| Do you love me? |
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Do you love me?
Feed my lambs.
Do you love me?
Tend my sheep.
Do you love me?
Feed my sheep.
Jesus asks Peter not one, not two, but three times before he accepts his answer. We are reminded of course of Peter’s three denials of Christ not long before this… and yet in this instant, Jesus once again calls Peter into life with him… into life with Christ.
And in this simple exchange between Jesus and Peter, we can learn so much about our Christian walk… and I think we can also find a great deal of guidance to help us in the wake of events of this week.
I don’t know about you, but for me, it’s been a strange week as I’ve watched the news. The horrific events at Virginia Tech seem to dominate the news and the internet… and on Friday I finally sat down and watched what they are calling a “manifesto” submitted to NBC by the young man who committed the murders. Did any of you watch it?
I found it incredibly disturbing… but not just for the obvious initial shock value of his video… for me there was something heartbreaking in this young man’s video… something really hard to get my head around.
How did this happen? What was it in Cho Seung-Hui’s young life that led him to this place? In reading about it, it seems that people everywhere are trying to answer the difficult questions of “why”. Doctors and health professionals ask whether it because he had a clear history of mental health issues and inadequate treatment for them… do we chalk this up to some kind of mental illness? Theologians ask if this is about something deeper at play… perhaps evil- or even satan at work in this tragedy?
I don’t know the answers… but I was deeply struck by the questions… by our drive, our need, to make sense out of this- to contain it somehow with explanations that can help us to pin down exactly what happened here.
Brian Mclaren reminds us that in the midst of our questions, in the midst of our grief, there is value in our sorrow…
"This kind of sorrow doesn't make us bitter; it makes us better. It doesn't make us smug at having an explanation; it makes us humble as we understand our shared vulnerability. It doesn't make us put up walls of blame; it tears down walls as we feel our common humanity. … he challenges us to allow the spirit of God to form us into more gracious, compassionate, and wise people. Doing so will raise other questions:
How can I help? Who around me needs to talk? What question can I ask that will allow my neighbors to share their pain, their fear, their anger, their sorrow? How can we open ourselves to the healing presence of God so we can walk together through "the valley of the shadow of death" - so that, even in great sadness, we "fear no evil?" (Psalm 23)
Elizabeth Mcalister talks about this story between Jesus and Peter as an example of the gift of displacement…
"Part of that gift is the ability to look over my shoulder and understand that the moments of deepest pain have been those in which I was most alive, most in tune with the sufferings of others, and, by a strange paradox, most joyful. I emerge from the fear and sweat only with an act of faith, with gratitude for all God's gifts, with laughter, and with a renewed commitment to live in the present moment, the only time and place in which I can live or praise God."
As we share in the grief of the loved ones mourning the victims of this tragedy… and yes, as we share in the grief of the loved ones mourning the shooter as well, I think perhaps we are called to this kind of uncomfortable, and yes, painful, displacement.
I think that Peter and the other disciples were experiencing this firsthand. They’d just lost the person they loved most in the world… were in the depths of their own grief and despair at this senselessly violent act, and suddenly Jesus appeared to them in the locked room. I imagine they were still reeling from this revelation when he showed up at the beach. If it had been me… I wonder if I would’ve wanted to celebrate… have a party… enjoy the joy of this moment.
And yet, what did Jesus do? He asked Peter those three questions…
Do you love me?
Feed my lambs.
Do you love me?
Tend my sheep.
Do you love me?
Feed my sheep.
And then he told him to expect to be led where he didn’t want to go… even into death. So much for the welcome back party!
How must that have been for Peter and the others? They hadn’t even had time to process the fact that Jesus had died… now he’d risen… and now he was going to send them out there again! How did they even wrap their heads around that!?
There’s a line in here that kind of makes me laugh…
When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea.
Somehow that strikes me as kind of comical… sweet, bumbling Peter throws on his clothes and swims madly for shore to see Jesus, this one he loved.
And yet, I wonder if it’s too much of a stretch to read this sentence on two levels…
When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea.
Maybe that’s not so far from the symbolic truth as well. I wonder if Peter had just been cracked open by everything that had happened… if he was just so vulnerable at this point that he was spiritually naked as well… just wondering…
At any rate he swims to Jesus and they have this famous conversation. And Jesus’ instructions are not comfortable ones. He tells Peter to feed his lambs. To tend his sheep. To feed his sheep. And to be prepared to be led to places he may not want to go. And then, after all this, he caps it off by saying, “follow me”.
And Peter, for all his mistakes, for all the times he’s fallen short, does just that. In his nakedness, in his vulnerability, in his humanness, he follows Christ.
