All God's Sheep

John 21:15-19            When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ A second time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, 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.’ (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’

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There was a time when I did someone wrong and knew the shame of it afterwards.  I didn’t know if I would ever be able to face that person again; I wanted to crawl in a cave and never come out.  But I knew life would require me to get out and be among people again, carry on with work and the other tasks of life.  I knew also that I would very likely have to face that person again, because our lives intersected with each other.  I just didn’t know how I would ever do it.

I think that Simon Peter must have felt something like that.

It hadn’t been that long since he had done a terrible deed – he had denied his teacher, Jesus, at the most critical time.  After Jesus had been taken away to be tried and then executed, someone said to Peter, “You’re one of the men who was with him, weren’t you?” “No,” Peter said, “No, I’m not!” 

Another person approached him and said, “Yes, I think I saw you with him,” but Peter repeated, “No, I was not.  I do not know him.”  A third person said, “I know you were one of them who was with him.”  Peter cried out, “I do not know the man!”

The worst part of all was that Jesus knew – he just knew – that Simon Peter would do that.  It was pathetically inevitable.

Now Jesus was back, from the grave, back among his disciples.  None of them understood how or why, but they knew they had been given an incredibly precious gift – to be with their teacher, their Lord, their friend once again.  But I am sure that Peter, at least, felt some shame.

Jesus had come to them on the evening of that first day, as they were gathered in their locked room.  Peter lay low that night; not a word was heard from him – which is unlike him, we know. 

Jesus returned to them a week later. Again, Peter kept a low profile and let Thomas, the Doubter, absorb most of the attention.  Let Thomas feel some shame for a change.  Then Jesus appeared to them again on that early morning while they were out fishing, and a voice from the shore guided them to the other side of the boat, where they would haul in a load of fish so great it nearly burst the nets.  “It is the Lord,” one of the men said to Peter.  And when Peter saw this was true, he put on his clothes, because he was naked. 

I always thought that was such a strange detail.  I hadn’t imagined Peter to be the naked fisherman before that moment.  But I wonder this: if he was comfortable working among his peers, naked as the day he was born, why did he feel so uncomfortable in Jesus’ presence that he had to cover himself?

He jumped in the water, while the other men brought the net full of fish in and brought the boat to shore.  They carried some fish to shore, made a fire, and shared a meal together as friends.  And the moment for the encounter had arrived.

Some people say it is impossible to break bread with enemies.  You might start out with anger or tension between you, but when you sit at table together, reconciliation is the only way to share bread and cup.   And this is what happened on the beach that day.  Jesus offered bread and forgiveness; Peter accepted.

But the gestures were not enough.  Words would be necessary also.  Again, Jesus took the lead.

“Simon, son of John, do you love me more that these?”  And here was an opportunity for Simon Peter to make up for his error.  “Yes, Lord, you know I love you,” he said.  Behind these words may have been a hundred other words:  I’m sorry, forgive me; I hate myself for what I did to you.  I was tired I was afraid, I was confused – but this is no excuse; I was wrong.  I love you and I’m ready to forget this whole embarrassment.  Thank you, Jesus.  Thank you.

But all he said was I love you.  And Jesus replied, “Feed my lambs.” 

And then he asked again, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”  And Peter was surprised at the repetition, a second time he would have to declare his love?  But he simply said again, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” 

“Then tend my sheep.”

And one more time – a third time – he asked, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”  And Peter felt crushed by the weight of his sin and his debt to Jesus.  Would he ever be freed from the burden of his betrayal?  Would his teacher, his Lord, his friend, ever have faith in him again?  With a heavy heart Peter answered, “Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you.”  And Jesus replied, “Then feed my sheep.”

Feed my sheep. 

And perhaps it was only at this moment that Simon Peter heard what Jesus was saying to him.  Perhaps it was only in the repetition that Peter was able to understand the meaning of his forgiveness and the meaning of this love he had three times declared.  Perhaps only now could Peter see both the gift and the charge he had been given.

Feed my lambs; tend my flock; feed my sheep.  Three ways of saying to Peter this is what it means to love me – love the ones I love.  All of them.  Feed my lambs; tend my flock; feed my sheep.

Care for them – the youngest to the oldest, the silliest to the wisest, the healthiest to the sickest. 

Love them – the tiny insecure flocks and the largest most self-important flocks.  These are the ones I love and I ask you to love them too.

