The Beginning after the End--February 7, 2024

The Beginning after the End--February 7, 2024

"When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ A second time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘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.’ (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’” [John 21:15-19]

With Jesus, even dead ends become new beginnings.  And the moment we think Jesus should be done with us, he seeks us out to call us all over again and to begin anew with us.  

As we've been seeing throughout the stories in our devotions this Epiphanytide, it so often begins when Jesus calls to someone--often by name, specifically, and personally.  It was his call, "Mary!" in the garden beside the tomb on that first Easter morning.  It was his call to Levi the tax collector, pulling him out of his dead-end career as a sell-out tax collector and outcast.  It was the resuscitating call, "Little girl, arise!" that brought Jairus' daughter back from the dead.  It was the call to a bunch of unschooled fishermen to become disciples: "Follow me!"  And in so many of those situations, it was the way Jesus called to them that pulled people out of dead-end situations and into something that felt like coming to life again.

Jesus gives us that same capacity to begin again--he calls us, too, by name. We can begin again with him, and there is the hope, too, of being able to be reconciled with people we had thought we had no hope of making up with. Jesus shows us it is possible, because he takes the initiative to do it here in this scene from John's Gospel.  This story comes sometime after Jesus' resurrection, and in it, he takes what would have been Simon Peter’s worst regret of his life and erases what Peter thought was left permanently chiseled in stone in the record of his mess-ups. 

You probably recall that the last conversation Jesus and Simon Peter had had turned out to be a devastating lie… and that Simon Peter followed it up with not just one, and not just two, but THREE denials of even knowing Jesus. The last conversation Jesus had with Peter one on one before Jesus’ arrest, betrayal, and death, was when Peter had insisted “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you,” and Jesus answered back that he knows Peter will deny knowing him three times before the night is out. In some of the other gospels, Peter’s recorded words carry even more braggadocio—“even if everybody else deserts you, I never will,” and such.

In other words, Jesus lets himself be lied to, or at least lets Peter make an empty promise to him, knowing that it is an empty promise. That says something about love, to be sure—that sometimes love lets itself look foolish, and even lets itself, knowingly, look like it is getting hoodwinked or conned. (You give the money to the family member who swears up and down that “it’s just a loan,” but you know full well you will never see the money again… or you hear the co-worker that you just helped out say to you, “I will cover you sometime on the schedule, I promise!” when experience tells you they will forget ever making the promise before long. Or your young child, penitent over getting caught hitting his little sister, says, “Ok, Daddy, I will never do that again!” when you know that you will likely have to deal with this same issue again before long.) So yeah, love does let itself look like it is being taken for a ride sometimes, and Jesus does that with Peter. He let Peter make all these big sweeping promises, knowing they would all crumble like ash from embers, and then after the denials are all past, and even after the cross, Jesus creates a moment for Peter to be restored... for a new beginning.  And it starts with the calling: "Simon, son of John..."

Jesus doesn't call people only in order to recruit members for his team or workers in his kingdom.  Jesus' calling conveys the grace that lets us start over--even starting over beyond death. Without this call, Simon Peter would have been trapped in the guilt of remembering all his life that his last words with Jesus were his self-centeredly pompous empty boasting that he would never bail out on Jesus, spoken mere hours before he did just that.

They were words that Peter regretted the moment he heard the rooster crow and realized what he had done. They were denials he wished he could take back, or even apologize for—but after the betrayal and the arrest, the trial and the execution happened so fast that there was no time and no moment for Peter to beg forgiveness, or even approach Jesus to try to talk with him. And before anything could be done about it or changed, Jesus had been crucified, Peter had fled the scene, and death ended their relationship.

Well… at least, that’s how Peter assumed it went. Death does have a way of ending relationships. But this is the gift that the resurrected Jesus makes possible by calling to Simon Peter—not only is there the hope of life again beyond death, but of the chance to restore relationships that had been left for dead as well.

After Good Friday, Peter could only assume that he had not only ended things poorly with Jesus as his friend, but also that he had burned a bridge with Jesus as his Lord. We all would have assumed the same. And then with Easter Sunday, Jesus was alive again, but Peter is left wondering if the risen Jesus still holds a grudge about Peter’s denial.

So Jesus makes things right from his side. Jesus takes the initiative to do what Peter was too afraid to dare to ask for by calling to him. Jesus gives the chance that Peter had been sure was lost forever. Jesus gives Peter a new beginning, or rather, another new beginning in a line of them. Jesus not only lets Peter start over with him--all the way down to a repeat of the "Follow me" calling that began their relationship all the way back at the beginning of the Gospel--but Jesus starts the starting over from his side because he knows Peter will never dare to ask for it. Jesus creates the space for Peter to say “Yes, Jesus, I love you”—in effect, to undo the undo-able—once for each time he had denied Jesus. And Jesus doesn’t just leave Peter’s “I love you”s to fall flat like against a concrete wall with a cold “I know” or “Thank you” or “Message received” (all three of which are probably worse for the hearer than even just plain silence when you say "I love you" to someone). Jesus makes a renewed relationship with Peter in the invitation, the calling, “Follow me.” (Those, by the way, are the last words Jesus says to Peter in John's Gospel--and yet, of course, they are hardly words of ending and finality, but the hope of a new adventure just beginning.)

In a way, that is our hope, too. This story tells us that the relationships we think we have permanently ruined this side of glory may be seen in a different light and may well be repairable—not by our striving, but because of the grace which resurrection makes possible. Jesus has wedged his foot in the door to make possible the restored relationships we had given up hope on. Estrangement doesn’t get to be the last word. The living Jesus starts over with us, even when we are sure it's too late, so that the last word can become the first word all over again: "Follow me."

Lord Jesus, let us hear you renewing our relationship with you as you call us back from our dead-ends.