In the Gospel of John Jesus’ last words
from the cross were these: “It is finished.” At that point, as he prepared to
give up his spirit, Jesus had accomplished all that he had come to do—to offer
up his life as what the Anglican Book of Common Prayer calls the one “full,
perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of
the whole world”. The curtain of the temple (reputed to be as thick as a man’s
hand) was about to be ripped apart, from top to bottom. The impenetrable wall
of separation between sinful humankind and the all-holy God had been breached. Yet,
in spite of the colossal nature of the cross, there still remained some loose
ends that needed to be tied up.
For the past couple of weeks we have been having
some renovations done to our house. Very soon I am hoping we will be able to
say that the project has been completed. Yet, as with almost any undertaking, there
will undoubtedly still remain a few details that will need to be attended to.
Without wishing to be in any way frivolous, the same was true in those days
following the crucifixion. Yes, Jesus’ mission was completed on the cross. “It
is finished.” Yet there were still some important matters that needed to be
dealt with. There were mourners like Mary Magdalene and Cleopas and his friend,
who needed to be consoled and delivered from their grief. There were doubters
like Thomas, who needed to be convinced that Jesus had indeed conquered death.
And then there was Peter, who needed to be relieved of the terrible burden of
guilt he carried about with him following his cowardly denial of Jesus outside
the high priest’s court.
That last story is found only in the fourth
gospel. It almost seems, at the end of chapter 20 and Jesus’ dramatic
appearance to Thomas in the upper room, that John has come to the end of his account—and
what a high point to end on! And so he concludes, “Jesus performed many other
signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book.
But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son
of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31). I can imagine John
putting down his pen with a great sigh and then saying, “Oh! I almost forgot to
tell you what happened with Peter…” and picking up his pen again to add the
twenty-first chapter.
“It all happened like this…” he begins. The
scene this time is to the north, in Galilee, where the disciples’ adventure
with Jesus had begun. Seven of the disciples had gone out to fish. The first
glimmers of the rising sun were beginning to appear on the horizon when they
heard a voice from the shore. “You wouldn’t have anything to eat, would you?”
Their annoyance at having caught nothing in spite of having been in the boat
all night was evident in their monosyllabic reply: “No.” “Well, toss your net over
to the right side of your boat and you’ll find some.”
Now you would think the disciples should
have started to become a little suspicious. The scene was remarkably similar to
something that had happened three years before. That time Peter had objected.
This time, however, there was no demurral. The net had barely sunk into the
water before it was bursting with fish. It was at that point that the penny
dropped for John at least. “It’s the Lord,” he stammered. No sooner had the
words left his mouth than Peter was pulling on a tunic and splashing into the
water.
“Do you love me?” – Discipleship, not competition
It was after they had eaten that Jesus
turned to Peter with the painful question, “Simon, son of John, do you love me
more than these?” The question was painful for two reasons. First, Jesus was
addressing Peter by his formal name, not the nickname—Peter, Rock—that Jesus
himself had given him. Secondly, Jesus’ question harked back to a conversation
that had taken place on the eve of his crucifixion. “All of you are going to
desert me,” Jesus had warned them. But Peter objected, “Even if everyone else
deserts you, I never will” (Mark 14:27-31).
I don’t think it was intentional, but Peter was implying that his devotion to
Jesus was greater than that of any of the other disciples. Now Jesus was
asking, “What do you think about those words now, Peter? Do you really love me
more than these?”
Jesus’ penetrating question reveals one of
the most insidious dangers for the followers of Jesus. It is the temptation to
turn discipleship into a competition. It is a very easy rut to fall into, to
begin to compare ourselves (either favourably or unfavourably) with other
Christians. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that it isn’t good to have
role models or saintly examples of Christian living that we look up to. Nor am
I suggesting that there are some people (and, sad to say, Christians among
them) whose lifestyles we should avoid. No, this is something considerably
subtler than that. In the New Testament we see it in the church in Corinth,
where some people were under the impression that their spiritual gifts were
more valuable to the life of the church than those of others. No, says Paul,
such comparisons have no place in the Christian community. To get his point
across, he uses what has to be the most powerful image of the church in all the
New Testament: the body of Christ, where every part, no matter how large or
small, visible or hidden, plays a vital part in the functioning of the whole.
There are different kinds of gifts, but the
same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the
same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in
everyone it is the same God at work… The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t
need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’ … But
God has put the body together … that its parts should have equal concern
for each other. (1 Corinthians 12:4-6,
21,24-25)
We find our Lord Jesus enunciating the same
principle more than once in the course of his teaching. Remember his absurd
picture of the man attempting to remove a speck from someone else’s eye when
there is a great beam protruding from his own (Matthew 7:3-5). Or how about his story of the Pharisee and the tax collector
praying in the temple? Do you recall the Pharisee’s prayer? “God, I thank you
that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like
this tax collector” (Luke 18:9-14). It
is a trap that good, well-intentioned people can easily fall into. I have seen
it in the churches where I have served. I have seen it in myself.
