John 21.15-19

I’ve been a pastor for almost ten years now, and I’ve been a Christian for more than twice as long. And over that time I’ve come to realize that what we think the Christian life should look like is often quite different from what it actually is.

Here’s what we often imagine when we think of what the Christian life ought to look like. It’s not perfection, but a life that could be represented on a graph by a straight line moving progressively upwards. Smooth, straight—not perfect yet, but always going up.

Honestly, that’s not what the Christian life really looks like most of the time. What it usually looks like—or rather, what it feels like—is more like a spiky line on a graph. There’s progression, followed by moments or periods of struggle or outright failure, followed by more progression, then more struggle, and so on. We still move gradually upwards, but it’s not a straight line.

For some people, these spikes are more pronounced than for others—but we all have them.

The holier we become, the more we realize how unholy we actually are. The more like Christ we become, the more clearly we’re able to see just how pervasive sin is, and how much still remains to be changed.

This can be discouraging to us, particularly at a period like Christmas, because we can feel like the beautiful picture people paint at Christmas doesn’t apply to us.

This is our last message for the season of Advent. We always take one extra week after Christmas to reflect on why we’re doing this. If you remember, Advent is the period where we reflect on the people of Israel waiting for the coming of the Messiah. We do this, not just to remember Christ’s birth and be thankful for it, but to help us learn to wait for the day when the Messiah will return, rid the creation of sin and its effects, and bring us with him to live forever in a world without pain, without death, without grief or anger or fear.

In other words, there’s a reason why we read those passages in Revelation this morning: this is the day we’re waiting for. But often this can seem very theoretical to us, very abstract.

I’ve had conversations with multiple people this month that make me think that we would be well served, on this last Sunday of 2023, by speaking not directly about Christ’s return, but about the time in between—the time in which we find ourselves now, when we’re still waiting. Because a lot of Christians will hear a sermon on the second coming of Christ and feel doubt rather than encouragement, because given how their lives are going so far, they’re not sure they’re going to make it. You may not be sure you’ll make it—that you’ll be among those whom Christ will welcome into his kingdom.

So rather than panic about it, let’s sit in it for a little while. The last three weeks we’ve been in the beginning of John’s gospel, when John described Jesus Christ to us—God himself, the Creator of all things, our life and our light, who took on human flesh, lived our life and died our death.

It’s a beautiful picture, but imagine you were there to see Jesus in person, and you let him down, you betrayed him—in person. How would you feel to have Jesus look at you then? How might he react?

That precisely was the experience of the apostle Peter.

Peter: Background

Peter was a fisherman, a disciple called by Jesus to follow him early in his ministry. Of all the disciples, Peter was one of the most devoted, one of the most fervent, and certainly the most confident.

Toward the end of John’s gospel we see a lot of things coming to a head for Peter. In John 13, Jesus tells the disciples what’s going to happen soon—how he’ll be arrested and put on trial and killed. Peter, ever confident, says that he’ll follow Christ even to death, and Jesus says, “No you won’t—before dawn you’ll deny me three times.”

Which is exactly what happens. Jesus is arrested, he is taken before the high priest. Most of the disciples run away in fear. Peter follows from a distance, standing outside the house.

We see it in John 18. Those standing around with Peter recognize him and ask him if he’s one of his disciples. Peter is afraid, so he says no—three times, just like Jesus said.

We can of course understand Peter; he was afraid, and it’s normal to be afraid. Who among us could say with absolute certainty that we would do things differently?

But that’s not the issue. The issue is Peter’s heart. He had been sure that he was stronger than that. He was sure that even if everyone else left Jesus, he wouldn’t. In other words, he was prideful—he imagined himself stronger than he was, and was depending on his own strength to see him through.

We know what happened next. Jesus was crucified, all the disciples—including Peter—were absent at his crucifixion, all but one (John himself).

Jesus was buried, the disciples were in complete despair over it all. Clearly Jesus wasn’t the Messiah, the great King they thought he was.

But then, to everyone’s amazement—on the third day following his crucifixion, Jesus comes back to them. He is clearly the same man—they can recognize him, they can see the marks in his hands and feet—but he has been changed as well, resurrected and glorified, alive once again in a perfect body, freed from sickness and disease and death.