This is what love is: you don’t pay it back, but you pay it forward.  This is what forgiveness is: you don’t dwell in the past, but you move into the future.  This is what reconciliation is: you don’t let shame create a barrier between us, but you bare your heart and soul to the hearts and souls of all my people and together you create my church.

It had to be Peter who rejected him three times, and it had to be Peter who affirmed his love to him three times and who received the charge that is Christ’s charge to his church: Feed my lambs, tend my flock, feed my sheep.  It had to be Simon Peter, the rock on whom Christ’s church is built, because through him, through the church, we are invited to profess our love for Jesus and receive our charge to tend to Christ’s sheep. 

Do you love him?  Then show your love by loving the little lambs – the ones who sing for us and the ones who refuse to sing; the babes in arms who cry loudly enough to disrupt the sermon; the children who won’t sit still and the ones who ask too many questions.

Do you love him?  Then show your love by tending the sheep – the ones who sulk and don’t want to play the game according to our rules; the ones whose idea of a good time in worship is very different from our idea of a good time in worship; the ones who are not at all sure they want to make a commitment to the institution that belongs to their parents and grandparents. 

Do you love him?  Then show your love by feeding all the sheep – the ones who are longstanding members of our own flock and the ones who stand outside, unsure if there is a flock who will care for them.  Feed his sheep.

He said it once, he said it twice, he said it three times. Show your love to me by loving the ones I love.  Love is the hardest thing of all, but it is the only thing that makes a difference.

Love him.  Love his sheep, here, there, and everywhere.  And teach them to love as we have been taught to love – in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Friends

John 15:9-17  As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

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I call you my friends, he says.  How does that feel to you?  Do you want Jesus as your friend?

I know you want to be polite; you would never want to say anything to Jesus that would offend him.  But is friendship the relationship you want to have with Jesus?  When we think of all the different kinds of relationship we could have with him – Lord, Savior, Guide, Teacher, King – is friendship the one we want?

Remember when that guy or girl said to you, “I like you … as a friend,” and your heart felt crushed?  Sometimes friendship feels like second best.  There is a phrase that people often use about friendship:  He is just a friend.  Just a friend, as if to suggest that being a friend is a paltry thing. 

You can look at friendship from all different angles – I have tried to do that over the past week.   One thing I keep returning to is that friendship seems a childlike thing.  Let me explain what I mean by that. 

When we are young, friendship is everything.  For a young child, friendship is fairly indiscriminate.  Anyone who is on the playground at the same time you are can be your friend.  But as older children and teens, you become more selective because friendship takes on more weight.  Your friends are the people who understand you, unlike your family.  Your friends are the people with whom you share an equal footing and have the freedom to learn together, from one another, how to be the person you will become.  Friendship is exciting in youth, and very meaningful.

I noticed when I was working on a college campus that the first weeks on campus for new freshmen was a critical period for making friends.  They have some anxiety about establishing friendships because they are walking into a new world, leaving old friendships and family behind.  Some of them are ready to shed an old persona and remake themselves; finding a circle of friends will help them do that.

One year some students I worked with created a sermon on the subject of friendship, and they articulated seven distinct levels of friendship.  They drew a diagram that looked like a bulls eye target.  The weakest levels of friendship were on the outer rings and the deeper levels were nearer the center.  It was surprisingly detailed – something, I think, only young people could create.  Friendship is to young adults like snow is to Eskimos: something so central to their existence they are acutely aware of all the nuances. 

As I watched and listened to them working, I didn’t know if I could have distinguished seven separate levels of friendship.  At my advanced age, I have allowed friendship to recede into the background.  It’s something that can be pushed back by other relationships – marriage, children, work colleagues. 

While we continue to have friendships all our lives, they change over time, as our lives change.  They are the relationships we choose, more than any other kind of relationship.  We don’t choose our family; we don’t choose our coworkers or our neighbors.  But we choose our friends and, in a sense, we choose to continue or not to continue our friendships every day.  Friendship is a free will relationship in the truest sense, meaning they are the ones we are free to choose.

And the fact that we are free to move in and out of these relationships means that they are at risk in a way other relationships aren’t.  When life responsibilities press in on us, our friendships can give way. 

We have to figure out if friendships are valuable to us.  If they are not, we let them go.  We just stop calling them.  We break plans with them because “something came up.”  We forget their birthdays and other things that were once important to us.  When life gets busy, it is all too easy to neglect the free will, voluntary relationships.  They’re not required – they’re optional. 

