The story of Jesus’s ministry has
come full circle. In the first chapter
of John, Jesus invited the disciples to follow him. In this final chapter of John, Jesus tells
Peter once more, “Follow me” and these are, in fact, his very last words in the
Fourth Gospel (John 21:22). Luke’s gospel ends gloriously with the Jesus’
ascension into heaven. Matthew’s gospel
ends grandiosely with Jesus’ culminating command that his followers go out into
the world making disciples of all nations.
John’s gospel ends as it began.
Jesus starts all over again with Lesson 1: Follow me.
As a former teacher, I wonder if
Jesus felt discouraged. I used to dread
grading final exams because there were always a few students whose finals
indicated they had made little to no progress over the course of the
semester. Which made me feel like a
failure. This story seems a pretty sad
account of one rabbi’s life if his best student kept failing the tests and at
the end of the course had to start over.
However, the ending crafted by the
writer of John may offer encouragement to those who came along a few
generations later (when the Gospel of John is being written) and for those of
us who came along a couple of millennia later. For Jesus followers like us who
never manage to emulate Jesus perfectly, this is an ending that assures us that
it’s normal to be lifelong learners and imperfect followers. In fact, following
Jesus is not a course we ever complete.
Whereas the other gospels end
dramatically, John’s gospel just fades to black as Peter stands poised to take
the next first steps in followship. John’s ending gives the impression that the
story continues not only as Peter lives on but also as new followers try to
follow and fail and manage to start over again.
John’s last chapter tells us the disciples are back fishing, where Jesus
first found them along the shores of Galilee.
Once more Jesus calls out to them, though at first they don’t recognize
him. It’s as if Peter and the others are
encountering a stranger. And in this
“déjà vu all over again” moment, Jesus again tells them to follow him. This
framing of John’s Gospel is the literary equivalent of the song called “The
song that never ends” in which the last phrase loops back to the start of the
song and forces you to keep singing it.
At the end of the Fourth Gospel, Jesus says “follow me” one more
time—and we understand the resurrection story is about not only Jesus having a
rebirth but his followers, too. Easter
continues as a re-do for Peter. And for
us.
Much has happened in between the
first “follow me” and the last. Most importantly, Jesus has been arrested,
tried, crucified, and resurrected. But since Jesus singles out Peter in this
final vignette, the writer seems to want us to notice what has happened to
Peter as he has attempted to follow Jesus.
Peter often misunderstood what it meant to follow Jesus. For instance,
it was impulsive Peter in John’s Gospel who drew his sword and cut off a man’s
ear during Jesus’s arrest. Jesus admonished him for still not understanding his
code of nonviolence. Even more
infamously, it was Peter who denied Jesus three times in the courtyard of the
high priest. Although “Simon Peter and
another disciple followed Jesus” to that place of interrogation (John
18:15), Peter did not follow all the way. He followed up to a point, then
remained outside the gate. And it was
there Simon Peter denied, three times, that he was a follower of Jesus.
New Testament scholar Greg Carey has
noticed a detail common both to this scene of Peter’s denial and this final
appearance of the risen Christ at seaside.
In both instances, there is a charcoal fire around which people
gather. And the Greek word anthrakia, which we translate as
“charcoal fire,” is used only twice in the entire New Testament—in these two
passages. The rare use of this noun suggests an intentional, artful pairing of
these scenes. In the earlier scene, Peter
warms himself at a charcoal fire in the courtyard of the high priest—as Jesus
is interrogated and as Peter denies Jesus three times. In the later scene, Jesus has prepared a
charcoal fire back in Galilee and interrogates Peter, who professes his love
for Jesus three times.
Parallelism like this signals
something important. There is a lesson
for us. And if we’ve missed it in
a previous reading, we might catch it this time.
Taking my cues from Greg Carey, I
see the story urging readers to face into past mistakes and hurts. You might at first think that it was cruel
for Jesus to stage this reunion scene with reminders—in images and words—of
Peter’s worst failure. Can you imagine
how hard it was for Peter just to face Jesus again? And then to be repeatedly
asked to profess his love? Peter’s
frustration and guilt can be heard in his final response that sounds a lot like
this: “Lord, you know I love you.
Can we move on?” But Jesus is not
rubbing Peter’s nose in his disloyalty and cowardice. Jesus is making sure Peter has really looked
inward and faced a truth about himself.
Carey explains: “Jesus has confronted Peter with the moral injury of the
past. Through a ritual reenactment of that scene, Jesus walks Peter through his
past and ushers him into a brand new future. Yes, Peter has regrets; and yes,
this regret has scarred his soul. But now Peter must do the work of Jesus and
tend the flock. Somehow healing begins, and new life bursts forth. May it be so
with all who suffer moral injury.”[i]
May it be so for us. There are
times—recent or remote—when we have failed as a Jesus follower. We have not only committed an offense against
another—but in doing so we’ve injured our spirits, which may have become
cynical, bitter, apathetic, or afraid.
How do we come back from moments when we’ve made a mess of things from
stupid choices, from self-indulgent excesses, from cruelty or indifference to
others? If we have not been honest with
ourselves or have never been willing to take responsibility for our words and
action, we may still be suffering from the pain we inflicted upon another that
continues to wound us. Like Peter, we forget the lessons Jesus has been
teaching.
