Help

Acts 16:9-15      

John 5:1-9 

Of all the stories about healing in the gospels, this one stands out to me as particularly interesting. In part, because it is puzzling. We don’t know exactly what is going on here. Apparently, this pool of water has healing properties, and people come to the waters to be healed of their disabilities. I have no doubt that water has healing properties. Just the other evening, my daughter told me the baby was having a complete meltdown. I prescribed a bath.

The peculiar thing about these waters was that, evidently, they would periodically become stirred up, and people believed that the stirring was caused by the presence of divine power. According to the King James Version, only the first person to get in the pool after the waters stirred up would be healed. This seems unfair. And it’s probably not even true, because newer translations have left it out. It seems that this detail was added somewhere along the way by a scribe, wanting to make some logical sense of the fact that this man had been trying and failing for 38 years to reach the healing waters.

Some others have wondered about this and concluded that this man didn’t really want to be healed. Surely, if he wanted to be made well, he would have gotten to the water by now. Even Jesus seems to be suggesting this, because he asks the man this very question. Do you want to be made well?

It’s easy to hear a little implicit blame in his question. We don’t know what his tone of voice was like, but it might have sounded like, “Do you even want to be made well? Because I – and some of the others here too – suspect that you like this. You like being helpless, not having to do anything, not being responsible for anything.”

Whether or not Jesus would be as snarky as that is questionable. Actually, I doubt he would have asked in that manner. But he did ask. And in asking, it might be that Jesus wanted this man to take a moment to reflect on his own desires, his own motivations. In this way, he was making him an agent in his own healing.

Last week I told you about the woman, Lynn, who was living in her car in the parking lot at the King of Prussia Target. Two women approached her. One of the first things they asked her was, “Do you want help?” Only when she said yes did they go any further.

Helping another person is not a one-way proposition. We might forget that sometimes, when we see ourselves as helpers and others as helpees. It would always be simpler, easier, if when we see a problem we have the means and desire to fix, we could just go ahead and fix it. But it’s usually not so simple. In reality, helping another person often gets complicated. There are many reasons for this.

People don’t always want the help we want to offer. If you have ever tried to help someone get up or cross the street and they batted your hand away, then you know this. The two women who approached Lynn in her car knew it was better not to assume she wanted the things they wanted to give her, so they waited for her “yes” before proceeding.

But when someone says yes, this opens the door to more complications. There can be further mismatches between the wishes of the helper and the helpee. There may be competing desires – what you want for the other person and what they want for themselves.

A few years ago, there was a family living in their car in the Walmart parking lot – this was just a few blocks from the church I was serving at the time. Some women noticed this family and, just like the women at the King of Prussia Target, they were moved by compassion. They learned that this family included a veteran and his wife, two disabled children, and a dog. They had been trying to get back home to Oklahoma when their car broke down.

Pretty soon the whole community was mobilized to help. The women who initially approached them organized fundraisers and put out notices on a community Facebook group. We took up a collection for them in our congregation. People donated food and other supplies, and someone even donated a car. Everyone wanted to help this family get home, and we did. Happy ending.

But within a few weeks this family came back. Their troubles did not disappear once they got back home, evidently. And they had found our community to be so warm and caring and helpful, they wanted to come back and draw more water from that well. But I’m not sure there was any more water in that well.

What the people of the community had signed up for was to help them get back home. What they wanted (or needed) was, apparently, something else.

The problem with helping is we often don’t know what kind of help is going to be needed. What’s more, we don’t necessarily have the ability to give what is needed, or the desire to give it.

In Norman MacLean’s story, A River Runs Through It, there is a father with two sons. It is very much like the parable Luke tells. The older son is hard-working and responsible, the younger son just can’t seem to help being a prodigal. He is restless. He can’t settle down. He is an alcoholic and a gambler, a slave to these two addictions. And, like all addicts, he resists help. His brother is dying to help him but fails again and again. And at one point, his father speaks to the older son about the nature of help. “Help,” he said, “is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly. So it is, that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don’t know what part to give or we don’t like to give any part of ourselves. Or, often, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed.”

A sobering assessment. But perhaps we need to make a distinction between “fix” and “help.” No one can fix an addict. But something as small as giving a drink of water or holding their head might help.

It is a bit easier when someone comes right out and asks for help. In the story from Acts, this is Paul’s dream – that a man from Macedonia stood before his eyes and said come on over and help us. Help us. And so he did.