We know that friendships need to be cared for if they are valued.  They need attention and time to stay in good working order.  Friendship is the kind of thing that you need to take care of all the time if you want it to be there for you when you need it.  Or one day you realize that you are lonely.  When you just want someone to hang out with, someone to share a pizza with, and there is no one you can call.  You wonder what happened to the friendships you used to have.  You let them go.  You just let them go.

We talked about friendship a little bit at the roundtable this week and agreed that the highest level of friendship is one that can be described this way: they will be there for you.  These are the people you can call in the middle of the night in a crisis and they will take your call.  They will come running if you need them to.  These are the people who will do whatever you need them to do if it is in their power to do it.

These best friends don’t have to ask why you need them at 3:00 in the morning.  If you do, you do.  They will be there for you.  You can ask anything of these friends – anything at all – and you can be sure they will come through for you.  They will be there for you – anytime, anywhere.

A friend is someone who would lay down his life for you.

And, in truth, we know that even if we do neglect these relationships, because life gets in the way, the true friends will still be there for you.  When we lived in Iowa City, more than 20 years ago, I had a friend – Randy.  Randy was a person I could ask anything of.  When we moved to Pennsylvania, we kept in touch for a while but … you know how hard it is to maintain a relationship over 900 miles? 

In the past 15 years, I would guess I have spoken to her three, maybe four, times.  But we have made plans to see each other again soon and I know how precious that time will be.  In spite of the distance, she is still my friend.  I know that she will greet me with open arms.

Jesus says, “I do not call you servants any longer, but I have called you friends,” and in this we know the value of what we are being offered.  When we talk about friends as being the people who will do anything for us, there is an implicit understanding that it goes both ways.  Just as they would do anything for us, we would do anything for them.  That is to say it’s not a master-servant relationship.  It is a friendship.

To call Jesus our friend may not be the first thing that comes to mind when we think of our relationship with him.  But calling him friend makes us realize some valuable things about our relationship with him.

• ·      He regards us as partners in the shared work of the kingdom. The work that he has started, he has appointed us to continue.  He encourages us to abide in him and thereby we are enabled to bear fruit in his name. 
• ·      He chose us; and he invites us to choose him.  This is a friendship, a free will relationship.  No one of us is forced to be here, to seek him out and cultivate a relationship with him and with others in his name.  We can choose to be or not to be his friend.  But he chooses us.
• ·      Like a good friend, he wants us to be close to him always.  He wants to share our daily life with us.  But even if we wander off because more pressing things get in the way, he will be there when we need him, free with forgiveness and love.  He is one of those true friends who will greet us with open arms, no matter how many years.

And when after an absence you find yourself back in his arms you think, “Why did I let this go all these years?  Why did I deny myself this joy?  A friendship with Jesus is worth maintaining.

Friendship comes more easily in childhood; this is something I have learned.  But as we grow older, friendship becomes a rare and wonderful thing.  In friendship we share all the burdens and joys of life, making the burdens less burdensome and the joys more joyful.  Christ calls us his friends and calls us to befriend one another in his name – this is how we show our friendship to him.  Here, in this place, we are invited to be friends to one another, in his name and for his sake. 

I call you my friends, through Jesus Christ, our true vine, the one who laid down his life for us.  We will be there for one another even when we are hard to be with, as we sometimes are.  We will love and respect one another even when we disagree or disappoint, as we sometimes do.  We will support one another in becoming the persons God has intended for us to be. 

There is no greater love than to be a friend.

Apart from Me

John 15:1-8    ”I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

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It’s in our nature to become attached.  We get attached to people and things, ideas and habits. 

It’s not even just humans who become attached.  One of the classic studies you learn in the psychology of development is about baby ducks.  Newborn ducks and geese become attached – hard-wired attached – to the first moving creature they lay their eyes on after birth.  Normally, it’s their mother, but they can inadvertently get attached to something or someone else. 

It’s been studied extensively in human development – the psychology of attachment.  It explains why toddlers go through that period when they cry so hard every time Mom leaves them.  Even though they never did it before, suddenly they just fall apart when Mom leaves the room.  It’s because now they are aware that this person they are fully dependent on is walking away and might never come back.  They cling to Mom as if it were a life and death matter. 

And for the rest of our lives we continue to make attachments, because it’s in our nature to attach.  It’s one of the ways we most clearly see that we are social animals.  In the beginning, according to the book of Genesis, God could see that it was not good for the man to be alone.  Adam needed a companion, so God created one for him. 

