Deniers, Doubters, Betrayers

Acts 9:1-9; John 21:1-19

April 10, 2016

I love Peter. He has always been my favorite disciple: the one who never quite gets it right; the one who asks impertinent questions; the one who steps out of the boat and onto the water; and, in the end, the one who says, “damn-it, I don’t know him,” only to discover that it is not, in fact, the end.

For, in the end it will simply be alright, and, if it is not alright, then it is not yet the end. That’s what Peter must learn. It’s what Paul must learn. It’s what we must learn.

I love Peter, but, honestly, I’m probably a lot more like Paul. Paul was a pointy-headed intellectual who possessed a way with words. A Pharisee who knew the texts of his people in detail, and who upheld its law with zeal, Paul had as keen a mind as anyone of his day. He was a clear-eyed assessor of the way things are. And, before his heart could be opened to the way things could be, he needed those clear eyes to be blinded for a little while.

On the road to Damascus, his eyes were closed in order for his heart to be opened. The blinding of Paul sets the stage, ultimately, for his encounter with Peter.

I love Peter because he so richly and fully embodies the life of faith as I understand it. It’s a crazy, non-linear, tortuous path we follow, and it includes cul-de-sacs of denial, dead-ends of doubt, and off-ramps of betrayal. All of that is true.

But all of that is not all of the story, for, as our readings this morning also suggest, the way of faith includes so much more – not the least of which are the weird little rest stops along the way.

The gospel of John draws to its close by way of one such stop, on the shore of the sea of Tiberias, where, following the trauma of Holy Week, some of the disciples have begun to seek normalcy again. They began as fisherman, and they’re going back to the sea to fish again.

They don’t have much luck, and their nets are empty after a night of fishing. I am not a fisher. I have only one fish story and it’s just like what the disciples experienced: losing a good night’s sleep and catching absolutely nothing. Mine involved getting up in the pre-dawn hours to join my dad and a friend of his for fishing trip. We spent hours on a river in east Tennessee, and never even got a nibble. Any taste for fishing that I might have developed was cut short that day.

But Peter and his friends were fishers, so they no doubt appreciated the on-again, off-again nature of the enterprise. Like much of life, one never knows whether the nets will come in empty or full, but you keep casting them.

At that point in their lives, though, the disciples must have felt like their nets would never be full again. After the long, fruitless night’s work, the empty nets probably just felt like confirmation of their now empty lives.

Yet, even in that most desperate and desolate hour, grace abounds. Even when they must have felt alone and abandoned, Jesus shows up. What’s more, he feeds them. Grace abounds, even when it seems as if all has been lost.

Peter, in this moment, is confronted by grace, and it must have overwhelmed him all over again – perhaps just like his first encounter with Jesus. Put yourself in Peter’s place, if you can. He has denied Jesus three times.

This is such a crucial part of the gospel narrative that it is included almost identically in all four gospels. The early Christian community, built in significant part through Peter’s work, felt it crucially important to include his denial of the Christ in all of its foundational texts, its holy scriptures.

Why? I mean to say, that strikes me as strange. When I think of the foundational mythologies of other communities I tend to think of hero narratives. Why, in the foundation story of the early Christian communities is this story of denial and betrayal central? As usual, I don’t mean this as a rhetorical question. I am curious: what do you think?

Yes. The figures of Peter and Paul are foundational precisely because they are such very human figures. They are broken, scared, filled with doubts, weak, and foolish. Yet they are also seekers, searching for something whole beyond their own broken places. They are, in so many ways, just like the rest of us, and, like us, they stand in need of a grace that they cannot achieve on their own.

That is, after all, the human condition. From the moment of our birth, we inescapably need grace. We need the grace of our mother’s breast. We need the grace of someone to clothe us, house us, feed us, and keep us safe. We need the grace of air to breathe and water to drink. All of this is grace. All of it is gift. None of it is earned, and we cannot provide any of it for ourselves. This is the human condition into which each and every one of us is born.

We are not gods, much less God. We didn’t, in fact, build this.

We have cast our nets into the see and drawn them back empty. We face the endless sea as small and powerless. We come back to the shore tired and hungry.

And there stands Jesus, ready to feed us.

But the story doesn’t end when the bread is broken and the meal shared. (A meal, by the way, made possible when the disciples followed Jesus’ instruction to think through their problem differently, to get a new mind for a new time, to cast their nets on the other side of the boat.)

No, having been richly fed, Jesus reminds Peter what grace is for. Grace is for living through our own brokenness, and grace is for living deeply into relationship with other broken people.

Peter has denied Christ three times. What are our deepest denials? We deny our own need for grace, and, in so doing, we have no grace for others. Look around these days, and you can see that such denial runs deep.

The laws passed in North Carolina and Mississippi in recent days? A fundamental denial of the grace of safety for transgender kids, first and foremost.

Peter has denied Christ three times. What are our deepest doubts at the heart of such denial? We doubt that grace is abundant. The Panama Papers story that broke last week? It seems that the very richest among us harbor such deep doubts about abundance that they will go to most any length to bind themselves tightly to their earthly treasures, meanwhile the poorest of the poor are denied essential, life-saving services because the public treasuries are drained dry by tax dodgers in pin-striped suits.   

Peter has denied Christ three times. What betrayals result from this denial? We betray ourselves because we, like Paul, are blinded to our deep and essential connections. We do not see that we are in this together, and thus we betray our relational responsibilities.

Deniers. Doubters. Betrayers. That is who we are, yet Jesus stands before us loving us still. And thus, like Peter, we are confronted once again by the simple question that Jesus poses: do you love me?

Yes, Lord, you know that we do.

Feed my lambs.

Do you love me?

Yes, Lord, you know that we love you.

Tend my sheep.

Do you love me?

You know everything. Lord, you know that we love you.

Feed my sheep.