I think Paul was grateful for the direct request, because before this point he had experienced a succession of failures. He had somehow been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to enter the lands they were trying to enter. It was like they hit a spiritual brick wall. So, they would turn and go a different way. Then another brick wall. When Paul received the Macedonia vision, he perceived a door opening up before him and he raced through.

And in Macedonia, he was able to help. The gospel was well received by Lydia, a woman of wealth and influence. Now the gospel of Jesus Christ had reached a new shore – because there was a request for help. Again, a happy ending.

But you might have figured out by now that the happy endings, more often than not, are quickly followed by further complications. Our work of helping one another doesn’t really end. The church was established in Macedonia, but we cannot possibly think that once they put the building up it was all smooth sailing. No doubt, there were arguments about what color to paint the walls, and difficulties raising enough money to fix the boiler. There were laments about how the youth didn’t seem to be interested in the church their elders had worked so hard for. There were fights about how the mission budget should be spent. How to be Christ to one another is a continual uphill struggle.

I think in many cases the problems we have with helping others have to do with why we are doing it and what we are looking for. Consider this story from John’s gospel.

When Jesus approached the disabled man at the pool, what did he ask him? Did he ask him if he wanted to be put in the waters? No, he asked him if he wanted to be made well.

The man’s answer, then, did not really fit the question. He told Jesus all the reasons why he had been unable to get to the pool. It would be so easy, at that point, to fall into an argument on the logistics of getting in the pool of healing waters. It would also be futile to get in that argument. One thing we know about Jesus is that he was expert at avoiding that kind of trap. He simply ignores the man’s response and suggests to him: Pick up your mat and walk. And so the man does.

What can we learn from this about helping someone? Perhaps we can learn that it is good to know what kind of help you can give and what you cannot give. And learn to be comfortable giving what you can give, not berating yourself for the things you cannot give.

Perhaps we can learn that the important thing is figuring out the real need – if possible. This man’s real need was not to get to the pool, but to be made well. Maybe he, himself, had lost sight of that, but Jesus saw it.

Perhaps we can learn that it is good, if at all possible, to respect the other person’s autonomy. Helping someone help themselves is one of the best ways to help another. I think the women who helped Lynn get out of her car and into a home were trying to do just that. It involves giving people the help they want, not necessarily the help you think they should want. It may be the case with the family we tried to help in Ohio that we misunderstood their desires. Maybe they didn’t really want to go home.

Anybody who ever said, “helping someone is simple,” didn’t know what they were talking about. It’s never simple, really. Because helping is never really an isolated incident – it’s always part of an interconnected chain. As human beings, we are always helping and being helped, one way or another.

In Richard Price’s book, Samaritan, there is a man named Ray who goes back to his hometown to devote himself to helping the needy and downtrodden. He learns how not-simple it is. He repeatedly runs into troubles. An old friend in town tries to help him with the troubles caused by his helping. What we see in the story is two different kinds of help. Ray has a past he wants to be vindicated from by his good works. But his friend, Nerese, wants to help Ray for simpler reasons: Ray once helped her, and she is grateful.

So, you see, Ray wants to help in order to receive gratitude. But Nerese wants to help out of her own gratitude. This is where we all should find ourselves. We won’t receive salvation because we help others. But knowing we are saved by the grace of God, we may be grateful.

And may our gratitude serve God by helping others.

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[1] I am grateful to Garret Keizer, author of Help: The Original Human Dilemma, for helping me think through this topic.

New Things

Revelation 21:1-6

John 13:31-35      

I came across a news story last week about a woman who was found living in a car in the Target parking lot. You might wonder if that’s really even news. There are so many homeless people in our country, so many of them living in cars – and some of these may not even consider themselves homeless because at least they are not sleeping in the bushes. At least they have a car and the car is their home. Yet we know it is a far from adequate home.

It was reported in the local newspaper, where it was considered to be newsworthy. Perhaps because it happened in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. King of Prussia is a fairly affluent suburban community outside Philadelphia. It has a very low rate of poverty. Life is generally pretty good. The shopping is excellent – King of Prussia is best known for its giant mall.

At any rate, perhaps it was news because it was in King of Prussia. I don’t imagine things like that are seen very often in King of Prussia. The staff at the Target store were asked by reporters if they knew she was out there in their parking lot, apparently living there. They said, yes, they knew. They chose not to respond – neither calling the police nor reaching out to help. Target remained neutral.

