Most little children have a favourite, well-worn, soft toy, or perhaps just a strip of cot blanket or some other soft fabric, which they can snuggle up to when they need comfort and reassurance. One of ours even needed to take a very small square of fabric to school with her, hidden at the bottom of her purse, just in case. In the end we learn to cope without such very physical props, but even as grown-ups, when our life has been turned upside down, we may still feel the need to take refuge in the pages of a familiar book, or perhaps to tramp a familiar path. We need the comforting reassurance of familiar things as we struggle to come to terms with changed circumstances. So we can understand how the disciples must have felt. They had seen the empty tomb. Jesus had appeared among them more than once. They had talked to him, even touched him. They knew that he had passed through death into a new risen life, but there was still an aching void in their company where Jesus should have been. So after a bit they went back to Galilee, and got the boats out. After all, they were men. They couldn’t just sit about doing nothing.
We all know what happened next, as the dawn light strengthened, and they came closer to shore. The stranger building a fire of drift wood on the shore and offering to share his breakfast with them was not a stranger after all, but Jesus himself. John was the first to recognise him, but it was Peter who plunged into the sea and raced up the beach to be the first to greet him. We know that Jesus had already appeared to Peter, not just in the company of all the disciples, but privately, one to one, presumably to give him the special reassurance that he needed after his courage had so spectacularly deserted him on the night of the trial. Now as he ran towards Jesus, there was already a joyful recognition that he had been forgiven. So no wonder he was upset when after breakfast – Jesus’ question about his love, with its insistent triple repetition, touched the same sore spot again. But Jesus touches us not to hurt but to heal, and in Peter’s case the healing which had begun in private needed to be completed more publicly in the presence of the other disciples. Feed my sheep. It was Jesus who had been the good shepherd, the acknowledged leader of the little group. Peter had shown clear leadership potential from the first, but there might now have been some doubt about whether he could be relied on in a crisis, so it was important that he and the others should know not only that his moment of failure was forgiven, but also that his natural leadership was confirmed. Do you love me? Feed my sheep.
There are three aspects of this model, based on Peter’s experience, which are relevant to any task we may be called to perform as followers of Jesus. First, we should note that the primary qualification for any responsibility is not our aptitude for management or even our leadership potential, but our love. Second, we should note that it is when Peter most fully acknowledges and accepts his own weakness that he is given his fullest commission. Third, we should note that leadership is not about power and authority, but about service.
Usually, when an appointment is to be made, the candidate is asked for an oath of allegiance. Loyalty is required as a condition for the exercise of authority in public life. But that is not enough in God’s kingdom. We are not bound to our Lord by an oath of loyalty, but by the bond of love. It is love and love alone that makes us obedient to his call, just as it was Jesus’ love for His Father that made him obedient to His Father’s will. Peter’s service is to take the form of leadership, but he is qualified to serve, and so to lead, only because first and foremost he loves his Lord. Do you love me? That is the question we all have to answer before we can be commissioned in his service.
But the questions put to Peter, and the way he responds to them, reveal more than his love and his readiness to serve. Jesus begins by asking Peter whether he loves him more than these, more than any of the other disciples. Poor Peter. Not so long ago he had confidently boasted that even if all the others deserted Jesus, he would stand by him (Mark 14.29). Now, as he replies, the temptation to measure himself against others has fallen away. With the humility that was missing in the Upper Room, he speaks only for himself as he says: Lord, you know that I love you. So now Jesus puts the same question even more directly: Simon, son of John, do you love me? And Peter replies, more quietly, perhaps a little crestfallen, but in the same words as before: Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. It must have got very quiet indeed when Jesus put the question a third time. The implication, the memory, was all too apparent and almost too painful to bear. The old, impetuous, volatile Simon might have blown his top, angrily protesting his devotion. Now he is shaken and hurt, but his pride and his anger are held in check by the love which he sees in Jesus’ eyes and hears in Jesus’ voice. So it is not Simon, but Peter, Peter the Rock, humbled as he tacitly acknowledges and accepts his own weakness, fully aware that his heart and soul lie open to Jesus’ penetrating gaze, but confident in Jesus’ love, who makes the final and most moving declaration: Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you. And now Jesus can give him the full commission to feed his sheep. Peter is an object lesson in how God’s strength is made perfect in weakness. Peter’s weakness was the weakness of a strong man. He thought he could rely on his own strength. It is only when we accept that we can do nothing for him in our own strength whatever that strength may be – that we can become effective channels for the grace and power which flows from His love dwelling in us.
So first there must be love, then we must learn to rely not on our own strength but on his, and then finally there is the call to service. Peter is commanded to feed my sheep’, and although this was interpreted from the first as sanctioning Peter’s leading role among the apostles and in the Church, his call was essentially a call to service. Leadership is just one of the ways in which we may be called to serve. Before the crucifixion when Peter had boasted that he would follow Jesus anywhere, even to the point of laying down his life for him (John 13.37), Jesus knew that he was not ready to do that. Now his discipleship, his readiness to follow Jesus, is rooted in a deeper, steadier love which will pay any price. And Jesus warns him that in his old age he too will die with his hands stretched out on a cross. Thank God, none of us is likely to be asked to pay such a price to-day. But if we love him, we too will be called to serve him, and we cannot tell where the service of our love may lead. Nor is it any of our business to ask how anyone else may be called to serve, or what price they may be asked to pay. All we can know is our own path, and all we need to know is that his love will go with us all the way.
Like Peter and the other disciples, we know that Jesus is risen. He may come to meet us anywhere, but we particularly open our hearts to him as we come to eat and drink at his table.
Moreover, as our second reading reminded us, we believe that one day, in the life of the world to come, we shall encounter him in glory as we join with saints and angels in heaven to worship around his Father’s throne. We may not encounter him as intimately as Peter by Lake Galilee, or as dramatically as Paul on the road to Damascus. But the Lord who met Peter and Paul is the same Lord who comes to us in the Holy Spirit. He meets us where we are, with comfort or challenge, with encouragement or restraint, and still he asks each one of us: Do you love me? Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you.