Simon Peter’s Rehab

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

April 29, 2007

Text: John 21: 15-19

Jesus asks, “Simon, son of John, do you love me; do you love me more than these?”

Simon, he says. Not Simon Peter, the Rock: Simon, son of John. One can suppose that Peter, the name drawn from the word for “rock” had become Simon’s title. But in this first exchange of words between Peter and Jesus after resurrection, Jesus is simply speaking to the man whom he first called “Simon” (1:42).

Not yet. It would be like someone calling the bishop, Joel, the queen simply Elizabeth.

Now, after all that has transpired----all that Jesus has said and done, Jesus’ arrest, crucifixion and resurrection, and Simon Peter’s three denials that he ever knew Jesus-----after all of this, Jesus gives Simon a second chance.

Is he yet to be the Rock, the one on whose faith the church will be built? We’ll see.

It is as if the Boss is back and is interviewing the one in whom he had placed great trust, one in whom he saw great potential for leadership. Again, as at the first, Jesus calls Simon in from his fall-back job, fishing. And Jesus’ questions to Simon do not beat around the bush.

This is one of those occasions when you can imagine the other 6 disciples there were leaning forward. What will he say? What will he ask? How can Peter explain himself, prove himself?

The exam is not what we might expect. Jesus does not scold Peter; he does not ask him to beg for forgiveness. He does not ask him why he has returned so quickly to fishing for fish instead of people.

He simply asks him, “Do you love me?”

Can you imagine Jesus asking you this question? Supply your full name, without any title, and read the questions as if directed to you? Pause and think about your answer before you respond.

Then hear Jesus’ question the second time….pause. Think about your answer.

Then the third time. More than these: more than any other person?

I have been told that one of the ways you impress upon a person the importance of a piece of advice it to keep repeating it. Peter denied Jesus three times before the rooster crowed.

But what does it mean to love Jesus?

I grew up in churches which sang hymns about loving Jesus. “O how I love Jesus, because he first loved me.” “My Jesus I love thee, I know Thou art mine; for thee all the follies of sins I resign…..If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus ‘tis now.” “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, there’s just something about that name….” The feelings evoked by these hymns was that Jesus was forgiving, receptive, compassionate, a true friend and savior.  To love Jesus was to feel deeply thankful for Jesus’ love of me.

This is a form of love we are familiar with. We love someone because they have stood by us even when we have failed. We are blessed with a few friends like this in our lifetime. Because of what they have done for us, there is nothing we would not do for them. “Greater love has no one than this, than one lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Perhaps Jesus wanted to know if Simon, out of all the voices that he would be hearing, would recognize the voice of Jesus the Good Shepherd. Out of all of our allegiances, all of the so-called gods which clamor for our loyalty, Jesus the Lord must be preeminent.

Perhaps he knew that no one can lead unless they first be led. And we follow our hearts, wherever they would lead us.

“Simon, is your heart with me. Is the love you have for me the same love I have for you?”

We can empathize with Peter. Three times he respond, each time with more frustration and hurt: “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you,” Peter finally replies.

Love is the essential requirement for Christian leadership. Cleverness and intelligence and being well-informed are not enough. Without love, we really can become just like someone beating on a tin lid. (If you don’t get this love right, you will find it impossible to love others, especially those who do not fit our description of loveable.)

The surprise in the conversation is that, in response to Peter’s protestations of love, Jesus says:

“Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep.”

Our heart-felt gratitude, our love for Jesus because of what he has done for us, is not complete unless we are loving toward those whom Jesus also loves.

Love for Jesus is directed outward from Jesus to others---- especially here, we may assume, to those who also follow after Jesus, and will as time goes on. If he loves Jesus, Peter will show this love for Jesus by tending and feeding those whom Jesus has and will gather up into the community of faith.

Peter’s love will be evidenced by his active work of “seeing to” the real life needs of this little vulnerable band of people who follow the Way which Jesus walked.”

Note: Peter is not called to tend to Peter’s sheep but Jesus’ sheep. To love Jesus is to tend to the needs of the big and little sisters and brothers who abide in Jesus, too.

These “sheep” and “lambs” may be everywhere. Some may be our family members or the members of this gathered community; some may be across town; some may be in other lands. As we love Jesus, many opportunities are offered to us. Some may look like goats, but they can become sheep (a quote from Calvin, I think).

GREAT GRACE: PETER’S REHABILITATION

Great grace is offered to Simon. He is received into Jesus’ company, given a chance to state his love for Jesus three times, paralleling his denials. And he is given a purpose for which to expend his life.

By the time Peter has answered Jesus’ question three times, and been instructed on what to do, he has been forgiven and rehabilitated.

Carlo Caretto, quoted in the devotional book edited by Reuben Job and Norman Shawchuck, puts it this way, describing his own rehabilitation:

“Jesus washed me patiently in the waters of baptism, he filled me with the exhilarating joy of the Holy Spirit in confirmation, he nourished me with the bread of the world. Above all, he forgave me, he forgot everything, he did not even wish me to remember my past myself….When, through my tears, I began to tell him something of the years during which I betrayed him, he lovingly placed his hand over my mouth in order to silence me.” (Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants, Upper Room, 1983)

Tending to the sheep will be costly, even to death for Peter. Nevertheless, Jesus says to Peter, as he did about three years earlier, “Follow me.”

It is a fascinating juxtaposition: “Feed my sheep…..Follow me.” To follow Jesus is to continue to be shaped by his ministry, his deeds, his words, his attitude, his outlook, his agenda. Only in following Jesus can he be a leader of Jesus’ sheep. He must have what the Apostle Paul calls “the mind of Christ,” or Jesus in John refers to as “abiding” in Christ.

