"Do you love me?"
“Do you love me?”
John 21:15-19
Last Sunday, I made a mistake. I started out worship and announced—with authority—that our PADS Sunday (when we bring food to feed the homeless) was next week. Our sign up begins two weeks ahead of the date. Someone always gets a little confused about when the actual day is. That’s why you have me, folks! Except, I was totally and completely wrong. Of course, I didn’t realize that until an hour later when Tracy shared the news: “PADS is today.”
After whistling for everyone’s attention at coffee hour and setting things straight and apologizing a solid, dozen times, I was sitting in the office, shaking my head. Two of the newer folks to the community walked in. I said to them, “You know…I made it 27 years without making a mistake!” They did a bit of a double take. Then, I started laughing: “Actually,” I said, “I’m good for a mistake a day…”
I make mistakes all the time. I get the wrong number for the hymn. I have some glaring typo in the bulletin. I call someone by the wrong name. I leave someone out of the “joys and concerns” prayer. I leave a light on. I forget to turn the tea pot off. I totally intend to call someone or visit someone and it just doesn’t happen. I do all this and I’m actually trying. It’s not like I don’t care. I do care but care doesn’t make me perfect—never has and never will.
Because I care, it’s hard to let it go when I make a mistake. No one is harder on me than me. This is hard when I’m leading worship. In order to lead worship well, I have to be immersed in each moment as it happens. Worship isn’t a performance. Worship is about being present. If some part of me is asking, “How am I doing” all the way through, I’m never going to be fully present. I’m going to be too busy critiquing myself to remember that worship is not about me.
Often, what I tend to do, is laugh at my mistakes, not because they don’t matter but because if I can laugh at them or, even better, if we can laugh at them together, then we gain perspective. Then we can move on. Anne Lamott says that laughter is “carbonated joy.” I believe that worship is better when it is lightly “carbonated.” It’s not a comedy show but laughing at ourselves and with each other does seem to be what humble people do.
The place where I learned this early in my life was in high school theater. In my first play, “Cheaper By the Dozen,” I was cast as the doctor, a small but important part. I had to tell the father that the test results were in and it was not good news. My sister and her boyfriend were the mother and the father. I walked on stage and froze. They did everything they could to coax my line from me: “Is there any news doctor;” “Are the test results in;” “If you had to guess, am I going to live?” I finally barked out a few words and ran off stage. We’ve laughed about that for years.
I had a fight scene in another play. The fight was carefully choreographed. What wasn’t choreographed was the moment when the gun we were fighting over went flying into the audience. The other actor and I stared at each other and then looked out into the audience. We didn’t freeze, though. We began improvising. That was my first introduction to the joy that can happen when your response to the unexpected is to lean into the moment.
We make mistakes. Things don’t go as planned. We are not the masters of the universe. If anyone thinks that our mistakes mean that we don’t care, they’re wrong. We know this. However, given the chance to evaluate ourselves, we judge ourselves so harshly and, too often, that judgement sticks. We can totally lose our connection to the present when we are being crushed by our regrets.
Are you with me so far? Are you human, too? Do you make mistakes? Are you producing evidence every day, despite your best intentions, that you are still not the master of the universe? (Why is is taking you so long?) Good for you for being honest! Now, we can talk…
Here’s the truth: it’s hard enough to let our little mistakes go. People tell us not to sweat the little stuff. We learn how to say we’re sorry. We learn from our mistakes. We learn to not get stuck. On our good days, we get over ourselves. Over the years, all of this becomes less work.
However, the problem is that we also make really big mistakes, —the kind of mistakes that lead to heartfelt, deep seated regrets. We feel remorse. Again, it’s not that we didn’t care. We didn’t wake up thinking, “Today’s the day that I’m really going to try to hurt someone else’s feelings!” No…most of the time, we care enough. Our intentions are good. Often, though, we’re just too scared or too anxious or too haunted by the past to be our best selves. We get defensive. “I’m scared so I’m going to save myself.” “You hurt me so I’m going to hurt you back.” “This isn’t working so I’m going to cut and run.” No one can make you do such things. We’ve all spent too much time trying to find someone else to blame for unsavory parts of ourselves: “You made me feel this, do this think this…” No…those were your choices…
A lot of people think that the church’s job is to induce remorse and shame and guilt for being human. “Thank you so much for coming to church this morning. First, I’d like to point out your mistakes until you feel worse about yourself than you did when you got here. Then, if you’re lucky, God might grant you a pardon—a temporary reprieve that will last you until next Sunday.” Our sacred job is to feel bad about ourselves and hide who we really are from ourselves and from each other.
