love draws up fish of every kind. His church is meant to welcome and include people of all backgrounds. In her two names Tabitha embodied that great vision we read from Revelation 7 this morning, of “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and people and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”
Tabitha is also an example for us because of what Luke tells us she did there in Joppa. In verse 36, “She was devoted to good works and acts of charity,” the latter of which many translations elucidate as “helping the poor.” Reading on in the passage we realize that those who received her “good works” were likely the socially disadvantaged class of “widows,” who in verse 39 are putting on quite a display of mourning. The language suggests they are not only showing Peter items of clothing made by their patroness but actually wearing what they displayed to him. They held out their arms to show him the sleeves of their tunics and lifted the hems of their robes for him to see.
Those weeping women who surrounded Peter show us Tabitha’s deep generosity and faithful service to them. We find here that social concern and ministry to those whom we now call the “marginalized” people of society were part and parcel of church life from the start. Helping the poor and the oppressed is not an extra we add on to sharing the good news about Jesus or teaching the Bible. Helping those in need is just what good Christians, like this good woman of Joppa, do.
Then there is what is not said in this account of Tabitha. There is no mention of any family weeping there for her, no husband, no children, nor any other relatives. Perhaps she was a widow herself, childless and now alone. Perhaps, like Jesus and Paul both clearly identified and endorsed, she had never married so that she might better serve the Lord and others. Yet it’s clear from the emotion that surrounds her passing that she did have a family of another sort. All those women there in that room were her sisters in Christ, her daughters in the Lord. They wept for her with the same deep love one has for family.
Today on Mother’s Day I invited you all to acknowledge not only mothers and grandmothers, but those “who have been like a mother to you in some way.” It was an opportunity to remember that our lives and the body of Christ are not complete without relationships in the Lord which go beyond blood ties. In times like this we honor the important role in the church held by those who do not marry or bear children, both women and men. We may want to offer such good people a particularly special honor for the love which they offer willingly from their hearts, apart from any natural familial obligation or connection. They’ve loved us not because of biology but by their own choice.
Christians therefore have a distinctive place and honor for those who live good and godly lives in households of just one member. We can see that in the fact that, when Tabitha died, verse 38 tells us the Christian community there in Joppa quickly dispatched two men to fetch Peter from the nearby town of Lydda. They asked him to, “Please come with us without delay.” Her death was not just the sorrow and concern of a few poor women, but was an urgent matter for the whole congregation.
Likewise, the role and honor of Tabitha is apparent in verse 39 when we read that Peter did not delay. He just “got up and went with them.” The first and foremost of the apostles, the leader of them all, dropped whatever he was doing to attend Tabitha’s deathbed. This woman who sewed shirts and other clothes for poor widows mattered hugely in God’s plan for that time and place. The Lord sent Peter there not just to console and comfort that church in Joppa. The apostle came to make Tabitha a living sign of God’s love and approval for Christians like her.
Luke doesn’t tell us what the saints in Joppa expected when they sent for Peter. We are told just before this that Peter had healed and raised a man named Aeneas near there in Lydda. Aeneas had been sick and bedridden for eight years. Perhaps they hoped Peter could do something for Tabitha, but they also must have known their situation was different. Tabitha was dead.
It’s hard to imagine the Christians in Joppa thought Peter would heal Tabitha. Her situation was not like that of Aeneas. Verse 37 says “she became ill and died.” Then they washed her, washed her body, and laid her out in an upper room. You don’t do such things if you suppose someone is unconscious or ill and might wake up soon. Yet in faith they also sent for Peter. They put their sister in Christ in the apostle’s hands and thereby also put her in the Lord’s hands.
We don’t know what the church in Joppa expected in that room at the top of the stairs. Maybe they did hope that Peter who in the name of Jesus healed a paralyzed man by the gate of the Temple and raised up that bedridden man in the next village could do even more. Maybe they already understood that if Jesus Himself was raised from the dead, then He has power over death for anyone who trusts in Him. We don’t know exactly what they were thinking. It’s just very clear that Tabitha mattered enough to them that they sought the greatest spiritual help they knew.