The fact that her car was a silver Mercedes might also have contributed to the newsworthiness of the story. She wasn’t parked out there in a beat-up old Chevy or a Ford van. This was a pretty nice car. One that many people would like to have if they could afford it. Yet, here was this woman, apparently homeless, with a really nice car. Well, it was a 12-year-old nice car, to be fair. But this still creates some cognitive dissonance for us – it doesn’t fit the stereotype of poverty we have in our heads. And we are not sure what to think of this situation.

This is the kind of real-life problem we tend to encounter when we are trying to figure out how to obey Jesus’ new commandment: to love one another just as he has loved us.

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.

There was actually nothing new about love when he said that. Love was not a new concept at that time. The theology of God’s love had been around for quite a long time. The exhortations to love God and love one another were clearly outlined in the law of Israel. The books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy include the commandments to love God, love the neighbor, even love the stranger, for you yourselves were strangers in Egypt, God says.

The idea of love is nothing new. But Jesus presents it as a new thing, and he seems to want his disciples to feel this command with a new spirit, a new energy, a new commitment. At this moment, Jesus is calling upon them to love with a new urgency in a new way. He is, after all, doing a new thing.

The story we hear today is taking us back to the days before Easter. Back to the place we were a few weeks ago, before he was arrested, before he was crucified. It takes us back to that upper room with Jesus and his disciples sharing a Passover meal before he is arrested. This is where we are at this moment:

The bread has been blessed and broken. Jesus and his disciples all reclined at the table together, relaxed, feasting. And suddenly Jesus says, “One of you will betray me.” They all looked at one another, not sure what to think. Jesus casually picks up the bread, he speaks again, saying, “The one to whom I give this piece of bread, he is the one.” He dips the bread into the wine and hands it to Judas. Judas takes the bread, eats it. Jesus says to him, “Go, do what you have to do,” and Judas immediately leaves.

None of the others, at this point, have a clue. The words about betrayal are disturbing, certainly, but nothing is yet clear to them. As Jesus continues, when Judas had gone out, he now speaks of glory, and love. It will only be in retrospect, after quite some time has passed, that anyone understands what he was saying here: that as I prepare to die I leave you this legacy of love. Love one another and they will know you are my disciples.

Love one another. And, just as we have done with many of Jesus’ most challenging words, we have zealously overanalyzed these words for the purpose of finding our way out of them. Surely he didn’t really mean to love everybody. Without qualification or stipulation? That doesn’t sound right.

To love someone, really love them – in action, not just in theory – is hard and sometimes confusing. We don’t know how to love all the others in the world. How do you love someone who is choosing to live in a Mercedes Benz in the Target parking lot? I mean, is the woman in that car included? And if so, what does that love look like?

The car was spotted by a woman on her way into the store. She looked at the woman in the driver’s seat of the Mercedes and instantly labeled her. A hoarder, she thought. The car was clearly packed with stuff. But she didn’t just let it go; she contacted a friend who was a social worker and together they approached the woman in the car.

They were afraid. They didn’t know how the woman in the car would react to them. Would she be violent? They didn’t know, but they knocked on the window anyway.

How do you speak to someone who has parked her car with all her worldly belongings in the Target parking lot? A woman who, from the smell of it, seems to have been cooped up with her two dogs in this car for a long time? What do you say?

They said, “Can we talk to you?” she said yes. They asked, “Are you living in your car?” She said, yes, for about two years now. They said, we’d like to help you. Do you want help? She said yes. Her name was Lynn.

And they learned the story about how Lynn had gone from enjoying a solid middle-class professional life to her current existence. Her fall had been dramatic and heartbreaking. After a series of losses, betrayals, and health crises, she found herself left with nothing but her car and her dogs.

It turned out that these two women had mutual acquaintances with Lynn, a professional network of friends. So they began reaching out to others and soon a network was woven together to help Lynn get out of her car and back in a home. People cleaned out and repaired her car, others helped Lynn and her dogs get cleaned and groomed, others gathered together clothing, others prepared meals for her and got her a hotel room while they sought permanent housing. They created a safety net for her and made sure that she would have some security.

The fact that two years went by before someone stepped up and loved Lynn enough to get her out of her car causes me to realize how far we fall short of Jesus’ new commandment. This new thing he is doing feels new to us each time we hear it, because it seems hard for us to believe that this is what he is asking us to do.

Love one another just as I have loved you. Love one another, and if you do, then everyone will know you are my disciples. In this love, they will see God’s glory. Christ’s glory. And his glory is to weave love through the brokenness of this world that killed him.