We make attachments and we break them – and some attachments are healthy and others are unhealthy … even destructive.  Breaking attachments usually is very painful because it’s like losing a part of yourself.  Nonetheless, some attachments should be broken.

There’s a song by The Avett Brothers that begins, “I was scared but couldn’t admit it; each root planted out of fear.”  Part of growing up is figuring out your attachments – the good ones and the bad ones and letting go of the bad ones.  Actually, even when we grow up we still struggle with this; we still sometimes make attachments that are unhealthy.  And one of the reasons we make and keep these bad attachments is fear.

Fear can keep us clinging to someone or something that is preventing us from growing.  Bad relationships, bad habits, even bad beliefs we might cling to out of fear, just because it’s what we know.

And I think about attachments, both good and bad, healthy and unhealthy, as I think about these words from John’s gospel:  “I am the vine and you are the branches.  Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”

And he continues, telling us that there will be pruning, because pruning is good for us, whether we like it or not.  Gardeners know that good pruning will promote fuller growth and fruitfulness.

And he goes on to tell us that those who do not abide in him are useless, dead branches that will be thrown into the fire, because that’s all they are good for.  He is the life source.  Apart from him there is nothing. 

And I think about how pruning is painful, asking us to part with some things and relationships and ideas that are dear to us but, ultimately, harmful to us.  If we will stay attached to the vine that is our source of life, we will have to let go of some of the attachments that do more harm than good.

And say goodbye to old selfish ways of thinking and being in the world: letting go of old prejudices that tell us some people are inherently less worthy than others – because there is no way that kind of thinking can co-exist with the life of the vine.  Turning away from addictions – those things that take on a god-like status for us, becoming more important than anyone or anything else because we need them too much to even think straight. 

And I know how incredibly hard it is to submit to the pruning, the letting go of attachments to comforts and rigid ideas and hatreds – yes, hatreds, because they have served us well.  We learn from an early age to divide the world into us and them, those we can trust and those we cannot, those who think and speak and act the way we do and those who do not, those who have had the same experiences as us and those whose experience of life is completely foreign to us.  We have learned to divide and to hate because these things have served us well; they have kept us safe.  But ultimately, they serve us badly, and we are asked to give it up, all for the love of the vine.  All for the love of the vine, because apart from him we can do nothing, apart from him we are nothing.

And I wonder: even though I know it’s essential, even though I know the truth of what he says, how can I possibly abide in the vine so fully that all the bad growth falls away?  John says perfect love casts out fear, and by this I know how far I still am from perfect love.

Like little children, we attach to things.  Like baby ducks and geese, we sometimes blindly follow whatever it is that moves.  But one day we face the truth that if we really want life in all its fullness we have to let go of the things that hold us back.  And we feel like the trapeze artist in mid air who has to let go of one swing to take hold of the next one – there is the possibility of falling.

Out there among all the things you can grab onto, there is the true vine.  The one who asks you to abide in him and to allow his words to abide in you because in him you can bear much fruit but apart from him you can do nothing.  And, yes, it involves pruning.  Pruning is always necessary for good fruit.

He asks us to let go of the judgments that promote hate and death and to abide in him to grow in love and compassion.  Love one another even when the loving is hard.  Especially when the loving is hard.

He asks us to let go of fear that prevents us from growing in love – the kind of love that shows itself in truth and action, as John says. 

I know that this is a tall order.  I know that it is asking a lot.  No one of us can change the world and make it a more loving place.  But each one of us can take care of our own tiny branch – that’s all. Tend to your own pruning, casting off the bad growths as you are able.  Each one of us can draw on the strength of the vine to give us courage and wisdom to do the pruning we need to do.  He assures us that when we abide in him and his words abide in us we can ask for whatever we wish.  If we are abiding in him and he is abiding in us, our wishes will not be for a Mercedes Benz. 

And together we can take care of this larger branch, our church.  We can discern what pruning is necessary and draw strength from the vine and from one another for the hard work.  It’s what we are here for – the pruning, the growing, the fruit-bearing.  The abiding in the vine makes it all possible.

And apart from him we can do nothing. 

I know we can’t change the world.  All we can do is tend to our own twigs and branches.  So let us each do that.  Let us abide in the vine, for in him is life, in him is the power of love, in him is the glory of God.