Think of the massive shift in perspective this would have caused. Already Jesus had surprised them time after time, with his teaching, by performing miracles, and even raising the dead. But the dead he raised were pretty much the same after their resurrections as before; this resurrection was different.

The Jesus standing before them now was the sign of something much bigger than a simple bodily resurrection in the future: he was the sign, not just of resurrection, but of renovation, renewal. And not just of one or two individual people, but of everyone and everything that belonged to God.

I imagine the days following Jesus’s resurrection must have been remarkably strange for the disciples. You know that feeling when you learn some bit of information that is so huge, you walk around in a daze, unable to see anything in the same way because of what you now know.

The Conversation (John 21.15-19)

Now—in the last chapter of John’s gospel, John 21, we see a very interesting story, probably my favorite story in this entire gospel, and this is where we’ll spend the rest of our time today. Some time after Christ’s resurrection, some of the disciples were together near the Sea of Tiberias, and Peter decides to go fishing. So they all go out in the boat together, they fish all night, they catch nothing. They’re coming back in to shore, and they see a guy on the shore who tells them to throw their nets over the right side of the boat.

So they do it, and suddenly the nets are overloaded with fish.

John recognizes that the guy on the shore isn’t just a guy, but it’s Jesus, so Peter jumps into the water and swims like a madman to see Jesus. (I would have loved to hear what Peter said when he got to him, all wet, out of breath, while his buddies struggled to haul to load of fish to the short.)

When they get there and they bring the fish in, Jesus cooks them breakfast. Already, this would have been incredible: the resurrected and glorified Son of God serving you breakfast! But then after breakfast, Jesus trains his sights on Peter, for what would surely become the most significant conversation of his life.

Let’s read it together—John 21.15-19:

15 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.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” 16 He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” 17 He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved 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. 18 Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” 19 (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after saying this he said to him, “Follow me.”

Now this is a relatively simple story. Jesus asks Peter the same question three times, gets the same answer,  and gives a variation of the same command.

The question is, why did Jesus ask this question—“Do you love me?”—three times, and why was Peter grieved when he did?

Because that’s how many times Peter denied knowing him.

Jesus was subtly—but clearly—placing Peter directly in front of his own failure, in front of his own pride, in front of his own hypocrisy and sin.

Most of us know how that feels. All of us have disappointed someone. All of us have failed someone we love. All of us have hurt someone who trusted us. And if we’re Christians, we’re aware that all of us have failed God.

But sometimes, the knowledge that we’ve failed God can feel a little distant, like we’ve failed an idea or a principle rather than someone we love. So we need to try to put ourselves in Peter’s shoes here. He has walked with Jesus for the last three years. He has listened to him and observed him. He has had endless conversations with him, and been endlessly helped by him. Peter loves this man more than he loves anyone else in the whole world.

And now, Jesus is sitting across from him, reminding him none too subtly that Peter let him down. Peter responds to his questions the only way he knows how—“You know all things, Lord, you know that I love you”—and it feels a bit like when you try to say “I love you” after hurting your spouse, like you’re trying to say the thing that will make it better, when you know that nothing you can do in that moment will really make it better.

That’s the position Peter is in; that’s what he’s feeling.

It may seem cruel of Jesus to put Peter through this. Hadn’t he been punished enough during those three days when Jesus was dead? Why did he feel the need to rub his face in his failure?

It wasn’t for retribution; it wasn’t to punish Peter. Jesus is drawing Peter’s attention to his failure, and saying what he is saying, for Peter. Peter needed to know—not just in his head, but in his guts—that he would not “succeed” in being the perfect disciple he wanted to be. He would not get there under his own steam, and there would be bumps in the road.

And he needed to know that these bumps in the road didn’t mean he could no longer be a disciple of Christ.

Despite his failure, Jesus’s invitation still stands. On the heels of his questions, he also gives commands: “Feed my sheep. Take care of my sheep.” And most especially: “Follow me.”

Jesus is being very clear here. He is not expecting perfection from Peter. He’s expecting two things.