The truth, though, is that if we can’t be honest about our brokenness—the little mistakes that remind us that we are not perfect, and the giant, painful mistakes that we make that humble us—then we’re in trouble. It takes so much time and energy to cover things up. Life is too short to waste our time covering up. God calls us to love one another. If we’re going to love one another then we have to stop pretending that we’re someone else.
In our text, Peter is hard at work trying to cover up his remorse. Last week, we found Peter and six other disciples in a boat on the Sea of Galilee in the middle of the night, failing spectacularly. Peter—a natural born leader, the guy who Jesus called “the Rock” because he was going to be the foundation of the church—is lost. He didn’t know what to do so he tried to go back to what he used to do. The other disciples just follow him like lemmings. Everyone is in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing and nothing is working. The only thing worse than not catching any fish all night is the moment when they suddenly catch 153 of them. Their desperate desire—the thing that was going to fix everything else—has been fulfilled. What they are left with is a big pile of dead, stinking fish. The fish fix nothing. They should have had a better dream. (Did you ever work really hard to go on that date or to get that job? Then, in the middle of that dream date or half way through your first week on the amazing new job you realize, “This is awful”)
Peter is hiding from the truth. That night, Peter was sure that the one thing he needed to do was catch fish. He was wrong. Earlier, he thought all he needed was to see the risen Christ. He was wrong. He’s already met the risen Christ, not once, but twice and he can still barely stand to live in his own skin.
The crucial moment for Peter comes right when the nets are full of fish. One of the other disciples recognizes that it is Jesus on the beach. As soon as Peter hears that news, he has to get to Jesus first. He’s so excited to get another chance to be fixed! Notice, though…what does Peter do first? He covers up. Literally, he gets fully dressed and then leaps into the water. He desperately wants the risen Christ to fix him but he won’t even let the risen Jesus see who he really is!
It seems crazy but we’ve all done this. We get a chance to make things right, to reconnect to the one from whom we are disconnected, to bare our souls and make things right. However, our first impulse is to cover ourselves. Even if we’re fully dressed, (and I’m always hoping to be fully dressed,) we cover ourselves with excuses or with a dash of deflecting humor or with some other camouflage. We want so desperately to connect at a deeper level, but we’re so tempted to hide at the same time. God love him, Peter gets fully dressed and then throws himself into the water and swims for shore. This makes him one of us! Maybe we just have to accept that about ourselves. Maybe covering up is a matter of degree and the best we get to do is cover up less rather than more. Maybe when we accept that need and laugh a little about it we will finally get where we need to go.
Peter gets to shore but there’s no immediate breakthrough, which seems normal and healthy to me. Everyone has some breakfast. Everyone takes their time. You catch 153 fish. You head to shore. You have breakfast with the guy you love who died a few days earlier. Just another average day on the Sea of Galilee! Everyone knows this is Jesus. Everyone knows something big is happening. No one says a thing. It’s the kind of thing that happens when guys gather—a whole lot of not talking about what we all know is going on and kind of wish we could talk about.
Jesus breaks the silence. He pulls Peter aside and asks him a question that cuts through all the cover up and all the silence: “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” Peter hardly hears the question: “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus cuts right to the heart of what’s stuck inside Peter. Peter has always been proud of himself—the fish he could catch, his place as a disciple. He’s always thought he could outwork anyone. He’s believed in himself. He’s loved himself. He thought for sure that he was the best disciple. He thought, “I’ve got this!” until the day he failed Jesus and failed the other disciples and failed himself. Now, He can no longer tell the story of how great he is. Jesus basically says, “If you love me, Peter, get over yourself. Believe in me. Love me. Follow me.” Having denied Jesus three times, Peter is asked three times: “Do you love me?” Jesus isn’t shaming Peter. Jesus is letting Peter know that he has already forgiven him: “Isn’t it about time, Peter, to forgive yourself?”
Life is complicated. Walking on egg shells only makes it harder. If you pretend you’re someone else long enough, you’ll forget who you really are. If you try to carry every regret forward with you, you will get crushed. Learn how to forgive and how to ask for forgiveness and then, let it go. Let it be. There are far more important things to worry about: who’s going to feed the hungry, visit the sick, care for the lonely? It’s time to get on with the business of living a loving, faithful life.