“The Real Deal Jesus”
Original sermon given on Sunday, May 4, 2025 written and delivered by Pastor Jeff Leininger at First Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church.
Watch the sermon live.
“The Real Deal Jesus”
John 21.1-14
John 21.1-14
In the name of the Living God and the risen Christ. Amen.
We’re at the third resurrection appearance of Jesus to his group of disciples, as St. John records it. After that initial morning with Mary before daybreak, then John outrunning Peter to see the empty tomb, 1) Jesus manifests himself to the Apostles minus Thomas in Jerusalem. Then 2) a week later he appears again to them, only this time with Thomas, who declares “My Lord and My God”. 3) Now we’re back up in Galilee, perhaps a couple of weeks later, and Jesus appears to seven of the 11 (not at 7-11!).
I’m struck, or rather moved, by the specificity of the account, and so should you be. It reads in English and in Greek as an eyewitness account, which of course, it was. We’re told where it happened (Sea of Tiberias, the more Roman name for Galilee). We’re told how many were there (seven), and even specific named individuals, where they’re from and who they’re related to so that anyone could ask them to verify this event. We’re given precise times of day — fishing at night, breakfast at daybreak, fish and bread on the menu. Which side of the boat they’re asked to re-cast is recorded and the precise number and size and type of fish hauled in at Jesus bidding — 153 — because these shrewd businessmen would have counted each one. We’re told the type and size of the boat used, and about how far out they were working. John even recalls and recounts that Peter was stripped down for work (common in that era), and that he then throws on some clothes and hurls himself into the shallow water to greet the risen Christ.
We even get a sense of the mood of the disciples themselves. After all the dramatic ups and downs of the past couple weeks, with a slight lull, or denouement as the fancy dramatists say, Peter sort of resorts back to what he knows. Like any of us under stress or pressure or just overwhelmed, he goes where he’s comfortable and at home — “I’m going fishing.” Literally, “I go to fish.” “Yeah, us too,” the boys respond. And in the narrative which follows, we’re given specific, technical language they all would have known. There’s no fewer than six different words used for fish, fishing, and catching. It’s like we native Minnesotans who have, like, six different words for mosquitos… or Superbowl losses.
But I tell you all this to encourage and exhort you with this one point: this is an eyewitness account. This really happened. And it matters that it really happened. The dead but now alive Jesus ate with them. He took some fish, stuck it in his real mouth, chewed up that poor dead fishy with real teeth, and swallowed it into his real, resurrected digestive tract.
It’s the gritty, digesting details of this story which make it compelling… and life changing. And the message for us is this: we do not have a metaphysical, ghost-like, mist and myth enshrouded spiritual Christ floating around somewhere giving us a general message about a spiritual renewal. No, we’ve got the real deal Jesus who got real cooking, serving, and digesting breakfast. And it is only this Jesus Christ who can make any difference in our lives, and who is worthy of our worship.
We need the real deal Jesus when we stand by the grave of a loved one. At that moment of truth and reality — that knowledge that these bodies are but dust and to dust they shall return — no mere spiritual reflection of general renewal will make a difference. What kind of Christ can actually reassemble a pile of dust and resurrect a dead body to real life? Only the one who ate breakfast that morning along the Sea of Galilee.
When you’ve sinned again. When you promised you wouldn’t, you gave your heart back to Jesus, when you truly repented and realized the irrational folly of what you’re doing, but you did it again anyway — what kind of Jesus do you need then? You need the one who actually really did reach out to Peter with pierced hands and really did restore him and send him into ministry despite his failures. You need the breakfast-cooking, eating, digesting Jesus.
When life is so overwhelming that you feel that if you add one more thing into it, you’re going to collapse into a pile of stressed-induced dysfunction; when you feel that you just can’t keep juggling all the balls up in the air for the next week, what kind of Jesus do you need? Do you need another nice story to stick on the children’s bookshelf along Amelia Bedelia? No, you need the flesh and blood and body who actually intervened into the lives of real people, bringing bigger miracles than they could ever have imagined.
The German theologians have a word for it: its heilsgeschicte (God bless you) — I can’t spell it, but I know what it means: salvation history. The story of the Bible is the account of God’s intervention into our history, into the lives of a sinful, distraught, lost, humanity. God kneeled down into the dust to create us at the beginning. In Christ, God took on a stomach and a mouth, grew some teeth, and had little hands and little feet in the baby of Bethlehem. God reached those same hands out and had them pounded through, not with imaginary mystical spikes on Good Friday, but real iron tore apart real flesh and blood. And now in this season of Easter, we celebrate the culmination of our salvation history — that grave was really empty. God’s body in Christ was alive again. We too one day will be raised forever.
So, find God in the details this morning, not the devil. Know that you don’t follow a myth, or an idea, or a nice story that has general meaning. We follow the real, Resurrected Jesus Christ, dead but alive, who now reigns forever. When you hear his voice, see his work, smell his cooking, recognize who he is and jump on in with Peter. Go and meet him, eat with him, fellowship with him by faith, and get ready for wherever he’ll send you.
This same risen Christ is here again today, truly present under the physical forms of bread and wine. There is an abundance of grace in hearing his voice — more than you can imagine. It’s life changing, I know, and perhaps a bit scary to believe that God was in Christ defeating death, giving divine purpose and direction to everything all the way from fishing to swimming to breakfast. But sometimes you just have to take the leap, plunge in with Peter and see what’s cooking on the other shore.
Come soon Lord Jesus. Amen.