— A Sermon by Robert W. Prim —
~~~ 4th Sunday of Easter ~~~
John 21:15-19
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DO YOU LOVE ME?
After breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?
“Yes, Master, you know I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”
He then asked a second time,
“Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
“Yes, Master, you know I love you.”
Jesus said, “Shepherd my sheep.”
Then he said it a third time:
“Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was upset that he asked for the third time, “Do you love me?” so he answered, “Master, you know everything there is to know. You’ve got to know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. I’m telling you the very truth now: When you were young you dressed yourself and went wherever you wished, but when you get old you’ll have to stretch out your hands while someone else dresses you and takes you where you don’t want to go.” He said this to hint at the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. And then he commanded, “Follow me.”
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When Fred Snodgrass died in 1974 at the age of 86, he was a retired and successful banker, popular city councilman, mayor of his hometown of Oxnard, California. Before moving back to his home state of California, Snodgrass was a professional baseball player for the New York Giants during their three consecutive World Series from 1911 to 1913. During his career in baseball he was, one year, second in “on base percentage” and for two years he finished third in “stolen bases” for the year.
But, in the 1912 World Series, Fred Snodgrass dropped a routine fly ball in the outfield and the error cost the Giants the game and the series. That error has become one of the most famous in baseball. The error even has a name: Snodgrass’s Muff. At his death sixty-two years after dropping the fly ball, the New York Times obituary headline identified him this way:
Ball player muffed 1912 fly.
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Society
can do this to us.
The families in which we live
can do this to us.
The communities in which we build our lives
can do this to us.
Sadly, especially for me as a pastor, the church
can do this to us.
We can do it to ourselves.
We can let ourselves be defined by our worst mistakes –
or, at least, our most public mistakes
be those mistakes of consequence or not.
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God, however,
will not do that to us!
Jesus
will not do that to us!
The Church, as its best Self,
will not do that to us!
~~~~~~~~
This story in John 21 is a beautiful story of restoration after failure. Peter was given another chance, a new life. For Peter the old life was gone, a new life had begun. Lives following the risen Lord are based on grace, forgiveness, second, third … chances. God can restore and use each one of us to bring good news to a dying world, especially those of us who know God’s grace in our lives after failure.
So it was with Peter. Peter’s wounded heart was stitched back together with grace, mercy, and forgiveness and it was with the patchwork heart of Peter (and Mary Magdalene, and Thomas and the others) – it was these patched up hearts that Jesus used to begin the building up of the community of faith.
This story of Peter’s restoration demonstrates to those of us in the Church and, I think, each of us in our communal and individual lives, if we have come to know the power of forgiveness – we are stewards of human broken-ness. Remember how Jesus when he appeared to the disciples the first time, when Thomas was not there, Jesus said to Peter and the rest –
If you forgive someone’s sins,
they’re gone for good.
If you don’t forgive sins,
what are you going to do with them?
Jesus was calling those early disciples and all of us who would come after to be agents of forgiveness and grace and peace. People will fail and fall away, as all of the disciples did, but Jesus’ word to them and to us is a word of peace.
This story echoes the same message as that story of the locked room and the guilty disciples and Jesus speaking peace to Thomas and the others. Jesus, in this additional story, came to the one who had denied him three times and offered Peter a chance to live beyond his failures. Had Jesus met Peter with condemnation and retribution, then Peter would have been forever defined by his worst moments, – Peter’s Muffs.
Had Jesus met Peter with condemnation and retribution then the Church of Jesus Christ would have been built on the rocks of judgement rather than upon the foundation of God’s grace.
When Jesus came to Peter with an invitation to express his love for him, Jesus was re-imagining Peter’s life from that moment. Peter’s future did not have to be dominated by the ways in which he failed Jesus; rather, Jesus was inviting Peter to live into a new life of doxology. Jesus, like a choir director of prison inmates, led Peter to sing his way into freedom –
Yes, Lord, you know I love you!
Yes, Lord, you know I love you!
Master, you know everything,
you know that I love you!
(Tune: OLD HUNDREDTH)
Peter’s life went from sorrow to singing because he was given the chance to see into the heart of the divine love of God embodied in Jesus. Peter saw that God in Jesus Christ is a healer of broken-ness. He saw it and heard it and was then instructed to share it – to feed God’s lambs and shepherd the sheep into fields of grace. So it is with us.
Maybe you, too, will sing with Peter his Doxology…
Yes, Lord, you know I love you!
Yes, Lord, you know I love you!
Master, you know everything,
you know that I love you!
(Tune: OLD HUNDREDTH)
Amen.