March 28, 2026, St. Luke Lutheran, Brendan Wiechert’s Ordination

John 21:9-17

Peace and joy to you all on this celebratory day. It is so good to be with all of you who have walked with Brendan to this, his ordination day. The constellation of people here today reflects what ELCA Presiding Bishop Yehiehl Curry often emphasizes: we are a connected church. 

We have people from your home church St. Luke (and we thank you St. Luke for the many ways you have supported Brendan). There are folks from the Northwest Intermountain Synod’s Candidacy Committee, who accompanied you through formal years of formation. The communities that were part of that formation are represented here to: your place of employment–Camp Lutherhaven, your contextual education site—Salem Lutheran, your Clinical Pastoral Education site of Riverview Retirement Community (started by Lutherans many years ago), and your internship site—Advent Lutheran. There are even parishioners from the congregation you have already begun to serve—American Lutheran, Newport. Beyond all these, there are other friends as well – connections beyond the formal church that have laughed and cried and held your wonderings with you. Last, but not least, your family who has experienced this journey most intimately, is here. What a great cloud of witnesses is gathered today.

Now, Easter isn’t until next week, but today Brendan is helping us celebrate early. Indeed, the gospel we just heard is an Easter story – an appearance of Jesus to his disciples after the resurrection. 

Brendan shared with me that Pastor Jim Johnson, lead pastor here at St. Luke, read these verses while a group of you stood next to the Sea of Galilee during a Holy Land trip. That pilgrimage is woven into Brendan’s experience of Christ. 

It is also an ordination story. This passage is why we often say that a pastor shepherds a congregation; why we will call American Lutheran Brendan’s “flock.” Shepherding language will be used later in the Ordination rite. Simon Peter is being called into ministry. “Tend my sheep.” Jesus says.

At first, Peter and Jesus’ conversation about shepherding might seem odd. Aren’t we next to a sea? What’s all this about feeding my lambs and tending sheep?

But Peter has been following Jesus for years. This is not a new conversation, but a building from Jesus’ earlier teachings. Jesus identified himself as “the good shepherd.” He had modeled costly love, laying his life down for the sheep – including Peter. He used the metaphor of a shepherd knowing his sheep, and the sheep knowing the shepherd to describe his relationship with the disciples. He knew them deeply, and let himself be known to them. And now, resurrected, Jesus returns to the metaphor, but this time inviting Peter to shepherd, too.

Jesus has already shown Peter what to do, and it is Christ’s own example that I pray will always both fill and inspire your ministry; will inspire all of us who serve as pastors in this synod. That when temptations and dangers stalk your flock, you stick with them – seeing them and loving them even when it is painful or messy or hard. That you know them, and that they know you. Not that the pastor and congregation are best friends or know everything about each other, but that on the deepest level you know each other as children of God and allow that love to spill into how you are together and in the world.

It is so important to remember Jesus’ own words about shepherding. It reminds us of what it means to shepherd and how all of us can follow Jesus. But even more is happening on the beach today. We need to turn back the pages and remember why it is that Jesus asks Peter three times “Do you love me?”

The night Jesus was arrested, before his actual crucifixion, Peter had boldly declared that he would stand by Jesus even in the face of death. Then Peter denied knowing Jesus three times, yes, three times. When it finally dawned on Peter what he had done, he went out and wept bitterly. He was convinced he had ruined the best thing he had every known, the friendship of Jesus. There was no hope that he would ever walk with his teacher and friend again. 

But things are not always what they appear to be. In Jesus we meet the God of second chances. After the amazing catch of fish, Jesus asked Peter three times, “Peter, do you love me?” Three times Peter is able to say, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you,” and Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.” Peter was restored as a disciple and a friend. 

God’s abundant love, evidence in that same miraculous catch of fish, is for Peter and for each of you gathered here today. The vast quantity of fish in the disciples’ net and the gracious meal of bread and fish show that God’s gift is available in the risen Jesus just as it was in the incarnate Jesus who walked with those first disciples. Just as Jesus’ ministry was inaugurated with a miracle of unprecedented abundance at the wedding at Cana, so is the church’s ministry, our ministry, your ministry! Each congregation and the church universal’s ministry is grounded in an experience of God’s fullness and unprecedented, unexpected gift.

Pastor or deacon or bishop or camp director or chaplain. Ordained people and lay people. Children of God, God’s abundant love is for each of you. 

When I was a few months into my second call as a pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church in Nampa, Idaho, I was leading a Sunday morning Bible study. Somehow, the call processes I had been in came up. I mentioned that some of the other churches I had interviewed at seemed to want perfection—they wanted Jesus to be their pastor. A woman in the Bible Study who had been part of the call process looked me straight in the eye and declared, “Don’t worry about that here. We told the congregation, ‘Jesus already came.’” We have laughed about that moment many times. But in all seriousness, it was incredibly freeing. 

As we will hear in the most full and humbling way this upcoming week, Jesus alone is the savior, healer, redeemer, forgiver. His love for you is abundant. When you forget him, betray him, deny him, disobey him, he is always there offering mercy and abundant life. How badly the world needs to hear that good news, and how grateful I am today to ordain one who will faithfully, if imperfectly, proclaim God’s love and grace. Amen.