Three things

Today’s Gospel lesson is familiar to many. It goes by various names but the crux of the matter is Jesus asking Peter three times, “do you love me more than these?” (John 21:15ff NRSV) The mirroring of Peter’s denial of knowing let alone loving Jesus the night before the crucifixion is unmistakable and unmissable. But as one of my homiletics professors used to ask, “So what?”

So what if Jesus and Peter cleared up the difficulty between them, to minimize it to the unimportance many place on this text? So what if they made up? So what? The answer to the “so what?” is what Jesus says to Peter when Peter assures Jesus he loves him. Jesus tell Peter to feed and to tend Jesus’ lambs and sheep. We can lose the impact of this if we zip over it as a story we have heard before. Peter betrays Jesus, Jesus restores Peter. Sure, that’s what Jesus does. That what we know from our 2000 year remove . . . what did Peter know?

We don’t know what Peter felt before this exchange with Jesus although we can reasonably guess he felt terrible but we know that after this Peter truly became the “rock” upon which Jesus promised to “build my church.” Take a moment or two to ponder this story and if you have the emotional capacity, put yourself in Peter’s place and see how it affects you.

My apologies for some of the sound at the beginning of the recording. It is due to some unfortunate movements on the pulpit . . . by me.

“Three things” St. Mark’s Presbyterian (to download, right-click and select “Save Link As . . .”)

Blessings,