A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. When Jesus this is after the resurrection and the apostles were fishing out on the Lake Of Galilee, and they saw Christ on the shore with a fire prepared and a fish cooking on the plain. So that's where the background of this text this morning. When Jesus manifested himself to his disciples and they had eaten their meal, the meal that he had prepared for him, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? The other disciples who'd gone fishing were around.
Peter answered, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. At which Jesus said, feed my lambs. A second time, Jesus asked, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Yes, Lord, Peter said. You know that I love you.
Jesus replied, hand my sheep. Third time, Jesus asked, Simon, son of John, do you love me? At this, Peter was hurt because Jesus had asked a third time, do you love me? So he said to Jesus, Lord, you know everything. You know well that I love you.
And Jesus replied, feed my sheep. I tell you solemnly, as a young man, you fastened your belt and went about as you pleased. But when you are older, you will stretch out your hands and another will tie you fast and carry you off against your will. What Jesus said indicated the sort of death by which Peter was to glorify god. When Jesus had finished speaking, he said to him, follow me, and this is the gospel of the lord.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. We have been listening for weeks, it seems, weeks on weeks, as a little bit at a time of the famous, very notable discourse of our lord at the last supper. And, of course, this follows that, of course, naturally. And it has been laid out before.
And I have been urging you for the equal amount of time when I've had the chance to read these texts in their entirety. You're only talking about three or four chapters. Read you can read this in a few minutes. But you can take the best piece of literature in God's earth and break it up into a few sentences or paragraphs and spread it out over several weeks, and you have simply destroyed it. See, whatever else you can say about the holy scriptures, they are written documents.
That's one thing we're sure about. And they were written after an oral trans tradition. But they it's a written document. And any written document can be can be given any meaning you want by simply a matter of selection, of choice. Or you can lose the point of the document by other ways, by misreading it, by spreading it out, by giving emphasis to one thing rather than the other, and so on.
See, the written word is a very tricky thing as Luther and company have found out. We're getting the results of that more and more all the time. But to come back to this, the whole thing of our blessed lord's discourse to those disciples at the last supper was following him, loving him. Now the word love is, to me, a meaningless word today. The the the new edition of the Oxford dictionary has columns of meanings for the English word love.
It's all I can say. I rest my case. But what it certainly means, in fact, as far as our lord is concerned is, it means follow me, said Jesus. Do you love me? Follow me.
Do you love me? Follow me. There it is. Follow. That's a very concrete term.
Jesus Christ lived. He moved. He had his being. He died. Rose from the dead.
Ascended into heaven. And our lord says, do you love me? Follow me. Follow me. The test of love is discipleship.
And in that and in that discourse, at the last supper, our lord time and again says, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. Well, that's exactly the same thing as saying, follow me. Now another very important point that I wanna make is in all of this. Notice how Peter is given is given a very special place. Why did Christ select Peter in this instance to be asked, do you love me, Peter?
Why Peter? Why not John or James or any of the others? Why Peter? Why when Saint Paul goes up to Jerusalem to consult with the elders? Why is it that Peter is the spokesman?
There no evidence in the New Testament that that any that they had an election, even a USA observed election, a la Panamania. The only thing we know is that the disciples were scared to death. And when Paul goes to confer with them in Jerusalem, who becomes the spokesman? Peter. Peter speaks up.
Just a little point. But if you'll if you read the four if you read the gospels, if you read the the backs of the apostles with this thought in mind, watch Peter, you're going to be amazed amazed at the dominant place that Peter had among the 12 disciples. And remember, he was no saint. He became a saint. And yet, he is the one Christ chose to be the leader of his chosen band and the rock on which he would build his church.
Now this idea of Christ, of discipleship, of love, and of the spokesman for Christ, these are all tied together. These are not separate things. When Christ says, follow me, what does it mean in fact? When he asked Peter, do you love me? And Peter says, yes, lord.
I love you. What does this mean in fact? It means allegiance to Christ. In fact, not merely in some words of lord, I love you. How many wives and husbands have heard that expression from an erring spouse?
It's what we do. It's the act of of loyalty. As Saint Paul says, who love bears everything, suffers all things, forgives all things, Saint Paul goes on and on. That's love. That has meaning.
And Christ says, do you love me? Now we ought to ask ourselves, is this a reality in my life? See, if as long as we think of God as this great, immense, unthinkable, unimaginable, and this is absolutely true, absolutely true, there's not a single statement you can make about God which is univocally true. Not a single statement. Even the little verb is has a special meaning when it applies to God.
When you talk about Jesus Christ, notice, our lord didn't say, do you follow God? He says, do you follow me? Follow me. Me, Jesus Christ, true god and true man. This is the point I wanna make.
Jesus comes to us as the baby of Mary. He comes to us in the concrete aspect, not of some vague, indefinable, unimaginable, inexpressible might and power and glory and all that. He comes to us as a baby. He comes to us as a young boy. He comes to us as a young man at the marriage feast of Canaan.
He comes to us as a man among men, a teacher among teachers, and an authority among authorities. He comes to us from the last supper from Calvary. He comes to us from a broken grave. He comes to us as ascending back to his father with the promise, I will not leave you orphans, but my spirit will come. The point I'm making is you cannot exaggerate Christ's manhood.
There's nothing wrong in imagining what he might have looked like, in imagining what he might have said or done or how he looked. There's nothing wrong with that because these all were facts of his existence of his existence. And Jesus says, come to me. There are our Lord didn't say come to he didn't say come to God. He could have said come to God.
He's God. He says, come to me, all ye who labor and are heavenly burdened, and I will refresh you. And that is our lord. He is one of us as truly as any other human being is one of us, and yet he's truly god. That is the great mystery, but that is our great hope, and it should be our great joy.
Peter, do you love me? Yes, lord. You know that I love you. In the name of the father, of the son, of holy spirit. Amen.