Sunday's coming!

We have a baptism on Sunday, so this is a short and snappy sermon based on the lectionary gospel reading of  John 13: 31-35 This reading come from the Last Supper : the night before Jesus is crucified. Judas has gone out – to tell the Roman soldiers where Jesus is, so that they can come & arrest him & kill him. Jesus says to his friends ‘I give you a new commandment – a new law’ – this is Jesus’ last chance to say something important to his friends – his last bit of teaching –  if they don’t remember anything else he has taught them they should remember this… ‘Love one another’ Just as I have loved you so you should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my friends – that you love’. You wonder whether the disciples of Jesus thought ‘is that it?’. But of course that one word love is the most important thing in our world, the hardest thing, sometimes to do, the highest demand Jesus can place on us. Love. It’s easy to love Astrid ...

John 21: 1-19,   Acts 9: 1-6 So Peter & Jesus end where they began – as Jesus says to Peter ‘follow me’. Which might get us wondering, when does discipleship start? You see, Luke’s gospel also contains this story of the miraculous catch of fish – but where John tells us this story here, as part of the resurrection appearances of Jesus, Luke has it right at the beginning of the gospel, when Jesus first calls the fishermen to follow. So when does Peter become a disciple – when he first starts to follow the earthly Jesus, without even knowing who he is, or here as he follows the resurrected Jesus, who he knows is “the Lord”? The answer, of course, is both. Peter has to make a decision to start to follow Jesus, but this is a decision he will have to keep making, everyday of his life, especially when persecution comes. And it’s not as simple as Peter seeing the risen Jesus and deciding, again, to follow Jesus. First there’s the very real issue of Peter’s deni...