P.S. I STILL LOVE YOU...AND YOU ARE STILL CALLED
Text: John 21:1-19

Today's text, John 21, is like an epilogue to the Gospel. The disciples have gone back to Galilee, back to fishing - - which was what most of them were doing with their lives before Jesus called them that first day by the seashore. We could entitle all Jesus' resurrection appearances: The Lord returns to bless and to call. This last episode in John I entitle: P.S. I Still Love You...And You Are Still Called.

I

They're back in Galilee, where it all began. Peter said, "I'm going fishing!" And the others joined him. They fished all night and caught nothing.

At daybreak Jesus appeared on the beach. The Greek says he "showed himself" to the disciples. When the anchoress mystic Julian of Norwich received revelations from Christ, she called them "Showings," "hearings" so vivid they were "seeings" too.

The disciples didn't recognize Jesus at first. "Lads," he called out, "caught anything?" "No," they yelled back.

"Cast your net on the right side," he called back, and their net was so full of fish they couldn't haul it into the boat.

The disciple "whom Jesus loved" - - a character in John's Gospel never named - - yelled out, "It's the Lord." Peter, ever impulsive Peter, couldn't wait for the boat. He jumped into the sea and thrashed his way to shore.

The text says that before he leaped overboard he put on his outer garment, which he had taken off while fishing. All he had on was his Spandex Speedo, and if he looked like most fishermen I've seen you don't want to see them in Spandex.

The disciples followed in the boat, dragging their net full of fish behind them. When they got to shore there was Jesus cooking breakfast - - bread and fish - - over a wood fire. Jesus said, "Bring me some of your fish." Peter jumped up and hauled the whole net full of fish to him! All he needed was a few.

The text says there were 153 fish and that they were large. Scholars through the years have endlessly explored the symbolic and numerological significance of the number 153. I don't have time even to begin. But maybe that's just how many there were! Sounds like a real fisherman's story to me: They counted every one and bragged about their size: 153 bigguns! Just because it means something doesn't mean it didn't happen!

Jesus cooked breakfast for them. Then, as the text says: "He took bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish." It sounds almost eucharistic, doesn't it? The Last Supper was not the last. It would go on and on forever.

Have you had those mornings when you awake and go out and everything seems so new and bright and clean? You seem so new and bright and clean. Like the world beginning all over again.

It must have felt something like that, that morning by the sea when Jesus appeared and called them all over again to follow him.

II

Then Jesus turned to Peter, and it's as if they are the only two on the shore. "Simon, son of John," he called him, Peter's birth name, the name Jesus called him by the first time they met by the seashore, before Jesus named him Peter. "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." Then Jesus, calling him all over again, said, "Feed my lambs." Feed, lead, teach, tend, take care of my new flock, Peter.

A second time. "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." "Tend my sheep."

Then a third time Jesus asked, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" At this third asking Peter was grieved, cut to the heart. "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you."

Why the three questions, and why was Peter cut to the heart? We remember the night of Jesus' arrest when around a charcoal fire Peter denied Jesus three times. "I do not know the man." "No, I'm not one of his." And swearing, "I do not know him."

Jesus is offering Peter the healing of memory, a way to re-remember the past so that it no longer has its hold over him.

So now with the smell of a charcoal fire in his nostrils he affirms three times his love of Christ.

Scientists say that smell is often the trigger to our deepest memories, even unconscious ones. When I visit the hospitals and smell the familiar hospital smells, I am taken back to what I almost never remember otherwise: Two eye-surgeries I had at ages 4 and 6.

A deacon in a former church was serving communion to an elderly member in a nursing home. The woman didn't seem to recognize the deacon nor understand anything the deacon was saying. But when Betty opened the container with the Welch's grape juice, and the woman caught the aroma, her eyes lit up and she said, "Oh, it's the Lord's Supper!"

The smell of wood fire and the memory of his denials would have forever haunted Peter. Now around another fire he is offered the redemption of his memory, three declarations of love replacing the denials.

So can the memories that haunt us be cleansed and healed, memories of past mistakes and failures, of hurt so deep we think we will never be whole again. Jesus offers in the grace of God a transformed memory, a new way of remembering that frees us from the hurts of the past that have bound us.

III

But the threefold question may have had yet another message: Jesus testing Peter to see how serious he was in his determination to follow Jesus.

At our meeting with Temple Beth El recently we discussed Jewish and Christian meanings of "conversion." There was one startling contrast to me. In the Jewish tradition a person seeking conversion, seeking to become a Jew, must ask a rabbi three times: I wish to become a Jew. The rabbi is to turn them down the first two times, then say yes the third. It is a way of saying: It is a serious and difficult thing to become a Jew. Are you ready for such a challenge?

It seems quite different from what most churches do, going out trying to convert as many as possible, saying how easy it is to become a Christian and join the church. But it's not, is it? It's not easy to become a serious follower of Jesus in this world.

That Jesus was testing Peter's seriousness is underlined by his next words to Peter:

It is a poignant description of old age, which is where most of us are headed, ready or not, a time of increased dependence and decreased mobility.

It is also, John tells us, a description of how Peter's own life would end: Stretching out his hands, being bound and shackled, led to prison and to his death on a cross in Rome.

But there is also in these words the most profound statement of the path of Christian discipleship and Christian leadership in the midst of all that life brings.

There are times when we are strong and there are times when we are weak. There are times we act and there are times we are acted upon. There are times we lead and there are times we are led.

When you're young you think leadership is all about strength and acting and controlling outcomes. When you're older and wiser you discover leadership is about weakness too, and being acted upon and being led. And that there's very little in life we really have control over.

Can we lead in our weakness too? Not just in our strength? I hope so, for we have a generous amount of both.

Some of you this day need most of all to get in touch with your strength in order for you to be and do what God has made you and set you here to be and to do. It's been denied too long, quashed too long. Touch your strength! Others of you need to get in touch with your weakness. This is your next step to wholeness and authentic leadership.

Church of the Savior founder Gordon Cosby has said that every pastor search committee needs to ask its candidate: Are you weak enough to be our pastor? The question should be asked of every deacon and every follower of Jesus: Are you weak enough to be a deacon, a follower of Christ? Can you befriend your weakness? Knowing your weakness, can you trust in God for what you most need?

Sometimes we act, and other times we are acted upon, by life, by others. Illness strikes. We are left by the one we love. We are deeply hurt by a friend, by an institution. We lose our job. Catastrophe strikes. Your family suddenly needs you in ways you never anticipated. Your life is different now. Or this: You take a public stand, take a risk for Christ and suddenly you get acted upon. You are criticized, made fun of, ostracized. You stretch out your hands and are taken when you do not wish to go.

Can you be a follower of Jesus in such a time? Can you lead in your weakness as well as your strength? What I want to say to these deacons today, and to you all who seek to follow Jesus: God can use your strength, but God can use your weakness too.

The Apostle Paul battled with what he called his "thorn in the flesh." We do not know what it was, but it was a public and humiliating weakness that hobbled him and threatened his ministry. His opponents used it to discredit him.

We know that he fervently prayed for the thorn to be removed. And that God did not answer this request. What Paul was given by God was this word and this grace:

My grace is sufficient for you [said the Voice from heaven],
for my strength is made perfect in weakness.
II Corinthians 12:9

I think this is what Jesus was saying to Peter that bright shining day at the seashore: You will be strong and you will be weak. You will act and you will be acted upon. You will lead and you will be led. In it all, in it all, "Follow Me."