“Feed my lambs…” – Discipleship as service
“Simon son of John, do you love me?” “Simon
son of John, do you love me?” “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Three times
Jesus addresses Peter with this painful question. Peter could hardly have
failed to grasp the significance. Three times he answers: “Yes, Lord, you know
that I love you.” “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” “Yes, Lord, I love
you.” And three times Jesus comes back with a commission: “Then feed my lambs.”
“Take care of my sheep.” “Feed my sheep.”
What was the point that Jesus was at pains
to get across? It is that the essence of discipleship is not competition but
servanthood. Once again, turning to Paul and his words to that contentious,
competitive bunch in Corinth: “To each one the manifestation of the Spirit is
given for the common good” (1 Corinthians
12:7). And of course Paul is really only echoing the same principle that
Jesus had emphasized to his disciples during his earthly ministry. It was when
James and John had come to Jesus asking to sit at his right and his left in his
kingdom. When word of this got to the other disciples, their blood rose. But
Jesus’ words put a stop to any indignation they might have felt:
You know that the rulers of the Gentiles
lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not
so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your
servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of
Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom
for many. (Matthew 20:25-28)
Jesus’ injunction to Peter was a call to
servanthood. More than that, those words, “Feed my lambs,” would have taken
Peter back to an earlier time when Jesus had declared of himself, “I am the
good shepherd.” And the good shepherd’s faithfulness to his flock would lead
him to give his very life for his sheep (John
10:11).
I recently received an article from a
friend in Cairo about a remarkable example of Christian servanthood.
In 1969, the governor of Cairo created the
slum by relocating the mostly Coptic Christian trash pickers [to the city’s
squalid garbage dump…] Women and children pick through 15,000 tons of the
city’s collected refuse, sorting out recyclable waste from the biodegradables
useful for wandering livestock. Men haul burlap trash bags twice their size
into garbage trucks poised to tip from overfill… By 1974, the community of
Manshiat Nasser had grown to about 14,000 Copts, living without electricity,
plumbing, or church. Alcoholism was rampant. Crime was common. A reluctant
Orthodox layman was asked to visit with an eye toward ministry… One day Farahat
Ibrahim was walking in the area, feeling overwhelmed. “Lord, I'm just a drop in
the ocean,” he prayed. “There are many people here and they are very hard and
wild. What do you want from me?” Ibrahim bought a pair of boots and a
flashlight, and trudged out in visitation to his unreceptive adopted flock. One
man attacked him with a knife. Another hid in the pigsty. But in an abandoned
cave above the slum, in a tin hut with a reed roof, nine people attended the
first church service… [Forty-plus years later Ibrahim, now ordained in the
Coptic Church as Father Simon, continues to minister there.] Six churches have
been planted and serve the poor. Patmos Hospital serves the sick. Ninety
percent of all trash gets recycled, as NGOs market creatively designed
garbage-turned-crafts.[1]
Tragically, I fear that we Christians are
probably better known for what we are against than for that kind of
servanthood. At the same time, I don’t think you have to scratch too far
beneath the surface of almost any church to find people who are feeding the
hungry, offering shelter to the homeless and engaged in countless other ways in
taking care of Jesus’ lost sheep.
“Follow me!” – Discipleship as a response to God’s love in Christ
It is a compelling picture—and Peter would
indeed find himself serving in that very way, even going to the death for it.
Yet I believe it still misses what is at the heart of genuine discipleship. I
believe we need to go a level deeper—and that comes to us in Jesus’ final words
to Peter in this morning’s passage: “Follow me.” “Follow me”—the same words Peter
had heard addressed to him as he had stood casting his net for fish three years
before.
You see, at its core discipleship really
has nothing to do with what I can do for Jesus. It begins with what Jesus has
done for me. Discipleship is a response—a response to God’s love for me in
Christ. We will inevitably falter and fail in our service to Jesus and to
others, just as Peter did. But there is one who will never fail, one who says
to each of us, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you
with unfailing kindness” (Jeremiah 31:3).
Again I am reminded of the apostle Paul’s words to the Corinthians when he writes
of his own ministry, “Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that
one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who
live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was
raised again” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15).
Scottish theologian Thomas Torrance beautifully
illustrated what I want to say when he reminisced of an experience he had with
his daughter. He wrote,
Many years ago I recall thinking of the
marvellous way in which our human faith is implicated in the faith of Jesus
Christ and grasped by his faithfulness, when I was teaching my little girl to
walk. I can still feel her tiny fingers gripping my hand as tightly as she
could. She did not rely upon her feeble grasp of my hand but upon my strong
grasp of her hand which enfolded her grasp of mine within it. That is surely
how God’s faithfulness actualized in Jesus Christ laid hold of our weak and
faltering faith and holds it securely in his hand.’[2]
Discipleship just isn’t about us. It’s
about Jesus taking us, feeble and fault-ridden as we are, and working through
us. May what we have read and heard this morning encourage each of us to be
grasped by that strong hand of Jesus to draw us more deeply into himself, so
that forgiven, restored and impelled by his love, we may go out to serve him in
the world. “If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown
himself” (2 Timothy 2:13).
[1] Jayson Casper, “From
Garbage to Glory”, Christianity Today,
April 2016
[2] Thomas F. Torrance, The
Mediation of Christ, page 83
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