Indeed, as John writes in his Revelation, God is doing a new thing, God is making all things new. The home of God is among mortals, those who are mourning and crying and suffering pain of body, mind, and soul. God does not forsake the suffering in this world. On the contrary, it is God’s desire to be right in the midst of it – wiping away every tear, relieving all suffering, making all things new.

The newspaper columnist David Brooks writes frequently about the fabric of our society and how essential it is to weave a strong fabric. Much of the common cause that used to hold us together has been lost in recent decades, and it is easy to see the negative effects of that loss. What he is advocating for isn’t anything new; it’s actually something old. It’s just that when we lose it, we realize anew how much we need it, how much we need one another. Sometimes people can’t take care of themselves. Sometimes, we can’t pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and carry on. Sometimes we really, truly need one another. And when we do need one another, that is when we are closest to God. Because this is what God is: God is community. God is care for one another. God is love.

And the world will know us as Christians – if we love one another. What a wonderful world this would be.

Photo: Ed Yourdon from New York City, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Radical Trust

John 10:22-30    

In the movie Ghost, Patrick Swayze plays a man who is murdered. I’m not giving away the plot. That’s just the set up. The story is about how his spirit lingers on earth, because he needs to communicate a message to his wife, Demi Moore, who is in danger of being killed, too. He needs to figure out how to communicate with living people, so he goes to a psychic – Whoopi Goldberg. She’s actually a fake psychic. She has never communicated with the dead in her life; she just puts on a show and the people who pay for her services believe her.

So when the ghost of Patrick Swayze walks in the room she practically jumps out of her skin. Because she can see him and hear him. She never knew she really could communicate with spirits. Now that she does, she’s not at all sure she wants this gift. 

But the ghost of Patrick Swayze convinces her to help him get a message to his wife. Which means they have to convince his wife, the grieving Demi Moore, that Whoopi Goldberg truly is speaking for her dear departed husband. As I’m sure you can imagine, this is not going to be easy.

The movies are full of plots like this, where some characters need to convince others that they really are who they say they are. It usually leads to all kinds of comic action and reaction. But something that never happens is for people to turn to the unrecognized one and ask, “Look, are you the one?” Demi Moore isn’t going to walk the streets of New York asking people, “Are you my husband?” She’s not going to walk up to Whoopi Goldberg and ask, “Are you my husband?” because that would seem crazy.

She is never going to know it’s him just because someone tells her it is him. She has to experience his presence with her, then she knows him.

Once she knows, she doesn’t have to ask. But if you don’t know, you are never going to know, no matter what anyone says.

At least, that seems to be the approach Jesus takes.

In this chapter of John’s gospel, he begins speaking of himself as the Good Shepherd. It’s worth looking at what comes before this chapter, because it matters. This begins in the aftermath of a long, involved interaction with a blind man, his parents, and some religious leaders. In that story, Jesus healed the man of his blindness, then nobody seems to recognize him because he is no longer blind. Which is a pretty cool example of irony, I think.

The religious leaders enter the fray laying out their circular arguments to deny that Jesus has the power to heal blindness. Because, evidently, they don’t want to believe. And Jesus says some words about how his presence in the world enables some who were blind to gain their sight, and others with sight to become blind. It confuses these religious leaders, mainly because they are among those who are spiritually blind to Jesus. They are unable, unwilling, to recognize who Jesus is.

As we begin chapter 10, Jesus starts to develop this metaphor of the shepherd and his sheep. His listeners fall right in with this; they know sheep and shepherding. They are people who live pretty close to the earth and are not unfamiliar with animal husbandry. So they know that sheep are exceptionally good, for some reason, at recognizing their own shepherd.

That seems to be the peculiar kind of intelligence sheep have. They’re not original thinkers; they’re not headstrong or independent. Sheep are followers. But they are not undiscerning in their following. They know their own shepherd.

I have heard it said that when flocks of sheep get mixed up together at the watering hole, each shepherd knows that when it is time to leave all he has to do is call his sheep. His sheep will follow his call, because they know him. Sheep know their shepherd and they trust him completely.

The shepherd doesn’t have to worry that any of his sheep will have a different idea about where to go. He doesn’t have to worry that some of his sheep will have doubts or skepticism. They trust their shepherd completely.

And we are not like sheep, are we? We have ideas, we have doubts and skepticism, we have independent thoughts of our own. We are not sheep. But we who call ourselves Christian also want to follow our Good Shepherd, the Christ. And we want to feel the assurance that we are, indeed, following him and not going astray.

All this means that it’s not as simple for us as it is for sheep. We have competing desires – we want to be independent and in charge; and we want to follow Jesus. Which means we are sometimes confused.