Firstly, he’s expecting dependance on God alone. That’s what the questions are for. “Do you love me?” “Do you love me?” “Do you love me?” Peter’s failure held up in front of his face, to remind him he cannot do this alone. He cannot love Jesus like he should, or follow Jesus like he should, on his own. He’s not strong enough on his own to get there. He needs God’s help.

Secondly, Jesus is expecting humble perseverance. This perseverance is humble because Peter must recognize that he needs God in order to do anything, and that he must depend on God to give him what he needs; and it is “perseverance” because if God gives Peter what he needs to do what God has called him to do, he has to do it.

This is the part a lot of people have a hard time understanding. By reminding Peter of his failure, and then giving Peter these commands, Jesus is pulling him up off the ground, and setting his feet back on the road: something Peter desperately needed at that point in time. But you can’t be set back on the road without first recognizing that you’ve left it. Jesus is telling Peter, essentially, “Despite your failures, despite your weaknesses, you must continue to do what I’ve called you to do. Feed my sheep. Feed my lambs. Follow me. You won’t get it perfect on your own, but God is here to give you what you need—and even if you fail, keep going. Do what you know to do. Keep going.”

We know what happened next. Peter is a changed man in the weeks and months that followed. He is confident, but it’s no longer the brash and self-centered confidence of a prideful man. He is confident in God’s ability to carry out his will (which is a very different thing).

Peter was not perfect. He made other mistakes. He still struggled with sin.

But he fed Jesus’s sheep. He and the others founded and cared for the church. He wasn’t perfect, but he persevered.

Conclusion

Some of you really need to hear this. You’re looking at these first five or ten or twenty years of your Christian life and you’re doubting yourselves. You’re wondering if God could ever really use you, if how you’ve begun is any indication.

But it doesn’t matter how you begin. It matters how you end.

Perfection is not the goal; perseverance is the goal, and God will help you persevere.

Some of you always feel out of place here because you look around and you imagine that everyone else is doing so much better than you. Some of them probably are; most of them aren’t. You can’t see that because you don’t know them well enough, but we’re all struggling to live for God. Living for God is by definition a struggle, because it goes against everything in our sinful nature.

OK, so people struggle. But you still feel out of place. Because you look around and you see all these smiling people, all these folks who seem genuinely happy to be here, while you’re barely keeping your head above water. You wonder if they’re faking it, or if you’re just missing something, or perhaps a combination of both.

Some of them might be faking it (I faked it for a long time). But I’ve come to learn that more often, that happiness is sincere. Maybe these people are happier in their Christian lives than you are.

If they are, it’s for one reason only. It’s not because they’re better than you, but rather because God has helped them to understand what he expects of them. It’s not perfection. Rather, it’s dependent perseverance, which always results in progress.

Perfection is the end goal, and we will get there, on that day when Christ returns and makes all things new, and rids the world of the effects of sin and death—everything we read during the worship service earlier. That’s where we’re going, but we’re not there yet. So for today, our marching orders are persevere, and progress.

That’s why happy Christians are happy (at least if they’re not deluded, and are happy for the right reasons). It’s because God has helped them understand what he expects of them, that the strength to persevere and to progress won’t come from them, but that they can depend on God to give them what they need to persevere and progress today.

So let me give you a bit of advice. Take a cue from what Jesus says to Peter. When he asks Peter three times if Peter loves him, he doesn’t command him to start a church that would become a global phenomenon and would still be continuing two thousand years later.

If Jesus had done that, Peter would have balked, because at that point in time, he wasn’t able to do that.

Jesus called him to a much smaller, very simple task: “Feed my sheep.” Peter, at that moment in his life, may not have been able to become the foundational apostle he would become. But he could take care of the people God had placed in his life.

You don’t need to concern yourself with what God will call you to do in twenty years, and whether or not you’re able to do it. You’re not, more than likely—at least not yet. All you need to concern yourself with is what he has placed in front of you today.

And you don’t need to compare yourself with where some other Christian may be today; they’re not you, and they’re not where you are.  All you need to do is keep your eyes fixed on where you’re going, and keep marching, slowly but steadily, in that direction.

This is just the beginning, and It doesn’t matter how we begin, but how we end.

All he expects of us is that we run our race, and finish our race, dependent on him, and persevering in his call on our lives.

And since we don’t know when the end will arrive for us, it must begin today.