Sermon 7th May 2017

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Simon Brindley, preaches. The reading is from John 21:15-19.

Risen Jesus and Peter

So there they all are, just a few days after the resurrection, maybe a week or two at most, all the anger, all the betrayal, all the denial in the past, all the brutal violence over, just Jesus and seven of his disciples on the quiet shore of the Sea of Tiberias, the freshwater lake also known as Galilee. The men go fishing in the early morning, as they always used to do before all this started, then Jesus makes them breakfast on a charcoal fire on the beach, fresh bread and fried fish from the enormous catch, you can almost smell it and taste it, can’t you? I wonder if he had herbs or salt to put on the fish and did they drink wine or water with it?

And then, after they have eaten, Jesus says to Peter:

Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these others do?

Simon, son of John, do you love me?

Simon, son of John, do you love me?

What question could possibly be more personal from the risen Jesus to his chosen disciple, but the one who had denied him when his own life was in danger? Try putting your own name in there and just see if you can see what it feels like. Why not do it now, in your heart, in a moment of silence? Just imagine Jesus speaking to you and saying, whatever it is in your case,

“Paul, son of James, do you love me?”

“Jane, daughter of Joan, do you love me more than these others here in this church this morning?”

Just put you own name in there and then put either your father or mother’s name, or maybe a grandparent’s or carer’s name if that works better for you, whichever you prefer, and imagine being on that quiet beach in the still, cool, morning, breakfast light, and see…

Simon, son of Stuart, it would be for me, do you love me?

Maybe it’s a question that still seems to get under the skin, a question that remains, perhaps even for us too..

Last weekend was the annual Herne Hill Parish and friends Whoosh 5-day sponsored cycle ride, raising money for St Saviour’s School and to help settle Syrian refugees in Lambeth. We had a great time, hugging the coast for most of the way, first round east and north Kent, then across the Thames to Tilbury and all the way round Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk.

Cycling near Colchester in Essex I remembered, as I mentioned to one or two people on the ride, being on the coast just south of there in that incredibly hot summer of 1976, so over 40 years ago. It was my gap year between school and university and I was working for a charity for 4 months, teaching young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to sail. We took three sailing dinghies from our base near Birmingham in the West Midlands, all the way down to the Essex coast near Brightlingsea and we lived for a week in an old Martello tower. All went well until one day the wind came up, the sea got very rough very quickly and I capsized a mile or two out at sea with two others in a little wooden sailing dinghy, and had to be rescued, in the end, by a fishing boat. For any sailors among you, the buoyancy tanks in the dinghy had long perished and we could not get enough water out, to allow us to attempt to sail back to shore, before the waves washed it in again. It could have been very serious if the fishermen and a passing yacht hadn’t seen us.

The man who ran the charity, however, seemed more angry that the fishermen could have charged us the full cost of the dinghy for the rescue (it was a sum that might have bankrupted that little charity), than he did about the risk to 3 young people. He wasn’t perfect, this man, far far from it. But the thing I really have never forgotten about him in over 40 years was that he did take his faith very seriously and he lived out probably as much as just about anyone I can think of, at least of those I have met, Jesus’ commandment to “take care of my sheep”. He was a non-conformist priest, what was called a Congregationalist minister, in a church in a poor part of Birmingham. He seemed to know everyone on the streets and canals of inner-city, rundown Birmingham in the mid 1970’s: he knew the down and outs, he knew some of the prostitutes, he knew the people living roughly on the canal boats; he knew the teenagers on probation; he knew the women effectively running a domestic violence shelter in their own front room with pretty much nothing but a sofa and a kettle and compassion for what had caused the bruises on the faces of those who came in; he knew the recently arrived Sikh families working hard to both maintain their own culture and at the same time to integrate. One way or another he introduced us, the young charity volunteers, to all of them and I have to say it left a big impression on a 19 year old. He introduced us to a young guy with children living in very modest circumstances, I seem to recall he lived on the canals, someone who I think must have been in prison. “That’s Billy”, he said. “If I ever get any money he gets half. If he ever gets anything he gives half to me.” He’d give his own bed away if he thought an old lady needed it more than him and I am pretty sure he actually did that while I was there.  We never quite knew what his wife and three sons thought about it but they all seemed pretty much OK. I spent a couple of weeks that summer sleeping in their spare bedroom, which was an old caravan at the bottom of their rough little garden off the Coventry Road.

Simon, son of John, do you love me?

Yes Lord, you know that I love you.

Then feed my sheep, comes the reply. Show me, go on …and I have just told you how to show me that you love me…. Feed my sheep.

Why sheep we might just wonder for a moment?

A Moslem friend set me two books, a few weeks ago, by the author Graham Greene, as a gift to go on holiday with. “He’s one of the few writers who can help me understand the meaning of sin and suffering”, my friend said.  One was a wonderful little book called Monsignor Quixote, loosely based on the famous Don Quixote and Sancho Panza story but this time Quixote is an honest, straightforward, elderly Catholic priest and his companion and best friend is a Communist, atheist, former mayor of the town they have both lived in for decades. And they go wandering around Spain in the priest’s ancient car getting chased at times by the police and the church authorities for one reason or another and talking, as life-long friends, about each other’s views and beliefs. 