It is also very clear that Tabitha mattered to God, that she was one of the Lord’s sheep we heard Jesus claim in our Gospel reading. In John 10:28 He said, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.” Peter came, Peter was sent to Joppa, to demonstrate vividly and overwhelmingly the truth of that statement. No one, nothing, can snatch Jesus’s sheep from His hand, not even, especially not even, death.
Read verse 40 and maybe it will ring some bells for you. Peter put them all out of the room. Turn over to Mark chapter 5 and verse 40 and you find that is just what Jesus does at the bedside of a young girl who has died. Peter then knelt down there and prayed, prayed to his Lord Jesus who came to bring life, whom he had seen years before give life to that girl by telling her in Aramaic, Talitha cum, “Little girl, get up.” Mark tells us she did get up and Jesus gave her back to her family.
Now Luke here tells us there in verse 40 that Peter turned to Tabitha and said almost exactly the same words Jesus said to the girl, “Tabitha, get up.” In Aramaic that would be Tabitha cum, just one letter different from Jesus’ own words. That same power over death which Jesus exercised was now manifested through Peter’s prayer and faith.
We need to remember of course that what Jesus did for that little girl and for a man named Lazarus and for others, what Peter did for Tabitha, and which Paul would soon do for a man named Eutychus, are none of them quite that eternal life Jesus promised to bring. These risings, these getting ups, were all returns to life, but would eventually be followed again by death. As we remember in this Easter season, only Jesus has risen yet to an eternal, everlasting life that faces no death to come.
The story of Tabitha is here, though, to remind us that the Good Shepherd knows His sheep. They hear His voice and answer His call. In the end, we who believe in Jesus will hear Him say, Cum! Rise! Get up! And we will. From every nation and people on earth, from the depths of the sea to the tops of mountains, the graves will open. We and those we have loved and lost to death will get up into that eternal life which Jesus came to give.
Alongside that glorious hope of resurrection, Tabitha’s story is also here for us today on Mother’s Day to teach us and remind us of our Savior’s tender love for half the human race and of women’s full and equal role in His work on earth and in His church.
So in memory and recognition of Tabitha I’d like to recall today good women who have blessed me as a Christian. My wife, my mother, and my grandmother are givens in such a list. But I also think of those who gave their lives like the martyrs Perpetua and Felicity of Carthage, and others who wrote inspiring and beautiful accounts of faith, like Julian of Norwich in the middle ages, or like present-day authors Madeleine L’Engle and Marilyn Robinson and Annie Dillard.
I also want to remember some good female colleagues in ministry. I’ve learned so much about preaching from Fleming Rutledge. I’ve been blessed and encouraged by Covenant pastor friends like Dawn Taloyo, who will be here to preach next Sunday, and Tammy Swanson-Draheim, who will be the next president of our denomination.
And today I’d like to thank and praise all the good women of this congregation alongside whom I’ve been able to serve all these years. Trudy was church chairperson when I came here and other women have often served in that role. You women have worked with me on the church council, prayed with me as deacons, taught our children in Sunday School, fed us delicious snacks and meals, served unhoused people in our community, and been the finest partners in ministry one could ask as a pastor. God bless all of you. You are the blessed and faithful Tabithas of Valley Covenant Church.
Near the end of our text from Acts verse 42 says, “This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.” That was surely part of the Lord’s intent in raising up Tabitha as well. The miracle for her was a sign for the whole city that the message about Jesus was the truth, that He truly is risen from the dead and can bring life to those who believe in Him. Let it also be a sign for us that our own work of sharing Jesus and demonstrating His life-giving power goes on in our community. Let there continue to be faithful Tabithas here alongside all their brothers in Christ whose lives and examples call those around you to believe.
Right here before you today, we baptized a little boy who will need faithful men and women to teach him about Jesus. You all actually promised to do just that a little while ago. Thank you then for serving him in the nursery and perhaps in children’s church or Sunday School one day, as well as all the other children God will continue to bring among you.
