I grew up here in Southern California, and when my parents divorced early in my childhood my father moved from Toluca Lake out to Malibu and got a house there because, if you can believe this now, it was cheap. So I spent many of my elementary school weekends at the beach, and that early experience probably colors the way I hear the 21st chapter of John’s Gospel when it is read. I cannot hear about Jesus at the beach sitting around a charcoal fire without thinking of what that looks, feels, and smells like from my own early experience.
One of the things I remember best about those Malibu weekends was going down to the beach and sitting around a fire. In that seaside setting you have all the elements which early humans thought made up the universe: earth, air, fire, water. There is something primordial and eternal in that kind of moment, and also something fleeting: everything in the scene is ephemeral; nothing will remain as it is for long. As a setting which mixes the eternal and the ephemeral, a fireside by the water is the perfect place for Jesus to say hello and goodbye at once.
Since my earliest days of reading the Bible with some care, I have been moved that the risen Jesus’s final meal with his companions occurred on a beach gathered around a charcoal fire. As much as Easter is about the joyful return of Jesus to his friends, it is also ultimately about the loss of Jesus, too. Jesus is returning to the One he calls his Father. This is the last time his companions will see him. And without trying to sound impious or inelegant about it, it means something at least to me that Jesus leaves his friends after a final beach cookout, and the meal he shares with them takes place in the setting not only of a beautiful natural place but also in the context of the work of fishing, the stuff of their daily life.
If this is the last time Jesus will see his friends, it is also the first time he has seen Peter since his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. And you’ll remember that things between Jesus and Peter did not go well back then. Despite his protestations that he would remain faithful, Peter denied Jesus. And he did so not once, but three times.
It is no wonder, then, what Peter does when he hears that Jesus is back. “When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea.” This is, at first, a surprising detail. And then it makes sense. I guess you’d run away from Jesus too if the last time you’ve seen him was to deny him three times.
There is so much going on in John’s 21st chapter—the final appearance of Jesus, the big catch of fish, the symbolic meal Jesus and his friends eat together around the charcoal fire, the questioning of Peter about love and the commandment to feed the sheep. Among all those details, this story seems primarily to concern forgiveness. On this third Sunday of Easter, let’s sit with Jesus and Peter as they attempt to reconcile.
Following Peter’s attempt to swim away from this meeting, Jesus invites his companions to join him in a meal of bread and fish. It is not stretching things to suggest that this meal has symbolic, Eucharistic overtones. In the early church the Eucharist was not the polite, institutionalized ritual we have come to perform over time. It was an actual meal, often featuring not only bread and wine but also milk, honey, and fish—real food with scriptural saving significance. The first audience for John’s account would have understood this.
It is only after this meal that Jesus approaches Peter with his threefold interrogation: “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Jesus asks a version of this question three times, and Peter answers each time, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Given that Peter had denied Jesus not once but thrice, it shouldn’t be surprising that Jesus questions Peter a similar number of times; and Peter’s answers are also predictable. The surprise comes with Jesus’s response to Peter: “Feed my lambs.” “Tend my sheep.” “Feed my sheep.” Roman Catholics will see here a prediction of Peter’s role as Bishop of Rome and founder of the papacy. But prior to any institutional connection, Jesus’s directions to Peter seem to offer the clue to his pathway to forgiveness.
Jesus’s interrogation of Peter ends perhaps differently that we 21st century people would imagine. There are no cultural markers of forgiveness in this interchange. Jesus does not offer Peter an extended hand to shake, nor does he embrace him in a reconciling bear hug. He simply gives Peter two commandments. “Feed my sheep,” and “Follow me”.
You and I tend to imagine things like love and forgiveness as some kind of mental states. To our minds, loving someone or forgiving them has primarily to do with how we think about them. We’re convinced that the most important aspect of something is what it means.
This way of seeing these core biblical concepts is alien to the world that gave us the scriptures. Love and forgiveare not gaseous mental notions, floating somewhere around in the ether. Love and forgive are verbs. If you love someone, you behave a certain way toward them. If you forgive someone, that pardon is made real in action.
In his post-betrayal, post-resurrection encounter with Peter, Jesus bypasses the endless therapy session that you and I imagine they might have been forced to endure. Instead, Jesus gives Peter two commandments. He tells Peter to feed his sheep, that is, to do something concretely loving toward his fellow disciples. And then Jesus tells Peter, very simply and directly, to follow him.
If you are like me, questions of forgiveness and reconciliation are always somewhere not far from the top of your consciousness. There are folks in my life I both need to forgive and be forgiven by. What I take from this morning’s seaside cookout is a new understanding: the way to enact forgiveness is not through thought; it is through action. Rather than stew over the offence either committed or received, the way to get myself and the other past it is to do something new: feed and follow. Because our culture seems to be so in love with endless talk, we think that we can work out our differences merely by introspection and dialogue. But Jesus offers us a different, and more pragmatic approach.
As Western, 21st century, media-savvy Christians, you and I live too much in our heads. We imagine we will solve our problems by turning them into rational, intellectual concepts. What Jesus offers is something entirely different: a call to get out of our heads and into our bodies and hearts. We love Jesus not only by praying to him but by feeding the people he cares for. We love Jesus not only by saying the creed but by living and acting as his disciples. In this morning’s encounter on the beach, Jesus offers forgiveness to Peter as a new way of acting in the world. The implication seems to be that when we get out of our heads and into our hearts and hands the hurt and betrayal that had seemed so vital becomes less important than the human need that, together, we can begin to address.
We all carry so many burdens of offenses both endured and committed. What Jesus offers us this morning is a way through and out of our obsessions. If you want either to forgive or be forgiven, feed Jesus’s sheep. If you want release from the injuries or the guilt you carry, follow Jesus in living a life of compassion, justice, and love. Jesus never promised Peter that he would feel better about things. He promised Peter that, in giving himself over to loving God and serving others, he would find a new life that would cause his worries ultimately to fade away.
You and I live in a world of such desperate need. From the war in Ukraine to the streets of Los Angeles, from suffering on a grand scale to the loneliness and illness of those close to us, there is no shortage of sheep for us to feed. On this third Sunday of Easter, as we celebrate the risen life of Jesus, let us claim our share in that Easter promise, too. As he called Peter, so Jesus calls you and me. A new life of joy and purpose is on offer for all of us as we gather around God’s table. We claim that new life by stepping into the deeds and actions Jesus calls us to do. “Feed my sheep.” “Follow me.” It sounds so simple. Yet it’s the life-changing renewal all of us so deeply want and desperately need. Amen.
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