The Third Sunday of Easter
John 21:1-19
“I like you; I just don’t love you.” Sound painfully familiar? Well, all I can say is—been there, done that. Yes, I will admit it. Have had those words spoken to me in the past. And on at least one occasion, said them to someone. Anybody in this room who is past their teenage years knows exactly what I am talking about. You are sitting in a nice restaurant after an expensive dinner date or on a couch in someone’s house, and out come the words you have been afraid to say for so long, “I love you,” and the response is, “I like you; I just don’t love you.” The cue then, as always, is exit stage left. The last act is over. You think you have found love, and the object of your affection says those ominous words. It is the end of a relationship. Something has broken that will not be repaired.
Why in the middle of Easter season, which is supposed to be filled with joy, do I utter these disappointing words and thus bring up some of the uncomfortable parts of so many of our lives? You would know immediately if you had read today’s gospel—in Greek. This is one case when we can’t trust the usual translators. As far as I can tell, the various translations into English were afraid to tackle the issue until Sarah Ruden recently translated the Gospels. She came close to what I had noticed when I encountered this passage in Greek during seminary. (That last sentence, by the way, was uttered to trick you into thinking that your bishop is a very bright person).
In the gospel, most of us who have in been the church for several years are familiar with this scene after the events of Good Friday. It is when Jesus appears and asks Peter three times if he loves him, and Peter replies three times that he does, but by the third time is really upset that Jesus keeps pressing the issue. For so long I could not understand what was going on because in a way it seemed that Jesus was nagging, sort of liking a nagging spouse. And if Jesus could keep nagging, then it gave us permission to become a bit unbearable ourselves in our relationships with others.
But read the encounter in Greek. What I had long assumed was not exactly what is going on. More literally, when you translate the Greek text, Jesus asks a first time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” and Peter replies, “I like you.” Jesus asks a second time, “Do you love me?” and Peter replies, “I like you.” And then, in the third iteration of this questioning, Jesus asks Peter, “Do you like me?” and Peter gets all flustered and upset that Jesus would ask such a question. Jesus had seen through the obfuscating answers. Peter is likely embarrassed to admit out loud that he does not love Jesus, as if his denial in the courtyard during Jesus’ trial before his crucifixion had not been proof enough. It is time to exit stage left. The old process of trying to find love must begin again.
That is the human condition. Love is rarely as genuine as we would want. Relationships crumble, and the old process of trying to find love must begin again. In today’s gospel, the disciples of Jesus had restarted their lives, going back to their old occupation of fishing after their relationship with Jesus had horribly ended. The radical movement toward love of those on the margin, spurred on by Jesus of Nazareth, was over. Yet one more prophet trying to overturn the smugness of those in power had been killed.
But just when they think life would have to begin all over again, Jesus shows up, this time not as radical reformer, but as ordinary fisherman and cook, and he is willing to question those disciples, especially Peter, to see if there is any love there. And Jesus discovers that there is not. We can set aside those old stories of Peter being the rock on which the church is built. That was all before Jesus got into trouble with the authorities. If Peter’s response to Jesus is anything like the real human response in those moments of honesty about love, we can fairly well determine what has happened: Peter has had a change of heart, or perhaps, more insidiously, he has not.
That’s the bad news. It is the human story. The very people we may have brought along and supported and loved do not love us in return, and perhaps never have. Hearts are broken. Lives turned upside down. We must turn our focus elsewhere in our search for meaning and love.
But did you notice what Jesus does in today’s gospel? First, he tells Peter what a mess Peter is going to get himself into. He is going to grow old and become decrepit, sort of like how we might lash out at a romantic interest who has turned us down. That ought to be the exit stage left moment. But then Jesus says, “Follow me.” It is okay if Peter doesn’t love Jesus; it is okay if there is no burning desire. Jesus is willing for Peter to follow him anyway.
That’s the good news in today’s gospel. God doesn’t exit stage left when we are unfaithful. God invites us to follow the divine path despite our rejections and frailties and hesitancies and all those other embarrassing things that make up our broken lives. God is not afraid to be around broken, embarrassing failures; God will stand beside those who are not very good at commitment. God will befriend impossible-to-love human beings. In other words, God will remain in relationship with us and with others who are similarly afflicted with lives that fall short. Don’t ever think that you are not good enough for the church.
The lesson today is that God calls us to follow goodness, even if we fail at it ourselves, with the hope being that eventually our lives will be changed. And if our lives are changed, there is hope that the world around us will be changed as well so that the ultimately hoped for reconciliation of humanity, of one human being with another, or as the Bible so frequently calls it—the reconciliation that is the kingdom of heaven—will be realized.
If God is willing to do so with us, then we can do so with one another. That is the evangelical lesson today in this increasingly polarized world, in which so many of us have exited stage left and gone back, in the popular vernacular of the day, to our tribal corners, where there is at least superficial mutual affection. God is calling on us not to act like the rest of the world. Don’t exit stage left. Our call is to continue to walk along those who don’t love us in the hope that ultimately love will prevail. It is a way to live that this state and nation and the world desperately need right now. How might we find ways to be in relationship with people who don’t love us and perhaps never have?
Years ago, in yet another time of culture wars, when I was a rector in Little Rock and we were having a rather controversial visitor, some church members asked me, “What if they come picket us?” My response was, “Take them a glass of water; they might need it.”
It is through such ways of staying in relationship that we will keep alive the power and the good news of today’s gospel. Ask honest questions. Listen carefully to responses. Don’t exit stage left. Stay on the stage and see how God might surprise us in the next act. Amen.
© 2022 The Rt. Rev. Larry R. Benfield
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas
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© 2022 The Rt. Rev. Larry Benfield
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas