The Sermon . . .

Dr Muriel Porter

"Do you love me?" It is perhaps the most important single question we ever ask, even if we do not always frame it in those words, or even consciously articulate it.

As little children, we need to know that our parents really love us. Unless we are confident in that primal love, we will find it extremely difficult, if not sometimes impossible, to develop into fully integrated, secure adults. Some people spend their whole lives seeking the answer to that question, or searching for alternative means of gaining some self-esteem.

"Do you love me?" In the rhetoric of romance, the question is at its most explicit. How many romantic songs and poems are based on it! It is central to our search for a life partner or spouse. But we should not overlook its quiet importance in all our friendships, and in the inter-relationships of the communities we belong to. Do they like me? do they respect me/appreciate me? Or do they in fact take me for granted, do they just tolerate me, or would they prefer me to go away? And just as we asked the question of our own parents, as we grow older we find ourselves asking it of our children as they come to maturity and independence. Do they love me? Shakespeare’s most bitter tragedy, King Lear, is the heart-breaking story of an unloved, rejected elderly parent. Sadly, it is all too familiar a story in many nursing homes.

In today’s Gospel reading, the Risen Christ confronts Peter with the question: Peter, do you love me? He asks him not once, but three times. Most biblical commentators like to pair this scene with Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus before his crucifixion. Three times he denied that he even knew Jesus. Now, after the Resurrection, Jesus gives Peter the opportunity to redeem himself, with a three-fold affirmation of his love for him.

That is an insight not to be overlooked. It demonstrates powerfully the notion that Resurrection means above all forgiveness. Peter had denied Jesus. With all but one of the male disciples, he had abandoned Jesus at the point of his arrest and trial, leaving him to die alone. Only his mother, the women disciples and one male disciple stayed by him to the end. But the Risen Jesus does not upbraid them for their desertion. There are no recriminations. The Resurrection is a total new beginning. All that has gone before has been redeemed.

But this is not just a second chance, a fresh opportunity for Peter as he talks with the Risen Jesus by the lakeside. It is something entirely new, a vastly different relationship, that is on offer. Look closely at Jesus’ questions to Peter. Yes, he repeats his question three times, but in doing so he probes Peter’s heart so insistently that he grows increasingly uncomfortable. "You know that I love you!" he cries eventually. "Why do you doubt me?" What is going on here?

It is tempting to move quickly away from the questions to what seems to be the next step. "Feed my sheep - tend my lambs", is Jesus’ response three times to Peter’s anxious protestations of love. Is Jesus saying, if you love me, you will care for my little ones? Of course, but I suspect we are jumping too quickly. Before his death, certainly, St John’s Gospel has Jesus telling his disciples how they were to show that they loved him. If you love me, keep my commandments (John 14:15). And what is his commandment? To love one another, as he loved them (John 15:12). Simple; straightforward; and fiendishly difficult! Two thousand years of church history demonstrate just how difficult it is for those who profess to love Jesus to love one another!

Peter and the other disciples had followed Jesus for a range of motives. Initially they probably thought they were the chosen band of a Messiah come to restore the kingdom of Israel by defeating its enemies, principally the Roman occupying force. Frightening, but exhilarating and ennobling! It is the same kind of idealistic motivation that sent soldiers on the Crusades, and to endless other battlefields down the centuries, right to our own time.

They also began to know Jesus as prophet, healer, and teacher. They saw his power over nature and the chaos of nature, as we saw last week as we reflected on the stilling of the storm. They even began to see, with a growing sense of awe, that he was no less than the Son of the Living God. But though Jesus tried to help them understand, they could not grasp what that really meant. They persisted in believing that his kingdom, his Sonship, was based on power and prestige. Their petty squabbles over personal preferment made that plain.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. As Jesus’ ignominious trial and death revealed, he was first and foremost the Victim, the Scapegoat, the defenceless lamb led to the slaughter. His only throne was the cross, the instrument of his torture and execution. And if he was indeed the Son of God, then God was in God’s very essence the vulnerable one, not at all the powerful tribal ruler they had imagined. No wonder the disciples ran for their lives, and hid themselves in locked rooms! This was not at all what they had expected. No doubt they felt they had been betrayed. What did they have to show for those years of faithful following, faithful service?

So when Jesus challenged Peter by the Galilean lakeside, something very profound was happening to Peter. Do you love me? Do you really love me? Do you really love me? he asked. Forget who you thought I was, or who you wanted me to be. Forget what you expected or hoped to get out of following me. Forget all your preconceptions and misconceptions. I am the Victim, the one who bears all the sin and pain and suffering of the entire creation. If you really love me, the Victim, then you too will become a victim: "You will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go". You will be put to death because you love me, but first you must die to everything that holds you back from loving me as I AM. So, Peter, do you love me?

Yes, Lord, replies Peter, and becomes no longer a fisherman, but rather a shepherd, like his Lord, the Good Shepherd. Shepherds in the biblical world, were lowly, vulnerable people who might be called on to lay down their lives for their sheep. The lambs and sheep in their care were utterly vulnerable, telling symbols of all the vulnerable "little ones" for whom Jesus had a special concern. Jesus, the Victim, cared deeply for all victims, all who were at the mercy of the powerful and the predatory. In the new creation inaugurated by his resurrection, his followers were to become like him, with their first priority to protect and serve "little ones".

We do not have to do it on our own, though. Like Peter, if we love Jesus, then the cross and resurrection change us. The great gift of our redemption and restoration to new life is that we are given a new heart, because God’s Spirit has been poured into our lives. And what is our new heart for but to love God and all of God’s people?

What does any of this have to do with who we are as a parish community, as the Body of Christ in this place and at this particular stage in our common journey? We all have ideas of what we want to see happen here. We have taken part in a consultation where we listed our concerns and priorities. All of that is good and proper. But the Gospel today calls us to our first priority, without which all other priorities will be in vain.

Preaching at his enthronement as Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams concluded with a moving story about recognising Jesus at the heart of the Church. He said: "About twelve years ago I was visiting an Orthodox monastery and was taken to see one of the smaller and older chapels. It was a place intensely full of the memory and reality of prayer. The monk showing me around pulled the curtain from in front of the sanctuary, and inside was a plain altar and one simple picture of Jesus, darkened and rather undistinguished. But for some reason at that moment it was as if the veil of the temple was torn in two: I saw as I had never seen the simple fact of Jesus at the heart of all our words and worship, behind the curtain of our anxieties and our theories, our struggles and our suspicion. Simply there - there he is as he has promised to be till the world’s end. Nothing of value happens in the Church that does not start from seeing him simply there in our midst, suffering and transforming our human disaster.

"And he says to us, ‘If you don’t know why this matters, look for someone who does - the child, the poor, the forgotten. Learn from them, and you will learn from me. You will find a life’s work; and you will find rest for your souls; you will come home; you will sit and eat."

Jesus asks each of us today: Do you love me? Do you really love me? Do you really love me? Love of Jesus is the only valid reason for our being here at all. May we all answer with all our hearts, "yes, Lord, you know that I love you". Then, here at St John’s - in this place intensely full of the memory and reality of prayer - we too will see the veil of the temple torn in two. We will see Jesus as the heart of all our words and worship. We will experience the healing power of his forgiveness. We will know the gentle shepherding of his risen presence, and know ourselves at home as we come here together to sit and eat.

Muriel Porter