So when they had dined, Jesus saith
to Simon Peter,
Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me
more than these?
He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou
knowest that I love thee.
He saith unto him, Feed my lambs.
John
21 culminates St. John’s Gospel with an appearance of Jesus to His Disciples in
the course of their normal daily vocations by a miraculous catch of fish at His
direction, and a sending of the Disciples into a new vocation of tending His
people. What Jesus had told them earlier
in His ministry about making them fishers of men, He now accomplished by
shifting their focus from merely secular vocational duties into spiritual
vocational duties. Their previous professions,
though good and wholesome and useful, would take a back seat to their higher
vocation to bear the Word of Christ, and to feed His people by it as He had fed
them.
In
the course of this teaching, Jesus took St. Peter aside and helped him see what
would motivate such selfless service:
the selfless, sacrificial love of God reflected in them. Peter seemed not to fully understand this
immediately, though his life demonstrated it later in the Book of Acts and his
own Epistles: the agape love of God, a
selfless and sacrificial love made clear in the Cross of Christ for the sins of
the world, was met by Peter with claims of philo, or brotherly love. Eventually, on the third interrogation, Jesus
condescended to Peter’s brotherly affection with the same direction: feed my sheep, tend to my people. This is what Peter would do, as he grew into
the love and mercy and grace of Jesus, and after the Holy Spirit fell upon them
all at Pentecost.
As
if to demonstrate Peter’s continuing need for guidance, Jesus rebuked Peter’s curiosity
into the future fates of the disciple who betrayed Jesus, and of John who
reclined with Jesus at the Last Supper. Since
Jesus had just indicated that Peter would end his life aged and weak, at the
mercy of those who would martyr him, Peter turned his interest to the fate of
other disciples. In a kind of hyperbole,
Jesus asked Peter what business it was of his, if Jesus intended John to never
die at all—something other gossipers would turn into a false legend that John
had to correct. The lesson for Peter, as
for all those with more curiosity about other people than their own
responsibilities, is to simply follow Jesus.
And
that was the Easter message John left at the end of his Gospel: Follow Jesus!
His Word alone would give life, as Jesus alone was the Way, the Truth,
and the Life. Only Jesus had
accomplished the Vicarious Atonement for the sins of the whole world, and only
Jesus had demonstrated His full humanity and divinity by dying and rising from
the dead, just as He said He would do. Jesus
alone is the full revelation of the agape love of God which lifts our best
attempts at brotherly love into an entirely new reality, and gives His people
hearts and minds to serve Him by caring for each other. None other than Jesus was the Savior of the
World, the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords—and no one else should more capture
the curiosity and focus of a disciple of Jesus, than Jesus Himself.
In
this Easter season, the Church is called once again to follow unreservedly the
Risen Lord; to hear His Word, receive His gifts of forgiveness, life, and
salvation, and to love each other as Jesus has loved them. Such a resurrection of our fallen hearts,
minds, and souls is a greater miracle than abundant fishing, and by His Word
and Spirit we are made to serve Him in His image, as each sinner-saint works
out his own salvation in Faith and Repentance before the same Savior—a salvation
that comes to all by grace, through faith, in Christ alone. Soli Deo Gloria! Amen.