Thank you for serving the poor like Tabitha did, housing them, feeding them, clothing them as God gives you the opportunity. Thank you for welcoming people who don’t look just like you, who speak other languages, who are not just white, middle-class people like most of us. Thank you for learning how to bridge cultures like Tabitha did, reaching across human barriers to share the love of Jesus.
May God reward you like He did Tabitha. May the day come when you hear Jesus’ own voice saying what she heard, Cum! Rise! Get up! Get up into eternal life and the joy of your Lord and Savior as He commends you for a life well-lived, for being, by His grace, a good woman, a good man. May that blessing come to you, and to us all.
Amen.
Valley Covenant Church Eugene/Springfield, Oregon Copyright © 2022 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
Luke 24:13-35 “Host” May 1, 2022 - Third Sunday in Easter
One of the very sad aspects of retiring for Beth and me is that because of COVID-19 we have had almost of none of you to our home for over two years. We look back with nostalgia to our last, which we didn’t know would be the last, church open house at the beginning of 2020. That January many of you crowded our living room, kitchen, and family room and joined us for meatballs, chocolate chip cookies, and eggnog.
Yet here the two of us are, still skittish of the coronavirus and turning down invitations to dine in other people’s homes, even from my sister. So this sermon is a promissory note to Beth and myself as much as it is anything else. It’s a story of welcoming a stranger in one’s home and being totally surprised by the outcome.
They welcomed Jesus on the road. Though, as verse 16 shows, God kept them from recognizing Him. It was late afternoon of the first Easter and these two disciples were headed home after the disturbing events of Passover in Jerusalem. Though bandits were a concern, non-threatening walking companions were usually welcome in those days. It helped pass the time to enter into conversation like you might do, at least pre-pandemic, with the person seated next to you on a plane.
They found Jesus a good companion, a good listener, as in verse 17 He wants to hear what they are discussing. In verse 18 we learn Cleopas’s name and hear his astonishment that the man alongside them doesn’t know the things that have happened. Verse 19 displays Jesus as the best sort of guest, the attentive conversation partner who wants to hear your mind, rather than talk about his own concerns. “‘What things?’ he asked.”
In verses 20-24, Jesus listened patiently as the two poured out their story of the last few days. They explained the hope and promise they saw in Jesus and now their disappointment that He had been crucified. Their weariness and frustration comes through in verses 23 and 24 as they tell what they clearly think is a silly story from the women that Jesus is alive. They clearly don’t believe it or they wouldn’t be headed home.
With verse 25, Jesus switched from listener to speaker. He began to explain to them what happened. He used their Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament, to show how it all fit together, how Jesus was the Messiah. They might have expected all this, given what the Torah, the Writings and the Prophets said. By their arrival at Emmaus in verse 29, they’re hooked. Their guest on the road is fascinating. So they ask Him to become their house guest too. Though they don’t know it, though they’re not ready, they host Jesus.
This Scripture bridges our homes and that humble house in a first century village, connects us to all the places Jesus actually ate and drank and slept. You can’t go and see the Jesus version of the Lincoln bedroom or any place we may confidently say, “Jesus slept here.” We are distant from Martha and Mary, from Peter and Andrew, from Cleopas and his wife. Yes, I like to think the second person was Mrs. Cleopas. They got to cook for Jesus, put a plate on a table for Him, make up His bed, draw water so He could wash up. They had the blessed and happy privilege of hosting the Lord in the most literal sense. You and I don’t have that. We don’t know quite where Jesus stayed. It was all a long time ago.
Luke wrote down this story—he was the only one—so you and I may still host Jesus. He wrote thirty years later, a generation. Christians already felt as we do, a sense that Jesus was long gone, distant both in time and place. As wonderful as He might have been, we in the church no longer find Him present in the same tangible way in our midst. So Luke told us this little sidebar story about Easter. Jesus appeared to two almost unknown disciples. Only one of them is even named. Luke wrote it because it showed then and now that Christ is still present, that you and I may still host the Lord.
