Third Sunday of Easter
I enjoy reading and re-reading John's 21st chapter, I admit it. And it's not only because Jesus is in charge of cooking for his friends, something I and many others like to do too and something he clearly enjoyed here! Maybe it's the palpable warmth and confidence we sense in Jesus; he's familiar in word and gesture with Simon Peter and friends, putting them at ease, encouraging them to trust in his word (again) and in their new instincts, their new faith. Maybe it's the experts fishing all night and catching nothing, yet another sad failure of church leadership (yes, even back then) but presented to us as as an eerily familiar subtext to the deeper story. Surely, empty nets certainly would distress the fishermen (and even more, their leader Peter who had failed so often and so recently with Jesus! But their inability to get the job done is now one more opportunity for Jesus. The little group, responding to his familiar challenge and invitation to trust his word, are again dumbfounded: their huge catch shows that the kingdom is actually here, that life is abundant rather than scarce, that grace has its own power.
Maybe it's just this resurrected Christ's easy manner, so friendly and familiar and inviting, not at all shut down by the apostles' initial fear, distrust and reluctance.
But what I've found most moving in these passages also seems terribly needed today, i.e. Jesus' two part private conversation with Simon Peter:
Simon, do you love me? three times, each one probing deeper into the heart of a man who was in trouble.
Lord, you know that I love you -- three positive answers from Peter, the
previously self-important, boastful, and violent knucklehead who was now learning true honesty.
It was enough for Jesus, who then lays on his friend overwhelming, impossible responsibility:
feed my sheep, feed my sheep, feed my lambs. Peter's love of Jesus (really, Peter's willingness to be fed by Christ's love for him ) clearly counts much more to Jesus than do Peter's sins -- and many they were.
Is this not the conversation that our Church (and we, its leaders and ministers) could be having with the Lord? We must know by now that it's not enough to fear for a world that will always tend to destroy itself. It's not enough to worry and stew in our feelings of failure, guilt, and loss.
The last part of the gospel seems to me to offer a lesson, but one easily lost to us today i.e.
when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.
What does
all that mean?
Commentators caution us to not be satisfied with the following text's explanation concerning Peter's death -- that can't be it. The "lesson" remains hidden or insignificant only to those who are not experienced enough in life to read it closely and personally, or who themselves are convinced only by some sort of muscular, dominating christianity, despite all what the prophets and the scriptures tell us.
We do know this about Peter. He never forgot his broken humanity, whether it was completely misinterpreting Jesus' intentions as his King or soon afterward denying Him completely. He apparently insisted that his contemporaries not forget his failures too (thus you and I know of them from the Scriptures). While he continued to get a lot of things wrong -- remember his many arguments with Paul about Christian identity? -- our first leader, Peter was himself now able to
be led. He was both able and willing to listen, to learn, to allow the Spirit and grace into the early Church. It was no longer about Peter, about his plans, his success, his church "building." It was all about getting the Good News out, and doing so by
being good news. More deeply, his role was now to help others allow the Lord love them, just as Peter had finally done.
How else could they have found their way?
