The Third Sunday of Easter 
April 18, 2010 
John 21:1-19 
Conquerable Love 
Brad Ross, Pastoral Intern

Do you love me? It’s a simple question Jesus asks. Do you love me? But for Peter and Jesus the question is anything but simple, for these two men shared a complex history with each other. Not long before Jesus asked, “Simon, son of John, do you love me,” the brother Andrew started to follow Jesus after John the Baptist exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God.” Overcome with the excitement Andrew immediately ran to his brother Simon proclaiming to him, “We have found the Messiah,” and took him straight to Jesus, but when Jesus met him for the first time, He took it upon Himself to change Simon’s name to Cephas, to Peter, and this was only the beginning.

Peter would witness first hand this Messiah, this Lamb of God change people’s lives through His ministry: changing water into wine at a wedding feast in Cana, feeding five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish, healing the blind, raising Lazarus from the dead, hearing the proclamation of Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and after all of these moments of Jesus being glorified, Jesus bent down to the ground to wash Peter’s own feet. And yet, after all of these miracles, after all of these awe-inspiring times, Peter shattered that most intimate relationship in one pivotal night.

Before this Messiah, this Lamb of God, would take His final steps to Golgotha, this Peter, who served Jesus as His disciple, His comrade, His friend, was asked, “You are not also one of this man’s disciples are you?” Then, Peter responded with the words that were as painful to Jesus as the very nails that pierced His flesh, “I am not.” Yes, Jesus did predict that Peter would deny Him, but Peter did not simply deny Jesus. It was as if Peter turned his back on the One who loved him the most, the One who opened his eyes to a world of new life, as if he denied the entire journey they spent together, denying the most precious service as a disciple of the Messiah (not just once, not just twice, but three times, “I am not.”) Yes, Jesus felt the pain of hearing His precious disciple deny Him.

The next direct conversation they share in the Gospel of John, begins with the question demanding to be asked not just one, not just twice, but three times, “Do you love me?” And not only does Jesus ask Peter this question, but Jesus faces us with the same question, “Do you love me?” The question may not arise the same way as it did with Peter shortly after the Resurrection, but the question comes with our own history as well, for Jesus knows oh too well the pain of us denying Him. We may not deny Jesus the same way Peter did, but we do deny Jesus oftentimes by our actions and even our words. We deny knowing Jesus when we do not carry out His ministry to the world. We deny His Gospel truth when we do not feed the hungry, who take on countless journeys of their own searching for some form of nourishment. We deny His impact on our lives when we do not listen and try to offer comfort to those who mourn, to those who lost their jobs or even the life of someone so dear to them. So when Jesus asks us, “do you love me,” Jesus also calls us to do those very things he called Peter to do: feed the sheep, tend the sheep.

However, the most powerful connection we share with Peter during one of the most intensely emotional conversations he ever shared with the Messiah comes at the very end, when Jesus calls Peter to come and die.

Just over a week ago we as the church commemorated our beloved Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and theologian, who 65 years ago was killed in Nazi Germany. One of the greatest lessons Bonhoeffer proclaimed to the church was exactly what Peter heard from Jesus that day by the sea. “When Christ calls [a person], He bids [that person] come and die.” It is most certainly not a call we like to hear from Jesus, but we know this call first-hand from our baptism, to die in a death like His.

Each day God empowers us to remember our baptism, to die to the sins we have committed, not feeding the sheep with physical and spiritual nourishment. Yet we also remember our baptism to rise to new life. As St. Paul wrote, “For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we will certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. So you…must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Each day God brings new life to us to feed the sheep, to not show our love, but to show the love of Christ Jesus, the love that conquers the gloom, to bring that love emblazoning light to a world of darkness filled with earthquakes, unemployment, cancer, heart disease, and death itself.

Around four hundred years ago a Lutheran pastor served in Germany during one of the most horrific wars in history, the Thirty Years War, when death reigned as approximately one in every three Germans died. This pastor would witness first-hand Swedish troops burning down his family’s home and the church, but his suffering carried over to a much more intense level. Four of his children died before they reached fifteen months of age, with only one surviving into adulthood. After thirteen years of marriage his wife died. His life was synonymous with darkness, with death, with absolute despair. So many times in his life he faced opportunities to deny this Risen Lord, to deny any existence of a God, to deny any hope whatsoever. Yet, for some reason, amidst all of his pain, all of the extreme madness in his life, this pastor managed to become one of the greatest hymn writers in our church’s history, Paul Gerhardt.

Shortly after the battles ceased in the Thirty Years War, Gerhardt looked upon the devastation of an entire nation and wrote the words to one of his most beautiful hymns, words that would be cherished today by people in the devastated nations of Poland, Pakistan, and China. The hymn, “Jesus, Thy Boundless Love to Me,” concludes with this verse:

In suffering be Thy love my peace,
In weakness be Thy love my power;
And when the storms of life shall cease,
O Jesus, in that final hour,
Be thou my rod and staff and guide,
And draw me safely to thy side!

This is indeed a boundless love, a love that continues to live in Christ, a love that continues to show up to people in the suffering, in the weakness, through emergency crews in China, through friends and family in West Virginia, and even through us. On this day we continue to praise God for the Resurrection, for that boundless love that conquered death, the day when Jesus set us free from sin, from death, from darkness, set us free to bring that boundless love to the world, to help people see a love that will soon quench the darkness, that sets the stage for Christ to come yet again. Although we oftentimes deny that love, Jesus’ love cannot be conquered by our denials, as He continues to call us time and time again to follow Him, follow Him even unto death, but we give thanks to God that that boundless love of Jesus will not allow death to be the end, but only last for a moment before Christ shows up yet again, to conquer the disasters, the diseases the war, once for all, and on that day everlasting life will reign forevermore! Thanks be to God indeed! Amen.