We host Jesus, we welcome Him in the same way two ways Cleopas and his companion did there west of Jerusalem. We welcome Him in His Word and at the Table. Ever since the road to Emmaus, Christians have said we recognize our Lord, as those two did, in Scripture and in the breaking of bread. Word and Sacrament are the true marks of the Church, because it is there that we know, as they knew, that Jesus is with us.
Jesus went in Cleopas’ house, pulled up a chair and sat down. It was a humble meal: wine, bread, olive oil, a little milk or cheese, maybe figs or raisins or some other vegetable or fruit. That was it, a simple little supper. But Jesus transformed it.
Verse 30 says, “he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.” Read the account of the Last Supper in Matthew, Mark or Luke, or over in I Corinthians 11, and you find the same four key words, “bread,” “blessed” or “gave thanks,” “broke,” and “gave.” They are also much the same words which describe the miracle of feeding thousands by the sea. In the breaking of bread just as they’d seen Him do before, verse 31 says their eyes were opened and they recognized Him. Then He vanished.
Why? Jesus appeared as a mysterious stranger, walked seven miles with them, taught them Scripture, accepted their invitation, never identifying Himself. Then, at the crucial time, just when they finally see who they’ve been hosting, He’s gone! Why did He not stay and offer more teaching, comfort, encouragement for days ahead? Why the vanishing act?
Jesus disappeared then for you and me. He vanished for all disciples and believers who come after those two. He left then in order to say: “This is how I will be with you now. I’m gone from sight, but you will see me in what I gave you, the broken loaf sitting on your table. That’s where I will be.” Emmaus teaches us that we still meet Jesus right here, at this Table set before us today.
This passage also teaches us what we’re about as a church. The first bullet point of our mission statement says we are here to meet the Lord in worship. This is how it happens. We hear the Word and eat at this Table. Our eyes are opened and we welcome Jesus as surely as they did a few hours and a few miles after He had risen. This is where you and I host Jesus Christ, where He becomes our honored guest.
Yet we also understand that, if Jesus is truly our guest, He is not the only guest. This Table where we meet Jesus is a gathering. We don’t know who walked with Cleopas, but he was not alone. A community met Jesus in Emmaus, even if it was only two people. When we host Jesus, we gather together. It’s not just you and Jesus in some intimate, private moment. It’s all of us together, getting our eyes opened together, meeting Jesus as a people. Community is the second point of our mission.
We meet Jesus and we meet each other. As they did on the road, we find Him in His Word. So our third mission focus is study, study together. Finally, our last aim as a church is outreach. If we’re going to host Jesus, we have to remember that He calls us to host the world. If we welcome our Lord, we will welcome everyone else as well.
“Host” is a strange word. It comes from roots which first meant not the one doing the entertaining, but the one receiving it. It meant “guest.” It also meant “stranger,” and it could mean “enemy.” That’s why it’s part of the word, “hostile.” King James Bible language referred to great armies as “hosts.” Welcoming Jesus means welcoming all sorts of people, even people we don’t like, who don’t like us.
In an old Saturday Night Live sketch, John Belushi is a guest in the home of a couple played by Jane Curtin and Bill Murray. Belushi paws their record collection, gobbles up all the food and drink in sight, and shows no sign of departing no matter how many subtle and unsubtle hints his hosts give him that it’s time to go. Curtain delivers piercing horror movie screams and a dripping title flashes, “The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave.”
Not all guests are good guests. It takes time, money, trouble and maybe pain. Last year some of you did your best to welcome a person to our outdoor worship services who ended up saying and doing hurtful things. Yet in Matthew 25, Jesus said that kindness shown to “the least of these” is kindness shown to Him. We host Jesus by hosting others.
Being good hosts is our mission. We host the Lord and because of Him we host others. To evaluate how well our church is doing, ask how welcome a child feels, a pregnant or addicted teenager, a divorced woman, a poor man, a person of color, a Republican, a Democrat, a former prisoner, a homeless person, a laborer, a professor. We worry about what people see and feel when we host them in our homes. What do people experience when we try to host them in our church? What do they see? Are they comfortable? Do they feel welcome? Those are questions to consider in days to come.
