Advent Lutheran Church

"Easter's Invitation: Follow Me"

                So, now three weeks into the Easter season, let’s review:  first, there was Easter with Mary, Peter and the Beloved Disciple.  Then, Jesus appeared to some of the disciples and Thomas who were locked behind closed doors.  Today we return to Peter and some disciples, back in the northern regions, back to fishing.  It struck me as I read the Easter story this year, that once Peter and the other disciple saw the empty tomb, they “went home…”  Home was up in Galilee!  Not in Jerusalem, where the disciples saw Jesus.  So Peter was probably not there when disciples saw him; nor a week later when Jesus came for Thomas.  GRACE is that Jesus always comes to us wherever we are, and MOST OFTEN when we need a bit of Easter’s New Life.

                I like to think of today’s story as the beginning of Peter’s Resurrection, as he receives a new set of marching orders from Jesus.  The last time we saw Peter, he was busy cutting off a soldier’s ear, denying that he even KNEW Jesus (three times,) and then running away from the empty tomb.  Peter is NOT the star in John’s gospel that he is in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  He’s absent, he’s lost; so he goes back to the beginning.  But any of us with any experience at all know that you can’t go home again.  You can’t go back to the old days and the old ways and bring them back the way things were.  So with his last words of denial still ringing in our ears, Peter speaks his first post-Easter words, “I’m going fishing…”  But without Jesus, even fishing wasn’t working.

                Then Jesus shows up on the shore.  Miraculous!  And Peter’s regrets and shame are washed away in the water of the sea.  Jesus meets Peter again where it all began, and his first call to “Come and See!” becomes a new call.  Easter Grace offers an opportunity to “do over” with Jesus, and to connect with  New Life!  Today, Peter gets Resurrection FORGIVENESS.  Peter the Big Fisherman, blustery and brave, found out that loving Jesus means that secret shames, our unforgivable thoughtlessness, the wounds we’ve inflicted on others and all the things that have hardened our hearts are cracked open (like an Easter egg) for NEW LIFE.

                The Easter Grace of Jesus’ love breaks through with New Life for us as well.  Just as it did when Peter got hooked in the heart, and caught for the Kingdom. Peter got a new call, and a new set of nets!  And we know we are “called” in our Baptism.  But when we finally “get it” in our hearts, we hear the “New Life Calls” that God provides.  And sometimes, God takes us where we would never dream we’d go!  Sometimes our call is as simple as caring for those in need.  Sometimes the call is a bit more complicated.  I’m going to ask Donna Hutchinson to give you an example of those “bit more complicated” calls from God:  

                (Donna)  Bonswa! (Good afternoon in Haitian Creole) I am back from Haiti and it has changed my life. Somehow I don’t remember choosing anything, it all just fell in my lap. In six days two Physical Therapy friends and I started/built an in-patient PT dept and an out-patient Community PT clinic at the Haitian Community Hospital in Petionville. That is the part of Port au Prince hardest hit by the earthquake. We began seeing patients Day One. On my second day there, I somehow I found myself at the Haitian government Therapy Development meeting with the Haitian Secretary of State, The Haitian Minister of Health, the head of the World Health Organization, head of Handicap International and representatives from around the world. We discussed the development of therapy services and a standardized training program for PT’s in Haiti and I am now on that board. At that meeting everyone discussed the need for out-patient follow services in the community for therapy and the fact that there were none at present. When I said we were looking into building one at the Haitian Community Hospital everyone became very interested!                                                                    At a Happy Hour on the roof of the hospital on Day 3, we created a company we named the Global Therapy Group and bought the domain name.  I need to get a website up and running this week. I have 3 Haitian employees and a payroll to meet now and have committed to staffing the site for the next 1-2 years with therapists. I need to find funding for housing and transportation for the volunteer therapists, equipment for the clinic, and will need to hire additional Haitian staff as we can train them.                                                  We met a volunteer construction team there who have committed to rebuilding the hospital over the next 3 years and partnering with me. I met them the morning of day 2 and asked if it would be possible for them to put up a tarp outdoors for the start of an out-pt clinic. Instead, over the next 4 days they built an entire open air structure for us. They have plans to build us a permanent site in the next year.  I arrived home at midnight Monday night and woke up in panic wondering “What have I gotten myself into?” I have no idea what I am doing as running a business is not anything I know how to do. I am not sure how one builds a website, have no funding as yet and I run out of volunteers the first week of June. God has been guiding this since Day one in Haiti and I have faith it will work out.  

                Well, things just keep getting more amazing. Extreme Home Makeover contacted a prosthetist in Chicago who is a friend of a friend. They wanted to film a segment where a girl here in the US they built a house for and is an amputee, donates her old prostheses and they are re-fitted and given to some children in Haiti. The show was having trouble finding a place to plug in. Long story short, they arrive in Haiti Friday the 17^th and filmed on Saturday at our new GTG clinic! I have asked that they put out a plea to PT’s and OT’s across the US to volunteer to staff it for me but they have not agreed as yet. Pray for God to sway their hearts and minds.  And watch on May 5, when our story will be the backdrop for theirs.  Finally, when I was working on all this, God kept speaking in the back of my head “Cast a wider net.”  Imagine my surprise this morning when Pastor Susan read that exact gospel lesson for the day.  God is Good. (Donna ends.)

                (Pastor Susan)  Amazing New Life when we answer that “Follow Me!”  Just  like Peter, we fear what God might ask of us, but just like Peter, wet from the water and sharing Christ’s meal, we are called, and prepared and readied for the work - and just when we think it’s all over, it’s too much, we can’t possibly…God calls us to a breakfast meeting.  And we find a new life.  Because of Easter.  Because God (pointing to the cross) loves us just that much.  So why would we not, “Follow Him?”    AMEN.