Repeat miracles


Why would Jesus repeat a miracle? He had given his disciples a great catch of fish years earlier (Luke 5). Didn’t they know he could push all the fish in the lake into their nets?

But the disciples were weak men like us. They needed all the reminders of Jesus’ love and power that they could get. Especially after their fear and betrayals of Holy Week.  In this fishing account, not only would they recall the earlier catch of fish; the breakfast of bread and fish would have reminded them of a couple of other miracles. In this after-Easter miracle, God’s grace and power were evident. And when they sat down to eat with Jesus, they were assured once again of his friendship.

Jesus repeats his miracles in our lives too. He performed the amazing miracle of washing our sins away at our Baptism. He repeats that miracle each time we repent and are forgiven. He does it again when he provides his body and blood as we gather at his altar. And he pours out that forgiveness every time we open his Word and read his wonderful Gospel message.

Jesus builds our faith so it will go into action. The earlier catch of fish was the prelude to Jesus’ calling the disciples to “catch men”; they then “left everything and followed him.” Now, after Easter, they’d gone back to fishing; but Jesus once again had other fishing for them to do (21:15ff).  Jesus likewise builds us up before he sends us out to serve him in our vocations.


“It is the Lord!” is the Easter refrain (cf. 20:18, 20:25, 20:28) that moves us, like Peter, to live the new life we have in our Lord.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Justified in Jesus

Image
Matthew 27:27–31 27 Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole cohort of soldiers around him. 28 They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him. 29 They twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand, knelt in front of him, and mocked him by saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” 30 They spit on him, took the staff, and hit him repeatedly on his head. 31 After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him. 1) Jesus on cross picture. We are still in the five hundredth anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation. With the Reformation, the Lord of the Church allowed His truth to be retold through the writings of Martin Luther. But, God also used artists to visually portray this gospel to the minds of His people. If we wanted to “picture” the Reformation in our mind’s eye, there is no better “picture” than The Weimar Altarpiece . In thi
Read more

Water into blood and water into wine

Image
Here are some thoughts that didn’t make it into Sunday’s sermon. The Old Testament lesson for the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany is the account of Moses turning the water of the Nile River into blood. The first of the ten plagues God used to get the Israelites out of Egypt. Exodus 7:14-24 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Pharaoh's heart is unyielding; he refuses to let the people go. 15 Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he goes out to the water. Wait on the bank of the Nile to meet him, and take in your hand the staff that was changed into a snake. 16 Then say to him, 'The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to say to you: Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the desert. But until now you have not listened. 17 This is what the LORD says: By this you will know that I am the LORD: With the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood. 18 The fish in the Nile will die, and the river will stink; the Egyptians will not
Read more

Jesus has prepared a place for you - A funeral sermon for Jim Hermann

Image
John 14:1-4 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.  2  My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.  4  You know the way to the place where I am going.” “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” Did you catch the difference between what I read just now and what I read in the Gospel lesson? The Gospel lesson was from the NIV. The second verse I read was from the King James Version. If you’re older than 50, that’s the version of the Bible that you heard in church and learned in catechism class. But, even if you’re older younger than 50, you know about the mansions. “The mansions of heaven” is a term Christians use pretty often. Preachers say it, poets write it, people
Read more