It’s difficult to be a good host, whether at home or here at church. As much as we try, we may fail to make someone feel welcome. It’s hard. It’s hard to keep your house ready for guests to show up at any time. It’s hard to keep a church ready and welcoming for anyone who walks in. We don’t always do well at it.
We don’t even do that well, it seems, at welcoming our Guest of Honor. As we listen to His Word, as the Scriptures are read, our minds are elsewhere—at work, at a sports event, at the coast, in front of the television. Our bodies are playing host, but we’re not paying attention to our guest. The same can be true at His Table. We come forward, we eat, we drink, but the eyes of our hearts are looking elsewhere and they don’t open to recognize Jesus as the bread is broken. We are often not such good hosts for Jesus.
The word “host” has another meaning. In some churches, the bread or wafer on the Table, the bread in which we recognize Jesus our guest, is called “the Host.” That’s because in Latin a hostis could mean a victim, a sacrifice. Jesus is the victim in the sacrifice which brings salvation to us and to the world. As we struggle with being good hosts to Jesus, as we gather and serve at this Table, there is a marvelous reversal in remembering that the bread in which see the Lord’s body is “the host.” Jesus is the real Host here.
That same reversal happened in Emmaus. It was the host’s role to bless the meal and break and give bread to the guests. Maybe it should still be that way. In my years as a pastor I cannot count the number of times I have been asked to say the table blessing in someone else’s home. I am honored and privileged to do so, but sometimes, if I know my host well, I may quote Robert Farrar Capon. He wrote, “A host is the priest of [their] house. Even if an ordained [minister] is at the table, it is the householder… who should say the blessing. No one else has proper jurisdiction.”[1]
At that table long ago, Jesus took over hosting jurisdiction from Cleopas and his wife. He blessed and broke the bread and gave it to them, revealing Himself not just as their guest but as their true Host, their everlasting Lord.
When we come to this Table, when we gather as Jesus’ people, He is Master of the house. This is His Table. Some of us prepare the bread and the cups. Some of us serve. We act like hosts. But as we do our little bits to set the Table and serve, our Guest arrives to receive these gifts from our hands and bless and give them back to us. The One we thought was our Guest is really our Host. In receiving His bread and cup, we become the guests.
Jesus Christ welcomes us with all the love and grace and comfort with which we may fail to welcome each other or even to welcome Him. He is the Good Host and we may be the bad guests, horrible things which just won’t leave our sins and pride behind. Yet our Lord always has a place for us at His Table. He never tires of us. He never wants us to leave.
So we come today to be a church, hosting each other, hosting all who seek a place at His Table. Ultimately, though, we host the perfect Host who is Jesus Christ. He’s here in the Word He has spoken and in the Bread He has broken. May He open our eyes to recognize Him as our gracious Host this morning. Amen.
Valley Covenant Church Eugene/Springfield, Oregon Copyright © 2022 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
[1] The Supper of the Lamb (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969), p. 179.
John 21:1-19 “Count the Fish or Feed the Sheep?” April 24, 2022 - Second Sunday of Easter
“How many fish did you catch?” It’s what you ask a fisherman. We love to answer. We will gladly share that statistic, along with answers to questions you didn’t ask, like length, weight, and how many minutes the big one took to land, how many were almost caught, and maybe the water temperature and the size of the leader and fly being used.
A fisherman’s love for measuring his catch is probably only matched by a mother’s or grandmother’s love for the measurements of a newborn. I cannot remember at all, but I’m sure Beth can tell you how much each of our daughters weighed at birth, and likewise for our grandson. Ask that new mother or grandmother and you may also hear not just about weight, but about length, hours of labor, Apgar score, and, as they grow, the child’s percentile among other babies of the same age.
