Do You Love Me?

 John 21:1-19

If I were to take a straw poll of the congregation here today as to which character from Jesus’s ministry you feel the most affection for, I’d hazard a guess to say that the person that would come out on top would be Simon Peter.

Simon Peter is there at the beginning and he’s there at the end. He is a gloriously complex, impulsive and thoroughly flawed human, that I think each of us will end up being a little bit like Simon Peter at some point in our lives. 

Simon Peter’s journey from full time fisherman to being ‘the rock on which the church is built’ is an incredible story and I wish we had a whole sermon series to look at this wonderful man.

But we don’t, we have today.

And whilst many of the things I say may already be familiar to you, let’s revisit this wonderful tale like an old bedtime story, as we look at three simple phrases from today’s reading.

It starts off like this…..

Simon Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, The Sons of Zebedee (James & John) and two other unnamed disciples were sitting around, kicking their heels, wondering what to do next.

So Simon Peter has a bright idea. “I tell you what lads, I’m going fishing!”

On the face of it there’s nothing very remarkable about this. After all, Peter was a fisherman by trade. Perhaps it’s no surprise that he’d want to get back out on the lake.

But the problem is that I’m not sure Peter was doing this for recreational purposes. I’m not sure that he was doing it to pass the time or to relax on his sabbath. I think, by going fishing that day, he was going back to the way things were before. In saying “I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter was actually saying,

“I’m not doing this any more. I’m done with the whole ministry thing. It’s all a bit much for me.”

By getting in that boat Peter was turning his back on the life that Jesus had called him to. He was shunning a life of full time ministry, in order to keep his head down, live with his guilt and do something he was good at for once.

I have to tell you, I can’t really blame Simon Peter for thinking like this. Being able to do something for a living that you are good at is a joy and a relief. Learning things is hard. Being a student is even harder still. I’m fairly sure that one of the reasons I love doing school assemblies and Forest Church so much is because it’s familiar for me. It was my trade, it was what I did for many years before all of this!

Give me 500 little faces in a school hall I can cope without much fuss at all, but if you were to ask me to sing the Eucharistic prayer and I’d start to go all ‘wobbly’!

We’ve all got stuff we’re good at, and we can all use those God given talents to glorify….well, God! But also, in my experience, God will ask us to do stuff we’re rubbish at. Not because He’s mean or likes to make us feel silly, but because to serve God is to give all of ourselves over to Him. The good and the bad, the talented and the incapable. We can give it all to God and He can do marvellous things with our meagre offerings.

So anyway, the disciples are out on the boat and they have an absolute stinker of a fishing session. If Simon Peter was thinking about resuming his former career, he might have had second thoughts after this one.

But then comes a voice. A distant and unfamiliar voice who says something like….

"Oi!!!!!!!!"

The bible translates it as ‘“Friends, haven’t you any fish?” but that doesn’t seem likely to me.

"Oi!!!!!" seems much more appropriate!

‘Where are all your fish?’ the mysterious man asks.

The disciples share their woes, probably coming up with a variety of excuses no doubt.

“Have you tried the other side of the boat?” the mystery man asks.

If we were re-enacting this seen for real I can imagine that John might have left a few words out here. I’m not sure how you swear in Aramaic but I can’t imagine a group of tired and burly fishermen would have taken kindly to a stranger telling them how to catch fish.

But…..

What did they do next?

“Jesus said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.”

The disciples listened. They took notice. They humbled themselves and their egos and their pride and thought, “alright then, we’ll give it a go.”

We know what happened next. But I don’t think we can overstate the importance of the willingness of someone to try something new.

One of the unexpected joys of arriving here in the middle of a pandemic was that I got to see the ‘fighting spirit of St …….’ fairly early on. When we were forced to move our worship online, we had people in their 70’s, 80’s and even in their 90’s who thought to themselves “alright then, we’ll give it a go.”

Yes it was a bit uncomfortable. Yes we all felt silly (least of all those of us leading the services. I’d never even been on zoom until a month before I arrived here!) But you did it, and you’d do it again if we had to.

Trying something new and having a go is something we can all learn a lot from Simon Peter. A man way out of his depth, who gives it a go.

Speaking of being out of his depth,

Simon Peter, so overjoyed at the catch of fish and the recognition of His Lord as the one who was on the beach, leaves the other disciples to contend with the nets and swims ashore to greet His risen Saviour.

And then we get to the good bit don’t we.

“Simon son of John, do you love me?”

“Simon son of John, do you love me?”

“Simon son of John, do you love me?”

Scholars have read so much into this short passage that it’s sometimes hard to recognise what’s going on. We can argue about the Greek words for love or whether there’s any distinction between ‘feeding my lambs’ and ‘feeding my sheep’, but there’s a point to made here that can not, should not and will not get lost in the world of biblical grammar.

Do you remember the last time Simon Peter was asked three some questions in John’s Gospel? Let’s me refresh your memory...

“Simon Peter and another disciple were following Jesus. Because this disciple was known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the high priest’s courtyard. It was cold, and the servants and officials stood around a fire they had made to keep warm. Peter also was standing with them, warming himself.

A servant girl on duty there brought Peter in and asked him:

“You aren’t one of this man’s disciples too, are you?”

Peter replied, “I am not.”

He continued to warm himself by the fire. So they asked him, “You aren’t one of his disciples too, are you?”

He denied it, saying, “I am not.”

One of the high priest’s servants, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, challenged him, “Didn’t I see you with him in the garden?” Again Peter denied it, and at that moment a rooster began to crow.

The last time Simon Peter was asked three question in the John’s Gospel, it was to deny that he even knew who Jesus was.

And now, after all that has been and all that is to come, Jesus looks him in the eye and says….

“Simon son of John, do you love me?”

We can, at times, throw around the forgiveness of God as if it was something ordinary. We can get lost in its generosity as if it isn’t terribly valuable.

But there is nothing cheap about being forgiven by the man that you denied even knowing. The person that you love dearly. The person that died in order to give you life.

When you think of the very worst thing you’ve ever done in your life, imagine yourself on that beach, with the sound of the waves and the smell of the fish cooking on the fire….and then imagine The Lord looking at you and saying ‘My dear friend…..do you love me’.

If Simon Peter can come back from the worst mistake he’d ever made, and end up becoming the rock on which the entire church, even our church here today had been built, then I think we can learn a thing or two from this wonderful, complex and loving human being.

Amen.