Like children, we learn through
repetition. I wonder if Jesus is giving
Peter the grown-up version of the book Guess
How Much I Love You, which we read during the children’s time today. Jesus may know Peter NEEDS to express his
love. Of course, implicit in this lesson
is Jesus’ love for Peter. Jesus continues to say to Peter as God continues to
say to us: “You can’t outlove me. I love
you all the way to the moon . . . and back.
But keep trying.”
Unfortunately, like a regretful
unfaithful lover, full of grief and guilt—Peter decided to leave the path he’s
been on with Jesus. He’s already made a
sham of the relationship. So he tells his friends, “I am going fishing” (John
21:3). And the former fisherman heads back to Galilee and the old cronies and
the old ways. No more of this “fishing for people” stuff, Peter returns to his
boats and nets and the real fish. But the Spirit that directed the life of
Jesus is a persistent one. And merciful.
Jesus follows Peter there, seeking him out in the Spirit of
infinite compassion, offering Peter a seaside breakfast for his hungry body,
and offering deep forgiveness (not easy absolution) to heal his wounded spirit
and help him move forward, not backward.
Moving forward allows us to stand
with Jesus, not deny him. And the way to
profess Jesus is not with bumper stickers or Jesus-y praise-the-Lord-halleluia
language declaring we’re part of the Jesus Club. Jesus tells Peter exactly how to profess him.
With love. We deny Jesus when we don’t show love. Sounding straight out of a fairy tale that
uses a good spell to reverse an earlier evil spell, Peter’s three professions
of love undo the earlier three denials.
“Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?” “Yes.” “Yes.”
YES!” And Peter is free. Free to demonstrate that love.
The poem “Those Winter Sundays”
which Charles read earlier is an example of love demonstrated by action. An emotionally remote and physically exhausted
father does the everyday work of caring for his family in a portrait with hard
edges painted in blueblack austerity. In
fact, it apparently took the speaker of the poem years to “warm up” to the
realization that there was love in his father’s lonely, thankless duties,
rising early, as he did even on Sundays, to build the fire, to polish shoes
that gleamed silently of a father’s unspoken love. The speaker is asking in the
poem: Did my father love me? Did my father love me? Did my father love me? The answer lies in the father’s actions.
“Do you love me?” the human picture
of God persistently asks us, too. “Then love me by loving others.”
If we love the God we have met in
Jesus, we care for others. “Feed my sheep,” he repeats across the
centuries. “Feed my lambs,” he teaches
still today. You love me—or deny—not
with words but with your actions. “Tend
my flock, Peter.”
And let’s not assume this is a time
to distance ourselves from the literal words of Jesus. Sure, Jesus is speaking figuratively about
feeding lambs and sheep, the people who will soon start following Peter and the
others. Feed them with God’s love. But don’t think for a minute that Jesus is
using this command to feed sheep and lambs in symbolic ways only. Jesus fed Peter and the others—hungry fishermen—with
real fish grilled over an open fire and hearty bread on the morning after a
hard night’s toil. Think how appreciatively
those fishermen devoured that outdoor meal some have dubbed “the last
breakfast.” We follow Jesus by loving Jesus, and we love Jesus by feeding bodies and souls.
Now a question you may have long
been wondering—you who aspire to follow in the ways of Jesus—is how it can be
possible for folks living 2000 years after Jesus walked this earth to know how
to follow him. I mean, Peter didn’t get
it right and he was living with Jesus.
For some who easily read the Bible in simplistic ways and with great
trust in some other authority’s interpretation of scriptures, it may seem
easy. But it may have occurred to you
sophisticated Bible students—as it has to many over the last couple of
centuries—that it’s difficult to know with absolute certainty very much about
the historical Jesus. There are
differing gospel accounts. There are relatively
recently discovered gospels that never made it into the Bible. And there’s the
challenge of interpreting those writings (that evolved over many years) by appropriately
filtering out our cultural biases and attending to the original writers’
social-cultural-historical contexts. The
process of knowing Jesus in scripture and received tradition is an important
topic for another time. And I’m not one
to sidestep the troubling bits of Christianity. We’ll discuss soon the work
of the Jesus Seminar, for instance.
But I also think there is a clear mark that Jesus left on all the people who knew him and who later experienced
the Spirit he embodied. That mark looks like Love. Love that is not only spoken but enacted. We
follow Jesus in the simple yet demanding way of love.
Love, of course, is easy to get wrong. If you’ve known what it is to hurt someone you
love and have to face them and ask forgiveness and work to mend a relationship,
your heart breaks for imperfect Peter.
But hear the good news. We can start over. When we leave the Way of Love, there is a way
back. We hear Jesus say once again,
“Follow me.” So we drop our fishing nets and once more follow him.
[i] [i]Carey,
Greg. “Repairing Our Grief” On
Scripture. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/onscripture/2013/04/repairing-our-grief-john-211-19/
See also “Beyond PTSD” On Being. http://www.onbeing.org/blog/beyond-ptsd-to-moral-injury/5069
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