Jesus’ disciples were just like other fishermen. Writing his gospel maybe forty or fifty years after the events we just read, John wrote verse 11 about the number of fish that were caught. As Oregon writer David James Duncan points out in his marvelous book, The River Why, “we learn that the net contained not ‘a boatload’ of fish, nor ‘about a hundred and a half,’ nor ‘over a gross,” but precisely ‘an hundred and fifty and three.’”[1]
For two thousand years, Bible readers and theologians have operated on the principle that if John was so careful to write down that precise number, then it must be important. There must be some profound significance to 153. The great Bible translator Jerome cited the classical writer Oppian, who wrote a long poem about fishing for the emperor Marcus Arelius. Jerome said Oppian named 153 species of fish in the world.
Jerome concluded that the 153 fish in the net were one of each kind, demonstrating that Jesus would bring people from every tribe and nation on earth into His kingdom. In Matthew 13:47 and 48, Jesus said the kingdom of God is like a fishing net that draws up “fish of every kind.” The problem is that the best counts on Oppian’s poem make it about 157 sorts of fish. Jerome either miscounted or was fudging a little, which is not uncommon for fishing statistics.
Other interpreters have been even more imaginative. Augustine was maybe the first to note that 153 is the “triangular” sum of 17. Like the rows in the triangle of bowling pins, you add up all the numbers in a “triangle” in which each row gets bigger by one, 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 and so on. So 10 bowling bins are the triangular number of 4. 153 is what you get if you add 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5… all the way up to 17.
Well, said Augustine, 17 is clearly the Ten Commandments plus those seven spirits before the throne of God in our reading from Revelation 1:4, the seven-fold Holy Spirit. Or you may remember that Jesus fed the five thousand with five loaves of bread and then they took up twelve baskets of leftovers. 5 + 12 = 17. What could be more plain? Other writers have gone after 153 a little differently, adding up those digits themselves. 1 + 5 + 3 = 9. 9 is 3 X 3, the Trinity squared. What could be more obvious?
More recently, scholars acquainted with Jewish methods of interpretation have applied a system called gematria to the sum of those fish. In gematria, every letter of the alphabet is linked to a number. So in English, A = 1, B = 2 and so on. So you assign a number to every letter in a word and then add those numbers up. That will give you a number for the word. Take the word “rock.” Add up its numbers and you get 47.
So now, stay with me, turn over to Ezekiel 47 where you read about that great River which flows out from the Temple and transforms the Dead Sea, making salt water into fresh. Verse 10 of Ezekiel 47 says that fishermen will stand on the shore and spread their nets from En Gedi to En Eglaim and will catch fish of many kinds. En means “spring,” gedi means “goat,” and eglaim means “calf.” Catching fish from the “Spring of the Goat” to the “Spring of the Calf.” Do gematria on the Hebrew letters of gedi and you get 17. Eglaim gives you 153. Well how about that?
Someone else has tried it in Greek and found that the gematria number for Simon equals 76. For fish it’s 77. Add them together and, voila!, 153.
Are we having fun yet? You can also take the number of the apostles which is 12, square it and get 144, plus the number of the Trinity, square it and get 9, then add them together and there it is again, 153. It’s a really, really cool number. We could probably go on a while yet finding all sorts of spiritual meanings in it. The truth is, no one can say for sure that John, or the Holy Spirit for that matter, intended any of those mathematical meanings when he wrote that there were “a hundred fifty-three” fish in that net.
Actually, I hope that going through all those relatively silly ways that have been dreamed up to parse out that particular number will make you a little more skeptical of “Bible code” sorts of nonsense which purports to find hidden meanings in Scripture using devices like counting words, gematria, etc.
It is a significant number, though. Its significance is the fact that we have it. It’s a very, very specific number. Listen to David James Duncan again. He writes:
Consider the circumstances: this is after the Crucifixion and the Resurrection; Jesus is standing on the beach newly risen from the dead, and it is only the third time the disciples have seen him since the nightmare of Calvary. And yet we learn that in the net there were “great fishes” numbering precisely “an hundred and fifty and three.” How was this digit discovered? Mustn’t it have happened thus: upon hauling the net to shore, the disciples squatted down by that immense, writhing fish pile and started tossing them into a second pile, painstakingly counting “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,…” all the way up to an hundred and fifty and three, while the newly risen Lord of Creation, the Sustainer of their beings, He who died for them and for Whom they would gladly die, stood waiting, ignored, till the heap of fish was quantified. Such is the fisherman’s compulsion toward rudimentary mathematics![2]
The significance of the number is the very fact that we’re given the number. The disciples counted the fish. They cared about how many they caught. They cared enough to put off talking with Jesus for a little while. Maybe Jesus Himself wanted to know how many.
