Apr 4, 2025

May the meditation of my heart and the words of my mouth be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.  Amen.

One of our favorite things to do as a family is play board games.  When our kids were little, we played Candy Land, and Chutes and Ladders, and Hi Ho Cherry O.  Often, they were games that Christine and I remembered how to play from when we were little. But even the new games weren’t all that hard to learn.

But as the kids have gotten older, we’ve graduated into more challenging games. Some of them are really complicated, and their intricate rules and the strategies you need to win take time and effort to learn.

There’s one game in particular that sticks in my mind. It’s called Seven Wonders. The first time we tried playing it, the directions didn’t make any sense at all.  We had no idea how to play the game.  And so we literally watched a YouTube video – which had a frighteningly high number of views – so that we could learn how to play the game from someone else who already knew how to do it. 

It would have been really easy to give up and go back to playing the games we already knew how to play. But now that we’ve learned how to play Seven Wonders – and gotten good at it – it’s become one of our favorites.

The reality is that when something is new and challenging and you don’t know how to do it, you need extra help. Whether it’s playing a game or baking bread or that “easy” do-it-yourself project or something else altogether, we’ve probably all had that experience of needing a guide. Someone we can watch and learn from.  Someone who can point us to that one thing we need to do differently.

I think something like that is happening in our Gospel story this morning.  John tells us that the disciples decided to go out onto the Sea of Galilee to fish.  But he doesn’t tell us why.  Maybe the disciples are bored. Maybe they need the money that a good haul of fish would bring. Maybe they’re hungry.  All of these could be true.  But I wonder if the disciples haven’t fallen back into old patterns of life because they don’t know what to do next. I wonder if the disciples don’t know how to be followers of Jesus without Jesus around to show them how to do it.

After all, if there’s one thing the Gospels make clear, it’s that the disciples had a hard enough of time when Jesus was there to apprentice them.  But now all of a sudden Jesus isn’t by their side 24/7, and they’re trying to take all those years of teaching and practice discipleship on their own? That’s like trying figure out that board game with the impossible directions, or how to weave an eight-platted loaf of bread, or how to reassemble those hundreds of parts back into a car’s engine. It’s overwhelming, and you don’t know where to start.

Then along comes Jesus. Oh, they don’t recognize him at first.  But they haven’t caught a single fish all night, so they’re pretty desperate.  They’re willing to listen to anyone.  So they do what he says, and throw their net over the other side of the boat and all of a sudden there’s all these fish.  And in that abundance, they recognize the Lord who had provided for them so many times before.

After breakfast, Jesus pulls Simon aside. Three times Jesus asks Peter if he loves him. Three times, Peter says yes. And three times, Jesus tells Peter what it means to love him. Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.

In these words, Peter is reminded of the central place love has in Jesus’ ministry. Jesus is taking him back to those moments at the Last Supper where he washed the disciples’ feet and told them, “go and do the same thing for others. Make a pattern of this. And every time you do it, remember that I did it for you.  Because this is how people are going to know that you’re following me – because you’re going to love them the way I loved you. You’re going to love them the way you love me.”

Being a follower of Jesus is often challenging, and Jesus knows it. No wonder that his last appearance to the disciples in John’s Gospel ends with him giving them the YouTube video on how to follow him. Giving them the key insight they need to understand how to play this new game that will be the most fulfilling thing they’ve ever done. “Are you in love with me, Peter?”  Jesus asks. Because if Peter’s relationship with Jesus hasn’t awakened love in him– if our relationship with Jesus hasn’t awakened love in us – then there’s no point in shepherding. Your service to others, Jesus says, has to be motivated by love for me. Without that, your discipleship will have no heart. No life. It will be so hard, in fact, that you’ll want to go back to the life you were living before – with all the hollowness of an empty net.

So, my friends, fall deeper in love with Jesus today. All you have to do is let go. Let go everything that gets in the way of your heart really, truly knowing and loving Jesus. Let go and let the Risen Christ – our life-sustaining Lord who is the giver of every good gift – draw you deeper into relationship. Let go and let the Living Christ – who loves you fiercely and wildly and completely for no other reason than because you are you – draw you deeper into devotion.

Let go and fall in love with Jesus, and you will have everything you need to faithfully follow him that wonderful future he has promised for each one of us.

Amen.