I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's on Sunday, May 6 as part of our ongoing exploration of the Gospel of John. The text is John 21:15-19, Jesus asking Peter if he loves him. You can read the text by clicking here.
We often read excepts here at St. Lydia’s, from the Four Quartets,
a set of poems written toward the end of T. S. Eliot’s career.
At the opening of the last section of the last poem, Eliot writes,
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
We are reaching the end of our months-long story of the gospel of John.
and, in a way that I’m sure Eliot was aware of,
the writer of the Gospel of John has begun to point us back toward the beginning.
In my imagination, Jesus and Peter have this conversation off on their own,
perhaps walking along the shore as they speak,
and as they walk,
we are reminded of another moment by the sea,
when Jesus said to Peter,
Follow me.
It doesn’t appear in this Gospel, but it does in Matthew and Luke –
traditions that the writer of the Gospel of John certainly would have been aware of –
and it happens right at the beginning.
The first thing Jesus does when he returns from the wilderness
is to call these disciples, fishermen by the sea,
to follow him.
And so here we are,
at the end of the Gospel of John ,
by the sea with our nets,
with Jesus saying to us,
Follow me.
Except this time,
instead of the beginning,
it’s the end.
And this time,
perhaps we know a little bit more of what it might mean to follow.
*
Every once in a while,
when life is seeming really great,
I catch myself doing this thing –
it’s almost pre-conscious –
of thinking,
Wow, I’ve almost got it!
It’s almost perfect!
As if life is a puzzle,
and if I just find all the right pieces,
and get them all in the right places,
everything will be…
complete.
Or finished.
Or better.
Or right.
Perhaps I’m not alone in this sentiment.
Last Christmas I went to with a friend
to see The Muppets with Jason Segel and Amy Adams,
and despite being genuinely delighted by the spirit of earnest campiness the film achieved,
I couldn't help being unnerved by the lyrics of the opening song,
"I've Got Everything That I Need:"
Everything is great, everything is grand,
I’ve got the whole wide world in the palm of my hand!
Everything is perfect, it’s falling into place,
I can’t seem to wipe this smile off my face.
I’ll pause here to just let you know that I’m refraining, in this moment, from a whole lot of commentary that I could very easily offer comparing these lyrics to those featured in earlier Muppet movies, such as “The Rainbow Connection,” and how the earlier lyrics have a certain ambiguity and complexity that are simply not present in the latter...but I digress.
The point is that our nation is being fed and consuming the notion
that “everything is perfect and falling into place,”
or that everything could be perfect,
or could fall into place.
I don’t know about you,
but I’ve spent some time in my life
waiting for things to fall into place.
And I’ve found that when I start waiting,
I tend to wait for a really long time.
*
Perhaps there is some part of Peter
that thinks that the abundance of fish that he and his friends have caught by the beach,
the warmth of the fire,
and food in his belly
erases the confusion, chaos and tragedy
of all that has transpired in the last days and weeks.
Perhaps he believes that Jesus is back,
and that now everything is perfect,
everything is fine,
everything has fallen into place.
Perhaps he thinks,
as he sits by the fire and warms himself,
that those three things he said
just before the cock crowed,
in the confusion of the night
when Jesus was taken away
and no one knew what was going on...
perhaps he thinks that he can forget about that.
Or if not forget about it,
that maybe it didn’t matter that much after all.
Because everything is fine now.
Right?
But then he and Jesus are walking alone together by the sea,
and Jesus wants to remember.
And for every time Peter denied him,
Jesus needs to hear him say:
Yes Lord, I love you. You know that I love you.
Even if it’s a conversation that hurts to have.
It’s the end of the story.
But there is no real sign of happily ever after.
If anything,
as the Four Quartets reminds us,
the end has brought us right back to the beginning,
to a decision that we thought we had already made:
To follow.
But now we’ve seen the end,
and we know a little more of what it means to follow Jesus.
And it’s not about things being perfect
or things being great
or things falling into place.
After the resurrection,
it turns out,
love and death still sit at the same table,
held together by Jesus.
For next to the fish, the broken bread,
the warmth of the fire and those who are gathered around it,
is this question
which marks the end of one journey
and the beginning of the next one:
Do you love me?
Do you love me?
Do you love me?
For a time is coming when you be taken where you do not wish to go.
We know now what it means to follow Jesus.
Because we know now where Jesus has gone.
But we also know that Jesus has chosen Peter
to follow him there.
The disciple who not only seems to never get it right,
but downright failed
when things got rough.
He did not get this job
because he had the best resume
or a flawless track record.
In fact, his track record is looking pretty scuffed up right about now.
In as much as each of us is reflected in every character in this gospel,
each of us is beautifully reflected in Peter.
Just like Peter,
each of us has not been called because we deserve it,
or because we earned it,
but simply because God loves us.
And that’s all there is to it.
Do you love me?
Jesus asks,
Are you sure?
Follow me.
It won’t be perfect, and it won’t be fine.
It will be what it will be.
And God will be there,
in the midst of all of it.
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