Look at the connection that John himself, the beloved disciple, saw and told Peter in verse 7, “It is the Lord!” That fishing miracle was the same kind of thing that happened when they first met Jesus in Luke 5. They had been fishing hard all night, but not caught anything. Then Jesus comes along and suddenly they’re catching huge amounts of fish. How did Jesus explain that to them? As they followed Him, the Lord told them, they would learn to fish for people, they would learn to draw men and women into God’s kingdom.
This after-the-Resurrection fishing miracle happened, and the number was recorded by John, to say that the mission was still the same. After all that had happened, Jesus still wanted them to be, in the old words, “fishers of men.” He still meant for His apostles to help bring in every person who wants to be saved by the grace of Jesus. And each and every one of those people is important enough to be counted.
In a few weeks on Pentecost we will read Acts chapter 2. We will hear Peter quote from the prophet Joel, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Then later in the chapter we will learn they counted how many were saved that day, three thousand who believed and trusted in Jesus. A little further on we read that after Pentecost “God added to their number each day.” They were keeping count, doing their angler’s math for this new and beautiful sort of fishing. Jesus wants to bring everyone into the circle, into the net of His love and grace, and every single person counts.
That’s why we keep church records. That’s one of my responsibilities as a pastor which I will be passing on now. That’s why we have deacons who tried very hard to stay in touch with everyone for the last two years during the pandemic. Everyone counts in God’s kingdom. Everyone counts here in Valley Covenant Church. We are joining in Jesus’ mission to bring the world to God. So like good fishermen, we count the fish.
Let’s return to our text. In the rest of verse 7 that intrepid fisherman Peter is ready to jump back in with both feet. When he knew it was Jesus standing there, he jumped out of the boat and swam to shore, leaving the other disciples to drag in and count that pile of fish. Verse 9 says Jesus had already started a fire and cooked some other fish. Did He catch them Himself? In any case, Jesus told them to bring some of the fresh caught fish. Then they sat down and broke bread and ate fish with Jesus. Which may have reminded them how they once shared bread and fish with a huge crowd along those same shores. Jesus gave them all sorts of signs that He was the same Master they had followed for two or three years, risen from the dead now.
In verse 15, though, the focus changes, gets a little more serious, as it often does in conversation when a meal is over. Jesus began a conversation with Peter, asking him the question, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He either meant, “Do you love me more than all this fishing business, more than the boats and the nets and the water and all that?” or He meant, “Do you love me more than these other disciples do?”
Either way, Peter immediately understood that Jesus was looking for a reaffirmation of his personal commitment. Jesus looked him in the eye and asked for a declaration of loyalty, of love. And Peter responded like you or I might respond to a spouse or a child who asked us that question, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”
You may have heard sermons or read books where someone makes a big deal out of the fact that Jesus used one word for love while Peter used a different, supposedly weaker word. They will tell you that Jesus used the Greek word agape, asking his disciple something like, “Do you love me with all your heart?” Peter replied using the Greek word phileo, saying “Yes, you know we’re friends.” But forget all that. It’s wrong and off track.
First of all, Jesus and Peter were most likely conversing in Aramaic, not in Greek. So there’s been a translation from the original words already. Second, in John’s Gospel, those two words for love are interchangeable. As a writer, John just likes to vary his language a bit to avoid dull repetition. Right here in the same passage, as Jesus responds to Peter and says what He wants him to do, Jesus uses different words, “Feed my lambs,” “Tend my sheep,” Feed my sheep.” Same idea expressed with slightly different words each time. It’s the same with the two words for love. It’s as silly to look for subtle differences in those words here as it is to start mathematically carving up 153.
