James Tissot, "Christ Appears on the Shore of Lake Tiberias," ca. 1890, public domain (via Wikimedia Commons)
All of this Sunday's readings are powerhouses, but I have a special fondness for the Gospel passage (John 21:1-19). I have a memory of preaching on that text years before my ordination (thanks to our three-year cycle of readings, I can narrow the options down to 2004 or 2007) and while my words are long lost, I remember the vehemence with which I recounted the key dialogue (which I've taken the liberty of laying out as dialogue):
JESUS: “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”
PETER: “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”
JESUS: “Feed my lambs. Simon son of John, do you love me?”
PETER: “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”
JESUS: “Tend my sheep. Simon son of John, do you love me?”
PETER [wounded]: “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”
JESUS: “Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.”
NARRATOR: He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.
JESUS: “Follow me.”
It's such a great moment. Three times Jesus tests Peter's love, mirroring the three times Peter denied Jesus on the night of his arrest. You can imagine Peter's shame over that moment and his hurt at being interrogated in this way. Peter even stands up to Jesus: you know everything, you know the answer to this question. And with each affirmation, Jesus turns Peter's role toward the service of the church to come. "Feed my sheep."
On one level, this is perhaps a story about how the church gathered around the "disciple whom Jesus loved" (by tradition identified as John the gospel writer) came to accept the authority of Peter. But on a direct, literal level, it's a story about love and regret, past and future, a moment and the lifetime stretching forth from it. Peter was once a young man, doing as he wished. As an old man, however, he will be taken away, fastened to a cross, and ripped from this life as a witness to the Jesus he loves (He is always just old Peter, though; in the next verse after the reading stops, he points to the other disciple and says "what about him!?").
And all of this happens in the context of an exhausted, pointless fishing expedition. Peter doesn't know what to do after all the excitement of the death and rising of Jesus, so he just goes back to what he knows. They can't catch a thing until Jesus appears, and as he does, he is making them some fish. At his command, they cast their nets again and bring in a vast haul.
Here the miraculous and the ordinary sit side by side (as they so often do in the Gospels). Jesus appears miraculously and feeds his friends with the everyday fare of their world. They do what they know and yet they do it with shocking results.
I love the painting of this scene by James Tissot above. Normally, we might expect to see Jesus from the perspective of the disciples. Instead, we see the scene from behind Jesus, looking out at the small, ordinary, forlorn figures of his friends. They're all waiting for something, and all about to become the thing they're waiting for.
JESUS: “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”
PETER: “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”
JESUS: “Feed my lambs. Simon son of John, do you love me?”
PETER: “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”
JESUS: “Tend my sheep. Simon son of John, do you love me?”
PETER [wounded]: “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”
JESUS: “Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.”
NARRATOR: He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.
JESUS: “Follow me.”
It's such a great moment. Three times Jesus tests Peter's love, mirroring the three times Peter denied Jesus on the night of his arrest. You can imagine Peter's shame over that moment and his hurt at being interrogated in this way. Peter even stands up to Jesus: you know everything, you know the answer to this question. And with each affirmation, Jesus turns Peter's role toward the service of the church to come. "Feed my sheep."
On one level, this is perhaps a story about how the church gathered around the "disciple whom Jesus loved" (by tradition identified as John the gospel writer) came to accept the authority of Peter. But on a direct, literal level, it's a story about love and regret, past and future, a moment and the lifetime stretching forth from it. Peter was once a young man, doing as he wished. As an old man, however, he will be taken away, fastened to a cross, and ripped from this life as a witness to the Jesus he loves (He is always just old Peter, though; in the next verse after the reading stops, he points to the other disciple and says "what about him!?").
And all of this happens in the context of an exhausted, pointless fishing expedition. Peter doesn't know what to do after all the excitement of the death and rising of Jesus, so he just goes back to what he knows. They can't catch a thing until Jesus appears, and as he does, he is making them some fish. At his command, they cast their nets again and bring in a vast haul.
Here the miraculous and the ordinary sit side by side (as they so often do in the Gospels). Jesus appears miraculously and feeds his friends with the everyday fare of their world. They do what they know and yet they do it with shocking results.
I love the painting of this scene by James Tissot above. Normally, we might expect to see Jesus from the perspective of the disciples. Instead, we see the scene from behind Jesus, looking out at the small, ordinary, forlorn figures of his friends. They're all waiting for something, and all about to become the thing they're waiting for.
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