It is not merely the survival of the community of faith that Jesus has in mind; it is their survival as Christ’s “body,” his presence in the world.

By any measure, Peter’s leadership of the apostles was monumental. He is called Saint Peter for a reason. Without going as far as our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters do, we can give thanks that Peter passed this quiz from Jesus and, from all extant accounts, did----in partnership with the other apostles and disciples (some whose names are lost to us)---- feed and tend Jesus’ sheep.

THE CHURCH AS SIMON PETER TODAY

Well, the church keeps re-telling this story of Peter and Jesus. Why do we do this?

Perhaps because we are always being asked the same question by the risen Lord, “Do you love me more than these---more than any other so-called leaders?

 Is your love for me and our Father in heaven the controlling influence in your life?

Do you make your decisions as Christians and as a church on the basis of your confession that Jesus is Lord?

The crosses that you wear around your necks: are they jewelry or witness?

If we present-day disciples and leaders love Jesus, are we hearing Jesus say to us now, “Feed and tend my sheep?”

What would this mean for us?

At least a healthy diet of these, I think.

OUR CONTROLLING STORY

Are we nourished with the great Story, the narrative God and God’s people in scripture? Are our lives being shaped by the picture of happiness and contentment and success depicted there--more than by the prevailing cultural images of our time?

The Scriptures are read in worship, even those passages which make us uncomfortable. It is one of disciplines which saves the church from hearing only the pastor’s favorite verses! Regarding the discipline of sharing the passages we might be tempted to skip over, I share this story. (Thomas Jefferson to the contrary, we take all of the fun out of learning when we only choose those passages that are “reasonable,” with which we agree already. You and I need all of the nutrients that are to be discovered.)

A south Texas farmer told me about an experience in England. He met farmers who fence in their cattle within a moving quadrant of a circle, with the fences slowing herding the cattle all around the circle. This way, the cows eat all the kinds of grass in each quadrant, not just the grasses they especially like.

Thus, with the three year lectionary, we hear all kinds of things we need to hear but might not have chosen----either to preach on, or to listen to. We all have our “canon” within the “canon,” our favorite texts that we go back to over and over again. We may often come with our felt needs, however, and discover our bible reading, etc. speak to a need we did not know we had!

Biblical reading is not a fool-proof healthy diet. Some of the meanest people I have known can quote it better than any of us. But in a community where the Spirit is welcomed and there is mutual love, the Bible can be a perennial source of wisdom and life.

BREAKING BREAD

At least once a month, we partake of the Lord’s Supper, a means of grace for our lives. Anytime anyone is baptized, we renew our own commitments as well and are reminded of grace yet at work in our lives. This is one of the reasons John and Charles Wesley partook of the sacrament as often as possible, at least once weekly.

Holy Communion is the sacramental basis for what the church called koinonia-loosley translated as fellowship or shared life in community

Our need for community, for shared life, is met by the many different ways we gather in small groups and large in the name of Jesus Christ. Virtual reality, as much as seven hours a day for many young people, is not substitute for face to face meeting together as we are able. (We seem to have come full circle: from being rural people separated by land between us, hungry for the weekly church meetings, to being now urban people, separated by hurried lives, traffic patterns and various forms of blue screens, longing for the days when we can make it here to this place and share our lives in Christ. If you want a vivid picture of how the tube has changed our lives, view the move “Avalon.”)

Sometimes we are together to study; other times to just visit; other times to play; and many times to work together in helping others.

We encourage each other by being friends to each other as Jesus is to us. The telephone, the postal service and the computer also keep us connected.

(When my Maw Maw could no longer go to church regularly, she would have regular daily and weekly conversations with her old friends as they checked in on each other. My Paw Paw would tell her that her conversations would last about thirty minutes; he knew this because they were usually the length of his favorite soaps.)

I watched a TV show on penguins who, in artic cold, bunch up together in a very large but tightly packed circle to stay warm, taking turns to be on the cold edge. They do this for months during the winter to survive. We can be comforted by our times together.

It is a tough and dangerous world out there. By worship and learning, we are equipped to bear witness to the gospel and to serve the needs of our neighbors in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ. We hear the word of God’s fierce judgment on the arrogant and the corrupt and those who oppress and exploit the poor, and we gain courage to advocate for changes.

When we face our own trials and temptations, we are able to call upon our friends in the church for companionship and prayers.

In a world of discouraging news, we hear words of hope in God’s sovereign, unending love for us and the whole creation.

And the list could go on for a long time. It is not a job that we complete and then forget about. For the sheep and lambs keep on coming into the flock. We are all being shaped by Jesus as our sacrament (our means of grace) and our pattern for living.

ALWAYS STARTING OVER

Peter was not a perfect leader. We are fallible, too. N.T Wright has written that “Jesus himself taught his followers a prayer which includes a clause asking God for forgiveness. He must have thought we would go on needing it.” (Simply Christian, 2006)

But Peter, in spite of the fact that he let Jesus down, had the chance to start over.Jesus finds Peter and other disciples fishing again. After he prepares and serves breakfast, he says to Peter, “Follow me” as he had when he first called him. In following Jesus, we, today, can be a part of Jesus’ continuing shepherding of his disciples.

Every time we remember the story of Jesus questioning Peter, “Do you love me more than these?” we should stop let Jesus direct his question to us.

To love Jesus means that we “do not place our confidence in the many so-called gods, but solely in the promise of God’s unending love to all who will receive it….

“To accept God’s love for us is to fulfill the command to love all the others God also loves.” (Schubert Ogden, “What does it Mean to say, ‘Jesus Christ is Lord?’” in The Reality of God.)

This love begins close up. We are stewards of God’s love for the sheep----all of those, including ourselves, who hear Jesus’ voice and come to know and love him, too. We all need to be tended and to be fed.