At one point the way ahead is completely blocked by a large herd of sheep. “Sheep are stupid beasts”, the Mayor exclaims with venom. “I have never understood why the founder of your faith should have compared them with ourselves. “Feed my sheep”. Perhaps like other good men he was a cynic. Feed them well, make them fat, so that they can be eaten in their turn.  But if we are sheep why in heaven’s name should we trust our shepherd? He is going to guard us from wolves alright, oh yes, but only so he can sell us later to the butcher!” “And why prefer sheep to goats?” the Mayor goes on. I would rather eat a young goat than a lamb and anyway goat’s cheese is better than sheep’s and you can use its skin and not just the wool. And so on. It’s a humorous, gentle challenge between friends.

In the book the honest, straightforward priest is a bit baffled and can’t quite work out why it is sheep not goats. He thinks that none of the theology books he read for his studies decades before, and only occasionally since, seemed to address the question and eventually the two men drive on when the flock finally moves and they find a restaurant where they eat pork instead.

I suspect the author Graham Greene, a practising Christian, wants his readers to ask themselves the question, why did Jesus call us sheep?

I suppose Jesus could have talked of himself as the shepherd of the goats and told Peter to feed my goats, but what I suspect he was describing was not what might happen when the sheep need to go to market, but what the relationship is while they are still alive. I suspect he wanted to assure us all of his great love and care for us as our shepherd; I suspect he wanted to assure us that he is there to show us which way to go; I suspect he wanted to impress on us that it is right for us to rely on Him; and I also suspect that he wanted to put out there for thousands of years to come, the fact that we all have this tendency to wander away. Those reasons will do for me at least. You may have your own thoughts on that one.

Peter, son of John, do you love me?

Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you.

Feed my sheep.

So, now, what is Jesus doing when he asks these questions of Peter and then gives him that apparently simple command? Well it must at least be the case, mustn’t it, that he is taking this man who in his human weakness was prepared to deny he even knew his Lord when the servant girl at the fire in the courtyard of the High Priest thought she recognized him, it must be the case mustn’t it that he is moving Peter forwards from that, putting it way behind him, dealing with it and helping and showing him how to move on. Three times Peter denied him and three times Jesus asks him this question and offers him this command. It’s OK, even that kind of weakness can be forgiven and you can be both trusted and commissioned. It is OK.

Well, in one of those coincidences that just seem to happen from time to time, just as I was wondering what else I might say about this passage, this morning, with not a lot of time between the end of the Whoosh bike ride last thing Tuesday night and this Sunday morning what with work and then safeguarding training all yesterday morning at St Faith’s with other members of the parish, I came, just over a week ago, in a book of daily Bible readings and commentary I have been using on and off for a while, that takes fairly random Bible passages each day to illustrate its points, to three days of commentary on this passage, on John chapter 21, verse 17.

The book of readings is an old one and contains commentary by a man called Oswald Chambers written almost exactly 100 years ago, but it is very good. And the points that Chambers makes about these questions, answers and commands to Peter from Jesus are roughly these, if I understand him correctly:

-       firstly he seems to be saying that what Jesus wants to do is get right to the depths of Peter, right to where it is actually going to hurt him. The word of God he says, hurts not only like sin and wrongdoing hurt us, what he calls hurting us in the natural way, but the word or words of God hurt us also in a profound and personal way.  They get right into your heart, where there is nowhere to hide. Simon, son of John, do you love me?

-       And the answer that is required does not allow Peter to get off the hook himself. There is no real wriggle room. He is not able to make some proclamation like he may have done before, like saying, “You are the Messiah, the chosen one of God!”, or “I will never deny you. Even though all others leave you I will never desert you!”… He is not given the room to make grand statements, however heartfelt, however passionate, because he is asked the most direct and personal question of all. “Do you love me?....”

-       But what Peter is then brought to realize, says Chambers, is this.  He begins to realize how much he does love the Lord. The Lord’s questions, says Chambers, always reveal me to myself. The Lord never asks questions until the right time. But rarely, he says, and probably at least once, he will get us into a corner, where he will hurt us with his undeviating questions, and we will realize that we do love Him more than any proclamation about this or that article of faith or element of doctrine can ever show;

-        And then comes the point. Spend out that love. Don’t just talk about it.

-       And then Chambers finishes by saying that the commandment, the commission, is to feed all of the sheep. Feed the bedraggled sheep, feed the awkward sheep, feed the noisy, feed those that go round butting others, feed those that wander off at the least distraction. Don’t feed just those you might naturally warm to, those where your natural human sympathies lie. Don’t just feed those you find it easy to like.

Simon, son of John, do you love me?

Yes Lord, you know that I love you.

Then feed my sheep.

Jesus goes on to tell Peter how he must die.  Tradition says that Peter too had to face crucifixion some time later, probably in Rome.

I remember hearing about 15 years after that long hot summer of 1976, I was sitting at my desk in about 1991, perhaps I had a phone call, I can’t quite recall how I found it out, that that Congregationalist minister from Birmingham who had impressed me as a 19 year old died in a car crash in his early 60’s, so relatively young, not far from his home in Birmingham. I guess there are no guarantees.

I am not saying this morning that those who take most seriously Jesus’ commands will die young or in a difficult way. Nor am I advocating that we must all be prepared to give away our beds to old ladies if they need them. But I think what God might actually be saying to each one of us today, and will go on asking us is this,

Whatever your name is, whatever the name of your father or mother or grandparent or carer you might put in there, do you love me?

And if you do, then please help to feed my sheep, the ones I care for, that is how I want you to show your love for me. Spend out the love you have for me.

And can there be a better question to our dear Cameron and Jocelyn as they leave us shortly and think about their new work and new promises and new obligations and as they look for God’s assurances about the way forward for them?

Cameron and Jocelyn,  son and daughter of…do you love me?

Lord you know everything. You know that we love you..

Amen