The people who were gathered around Jesus at the temple that winter day, in the portico of Solomon, were confused – about whether he was the one. And they simply wanted him to tell them. Just say it, yes or no.

As if this were a court of law and they are simply gathering facts to make a case; tell us, are you the messiah? It’s a simple yes or no question.

It reminds me of another episode that both Matthew and Luke tell us about. When John the Baptist, who has been imprisoned by Herod, sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one we have been waiting for?” Just tell us, is it you or should we continue searching?

But, if you don’t already know, you will never know.

I don’t mean to be snarky when I say that, no more than Jesus means to be snarky when he says, “I have told you, and you do not believe.” He refuses to give them a direct answer to their direct question, but it isn’t because he is shying away from the matter. It really is because, if they don’t know, they won’t know.

They won’t know because he tells them, “Yes, I am the Messiah.” They won’t know if he wears a Son of God identity badge. They won’t know him by his words, because they don’t know him by his work.

They are like the religious leaders in chapter nine who refused to believe the evidence right before their eyes that Jesus had healed a man of his blindness, because such a thing didn’t fit into their narrative. They had already decided Jesus was at best, a nuisance, at worst, a heretic. They said, “We don’t know where he came from.” As if that would settle the matter.

Perhaps it is this same crowd of people confronting him on the portico of Solomon saying, “Just tell us plainly. Are you the one?” Although this time betraying a degree of uncertainty about their convictions, they are still unwilling to trust their eyes when they see the acts he has done, the signs he has performed. They do not trust the voice of the Shepherd calling to them through his works.

They have not recognized him when he healed the blind and the lepers, when he fed the thousands, when he restored life to so many in so many ways.

So why should it matter what he tells them? If they don’t know, they won’t know simply because he tells them, “I am the Messiah.”

They won’t know because they are somehow unable or unwilling to see him, hear him, trust him. Jesus says, “you don’t know because you don’t belong to my sheep.” It seems like it’s out of their hands. Is it out of our hands?

The strange and paradoxical truth of it is that it is out of our hands, while it is also in our hands. In a way, it’s a matter of seeing him and hearing him because you trust him.

We might look back again at that story from Luke, involving John the Baptist’s disciples, who come to Jesus at John’s request, asking, “Are you the one? Or should we keep waiting?” His answer to them is sublime: Go and tell John what you have seen and heard. The blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised, and the poor receive good news.

And this is what Jesus means when he says to the religious leaders, “I have already told you.” He means, I told you with my life, with every condition I healed, every hungry body I fed, every act of compassion, every work of justice. I told you. And you didn’t believe it. I told you with my thumbprint, my unique DNA, my body, my blood. I told you in a hundred different ways, different than what you were looking for. And you just could not see it; could not believe it.

Here, again, we have the competing desires at play: wanting to be in charge, to be in the know; and wanting to follow Jesus. Independence at war with radical trust.

The religious leaders of his day were at the forefront among those who could not recognize Jesus, because they were swimming in their sense of certainty and importance. And, the truth is whenever we fall into that place of feeling too certain, too secure, too important in the world, we also risk not being able to recognize Jesus. If we stop seeing as he sees.

If we stop seeing goodness, if we stop looking through eyes of compassion, if we stop believing he can make a way, somehow, when there seems to be no way. If we stop believing that his light leads us to eternity, we stop knowing him. Like a sheep without a shepherd, we are lost.

You know there are some things you can’t know just by someone telling you about those things. You need to experience these things for yourself.

Look, you don’t have to believe what you don’t see, because if you open the eyes of your heart you will see his work all around you. You don’t have to follow blindly and dumbly, because if you open your ears you will hear the sound of your shepherd’s voice calling you. It starts with radical trust.  

You know God by God’s care for you, the ways God provides for you, and the way a relationship with God shapes you to grow in gratitude during times of blessing; and patience and trust will get you through the dark valleys. We know God by the ways God cares for us, so we need to let God care for us.

Grace and Peace

John 21:1-19               

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the greeting Paul liked to use in his letters to the churches with whom he corresponded.

In these weeks since Easter Sunday I have been thinking about the kinds of feelings the disciples of Jesus might have experienced after his resurrection. As I said last week, fear was among those feelings, possibly even fear of the resurrected Jesus. But also guilt. They had failed Jesus spectacularly. They let him die.

Not that they could have prevented it, of course. In fact, they had tried on various occasions to stop him from going down the path he was going. He would not be stopped. There wasn’t anything much they could do, short of dying with him.