The point, the point, the point is that Jesus asked Peter the question three times. It’s the repetition of the question, not Jesus’ choice of words, which shook Peter down to the core of his soul. Verse 17 tells us Peter felt hurt when asked the third time if he loved Jesus. Three was a number that fish-counting disciple remembered very well. Three was how many times Peter denied Jesus on the night before the Crucifixion. After declaring publicly on three occasions that he didn’t know Jesus, Peter was now being given the opportunity to declare publicly three times that he not only knew but loved Jesus.
This was Peter’s rehabilitation, his welcome back into that mission of catching fish, of proclaiming the good news about Jesus and bringing people into the kingdom of God. But now as He dealt with Peter’s own failure, regret, and pain, Jesus added another dimension to that mission. He didn’t talk about fish. He talked about sheep.
Sheep get counted too. Jesus told a parable about a shepherd who knew exactly how many sheep he had, a hundred of them. When one was missing that shepherd knew and went looking for it. But unlike fish, sheep also need care. So Jesus told Peter, “Feed my lambs.” “Tend my sheep.” “Take care of my people.”
Jesus was telling his disciple that there would be many other people like Peter. They would be burdened and troubled by their sins. They would be overwhelmed by traumatic events and by sorrows they had experienced. Just like Jesus was doing for Peter right then, His people would need to be loved and cared for down through the ages.
Here at the end of John’s Gospel, it’s not just “count the fish,” it’s “feed my sheep.” Jesus gave Peter those two parts to his mission. Peter was the leader, the representative of all the apostles. So he also represents all of us who follow Jesus. Our mission has both dimensions to it. We count the fish and we feed the sheep.
Counting the fish, we want to reach out into our neighborhood and local community, as well as into the larger world to bring people to Jesus Christ. Yet as we bring men, women and children to Jesus, drawing them into His kingdom, we also realize how much they, and how much we, need to be fed and cared for like sheep. We can’t treat each other or the people around us like mere fish to be counted then tossed in the cooler while we try for another. With Peter we have a mission to love and feed and care for our Lord’s sheep, for the people He brings into the net of His love and grace.
I’ve tried to practice that mission over the years here as your pastor, counting fish and feeding sheep. Now I’m getting ready to hand off those ministries here to you all and to the person who will follow me as pastor. Like Jesus said to Peter at the end of the text, when you get old, you don’t really know where you will be led. But I do know that the Lord will continue to lead you and me. And through you and those yet to come God will continue to gather people in and to care for them here at Valley Covenant Church.
Please keep inviting friends to church with you. Please keep offering Sunday School for children and fellowship and Bible study for adults. Please keep supporting missions that share Jesus far away and supporting ministries that help people around us right here. Fix up the building to make it warm and inviting. Keep that trailer space available out there. And count the fish who are gathered in by all that you do.
But with Peter also keep joining the Great Shepherd in caring for the people He is saving. Continue to greet each other warmly and to phone those who seem to be missing. Take meals to those who are sick or just overwhelmed. Teach those children and care for the littlest ones in the nursery and children’s church so both they and their moms and dads feel loved by Jesus. Always, always, always pray for each other. Feed the sheep.
Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him, but then asked Peter to love those whom Jesus loved. We net the fish with love and we feed the sheep with love. At the end of The River Why, Duncan quotes Meister Eckhart who says God’s love “is like a fisherman’s hook… he who is caught by it is held by the strongest of bonds…”
Love is the way Jesus caught Peter and then brought him back after he ran away. Love is how Jesus reaches down and pulls in each of us. That line of love runs through you to those around you, hooking and drawing them to Jesus as well.
May you and I stay fastened on the line of our Savior’s love, caught up in the net of His grace, counted and cared for, counting and caring for each other. Then when the time comes He will draw us all home to fish forever in that beautiful River which flows from the Throne of God and to cast our nets into that crystal Sea which spreads out before it.
Amen.
Valley Covenant Church Eugene/Springfield, Oregon Copyright © 2022 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
[1] The River Why (San Francisco, Sierra Club Books: 1983), p. 14.
[2] Ibid., p. 14f.