I wonder if Peter has something to teach us today… in his willingness to follow Christ even when it’s painful… even when he doesn’t understand all the “why’s”… even when he knows that it’s going to be even more painful for him before he’s through. And he says yes to Christ’s call to feed his sheep. To tend his sheep.
I love that phrase tend my sheep.
There is something in that for me about deep care… about tenderness…
That kind of care, that kind of tenderness for our fellow humanity- requires incredibly courage. And when we face the kind of tragedy that has happened this week, I think it requires us to dig deep to find our responses… to dig deep to find our prayers.
I’ve been reflecting in recent months- with some of you- and on my own- on how we keep our hearts open in the face of violence… in the face of discrimination… in the face of those that we might call our enemies. It’s not easy.
So many of the articles about this week’s shooting talk about memorials for the 32 victims… but not many of them talk about the 33rd person being mourned- the shooter himself. Hear me. I grieve for the senseless and violent deaths of these 32 young people. But I also grieve for Cho Seung-Hui… and I grieve for a world that we’ve built together that allows for this kind of despair, violence, confusion… whatever it is- to grow to the point that this is the result.
I think we have to dig deep to find our compassion and maybe even our love in these times… and I’ll admit it- there are times I just don’t feel like I have it in me to love my enemies. I suppose we all have our “hot button” places… you know, those places where we lose our patience, where we find it really hard to connect with that gentler, more loving part of ourselves. One of my hot button places is around religious homophobia. I see and hear and witness too many times over and over and over again how that kind of “christian” homophobia breaks hearts… breaks spirits… breaks lives. And I find it really hard to feel love in the face of that.
And yet, there are many people here in this community who are doing that very thing. Many of you continue to stand and to witness and to let your lives be testimony of the power of love within religious institutions and denominations where you are facing all kinds of opposition. Many of you do this with such incredibly grace and love and passion… and I think that’s amazing. I really do. Feed my sheep. Tend my sheep.
This week also marks the anniversary of the Columbine shootings and of the Oklahoma City bombings. How do we keep our hearts open in the face of violence?
I’m reminded of a story from my own family… have I told you about my cousin Randy?
In 1980, Randy Reeves, my second cousin by adoption, stabbed to death Janet Mesner – also a second cousin of mine, and Victoria Lamm, Janet’s friend, in the upstairs apartment of the Quaker Meeting House in Lincoln Nebraska, where Janet lived. Both Janet’s family and Randy’s adoptive parents are Quaker families are relatives and friends and worshipped together for years.
The morning after the murder, at the Quaker meeting, Janet’s family had placed two flowers in the sanctuary. One for the victims, and one for Randy. Randy was later sentenced to the electric chair, and has been on death row to this day.
Leaving aside the fact that Randy is Native American, and that a majority of those on death row are people of color…
and leaving aside the fact that Randy’s jury was not told that they had a lesser sentencing option than the death penalty…
For more than two decades, the most outspoken advocates to having Randy’s order of execution repealed are the parents of Janet, the husband and daughter of Victoria, and the parents of Randy, working together.
In 2001, after 21 years, Randy’s sentence was commuted to two consecutive life sentences, and the death penalty removed from his case.
What does it take to dig that deeply to spend 21 years fighting for the life of the man who killed your daughter, your wife, your mother?
Feed my sheep. Tend my sheep.
I think Jesus’ call to Peter is a costly one today… he asks him once again to leave everything behind… to risk everything- and yet to do so in the face of death and violence… to do so when perhaps his heart has already been broken once- and will probably be broken again. And yet, Jesus tells him… if you love me, feed my sheep. Tend my sheep.
I was reading different peoples’ responses to the VT shootings online… one minister, Susanna, wrote about it as she reflected on our reading today, and she said,
"But I can and will preach the gospel of love and inclusion, a gospel that sends us to each other with open hearts, willing to share our lives in praise and worship of a God who loves us beyond our wildest imaginations. Only when we walk out in love can we combat the evil of isolation that has bred all of these incidents. (Koinonia-remember that?)"
This community is a living witness to that call. When, in the face of violence, of broken hearts, of discouragement, we still dig deep… we find the courage- and maybe even the audacity- to persevere… we find the courage to say yes, Christ, we will feed your sheep. Yes, Christ, we will tend your sheep. Yes Christ, even though our hearts may be broken… even though we may not understand the why’s… even though we know that our hearts will probably get broken again,
Yes, Christ, we will follow you. Yes, Christ, I will follow you.
Do you love me? Feed my sheep. Tend my sheep. Follow me.
Let us follow…
Amen
This sermon was delivered by Reverend Kerri Mesner at MCC Edinburgh on Sunday 22nd April 2007. All rights reserved.
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