They weren’t personally responsible for his death. But that didn’t mean they weren’t feeling personally responsible. Perhaps you can identify with that sort of feeling – if you have ever failed someone. Is there anyone here who has not, somehow, failed another?

When we love someone, we feel some responsibility for them. And we feel guilty. Sometimes so guilty that it surprises us to find that the ones we have failed actually still love us.

There may have been some of that going on for the disciples of Jesus during these post-Easter days. If they were human, and if they loved Jesus, they felt some guilt. So when Jesus appeared to them as they huddled in that locked room and said to them, “Peace be with you,” I don’t doubt they were shocked on more than one level.

They were shocked in the same way any one of us would be if Jesus walked through our locked doors and greeted us. It just wasn’t something they expected. But they were also shocked, I think, by his words to them: “Peace be with you.”

He said it twice, just to make sure they heard him. And to assure them he hadn’t misspoken – he really meant it. And then he came back the next week to say it again. Because Thomas hadn’t been there the first time, and Thomas needed to hear it too. Peace, Thomas. Peace be with you.

I’m not sure we always understand just what this means. It means a whole lot more than flashing a peace sign. It means I forgive you. It means I still love you, in spite of what has passed between us, we’re good; nothing stands between us now. We’re whole, you and I. But peace was not among the things they were expecting.

We use that word all kinds of ways, even flippantly. The peace sign is just a fashion statement. It means nothing. We pass the peace in our congregation, but sometimes that means nothing more than sharing tidbits of gossip with each other or confirming when the next committee meeting will take place.

“They have treated the wounds of my people carelessly, saying ‘peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” We hear from the prophet Jeremiah. Too often we use that word carelessly, because we don’t want to have to understand what real peace will demand of us. To treat the wounds with care, to dress the wounds with love.

When Jesus brings greetings of peace to his beloved disciples in that upper room, his disciples who abandoned and betrayed him, he is bringing them so much more than we are inclined to hear. He brings them forgiveness; he restores them to wholeness. Peace.

And he comes to them again at the lakeshore, while they are out fishing. They went back to what was familiar, fishing, perhaps thinking that it would be their future. They were not dead, and apparently were going to be alive for some indefinite length of time, so they would need to figure out what was next. Fishing was an obvious choice – for people who didn’t yet see the full extent of the change that had been wrought.

It didn’t work out well for them that night, though; they caught nothing. They might have seen this as a sign, or not. No doubt there had been other nights when they came up empty. At any rate, Jesus again appears to them, and we can see that they are still not comfortable with the post-resurrection Jesus. Silence. It seems like Jesus is doing all the talking.

But after the meal he turns to Peter. Simon, he calls him now – his former name. The name he had before Jesus anointed him as the foundation upon which his church would be built. Simon, he says, do you love me?

Then Simon Peter and Jesus begin a little dance. Simon, do you love me? Yes, Lord, I love you. Then feed my sheep. Simon, do you love me? Yes, Lord, I love you. Then feed my sheep. Simon, do you love me? Yes, Lord, I love you. Then feed my sheep.

Three times they repeat this, varying the words slightly. And Peter’s feelings begin to resurface during this dance – his guilt, his love, his shame, his hurt, his sense of helplessness, even hopelessness. Lord, he says, you know everything.

Everything – you know what I did, of which I am ashamed. And you know my shame, too. You know all of it, so you know how much I still do, and always have loved you.

As painful as this was for Peter, it was necessary. He needed to face all of this for him to be fully redeemed. Redemption doesn’t come cheap. It costs something.

Grace costs something. We know what it cost Jesus – his suffering and death, a journey through hell and back. We know this grace he brings is not cheap.

But do we know that it costs us something too? And do we know what it costs? It costs us our complacency; the denial of our complicity in the sin of the world; any privilege of hate. We give these things up for the sake of grace and peace.

Christ came to his disciples three times, John says, enough times to offer them his forgiveness, to offer them a chance to redeem themselves, to offer them a path forward. Grace and peace, he gives to them – through his broken body and the blood he shed – so that they may have life in abundance.

Christ came to them three times, John says, but he comes to us still, offering these same gifts.

May you receive these gifts:

May you know that as much as we bear responsibility for the brokenness and the hurting of this world, we are forgiven.

May you be blessed with the knowledge of your part in all things – the sin and the healing of the world.

May you hear the call of Christ to extend his forgiveness, to love his people, to feed his lambs.

And may grace and peace be yours in abundance.