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Sermon - Understanding John's Gospel - 22nd April 2007
Saint Alban's Epping 7:00am, 8:00am and 10:00am
Readings: Acts 9:1-6, Psalm 30, Revelation 5:6-14, John 21:1-19
In John’s Gospel, concerns about the faith community's future, are not secondary to the Fourth Evangelist, but are an integral part of his understanding of who Jesus is. In the opening verses of the Gospel “And the Word became flesh and lived among us and we have seen his glory, …”, the "we" of the faith community bear witness to the gifts it has received from Jesus. Almost twenty percent of the Gospel is devoted exclusively to Jesus' words about the future of the faith community after his glorification. It is contained in the account of his teaching at the Last Supper, which is called the Farewell Discourse. How will the community live in his absence? What shape will their lives take? How will they endure persecution and the world's hatred? How will they experience Jesus' presence? What will be their identity as a people of faith? Jesus addresses these and other questions with words of hope and promises of his presence. John gives these concerns pride of place in the Gospel by locating them in the teachings at the Last Supper, "so that when it does occur, you may believe".
The stories show the readers what the promises of the Farewell Discourse mean for us by illustrating the disciples' lives after Jesus' hour. The stories are not resurrection stories per se, because their focus is not on Jesus' resurrection and ascension. Rather, the focus moves beyond Jesus' resurrection to the future of which he spoke in the Farewell Discourse. This chapter invites the reader to envision how the community of disciples can continue to experience Jesus' post glorification presence and carry on his commands.
The story of the large catch of fish has important points of connection with the miracles of Jesus' ministry especially the turning of water into wine at Cana and the feeding of the five thousand. The abundant catch of fish and the breakfast on the beach both suggest that Jesus' gifts continue even after the events of "his hour.” This story is a testament to the truth of the community's statement that "From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace". The vast quantity of fish in the disciples' net and the gracious meal of bread and fish show that God's gift is available in the risen Jesus just as it was when he was in the world. Just as Jesus' ministry commenced with a miracle of unprecedented abundance, at the wedding in Cana, so, too, is the church's ministry. Our story is therefore a story of celebration for the post-resurrection community, because it demonstrates for the church that its life is grounded in an experience of God's fullness and unprecedented, unexpected gift.
This joyous story provides the backdrop for the call to discipleship that Peter receives in last few verses that we just read. Jesus' gifts in his miracles are only signs of his ultimate gift, the gift of his life in love, in which Jesus calls Peter, to share. It is important to note that Jesus' commissions to Peter in this story, both to feed his sheep and to follow him, are grounded in and arise out of Peter's love of Jesus. It is in the post resurrection community's love for Jesus that he continues to be fully known. To love Jesus is to know Jesus, because, as Jesus' words to Peter make clear, to love Jesus is to shape one's life according to Jesus' life. Peter's love of Jesus will be shown when he cares for Jesus' sheep, not apart from that care.
The life to which Jesus summons Peter and indeed Peter lived, requires of him an act of love that matches Jesus' act, the gift of his life. Peter models for the faith community the ultimate faithfulness to Jesus' words, because he fulfils Jesus' principal commandment, that his disciples love one another as he has loved them. When Peter three times answers, "Yes, I love you" he is not simply giving lip service to his love for Jesus, but is in essence pledging his life. Peter is the example of who Jesus wishes his followers to be, a disciple who puts no limits on his love, who will, like Jesus, love "to the end”.
What does such a model of love and discipleship mean for us in the post-resurrection community? If Peter is the model, if a life that is willing to embrace martyrdom fulfils Jesus' commandments to his followers, then what about those believers who do not lay down their lives in love, who are not martyrs for the faith? Are they excluded from the circle of Jesus' gifts? It may be some of these very questions that the exchange between Jesus and Peter in the verses that follow addresses.
“Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following
them; he was the one who had reclined next to Jesus at the
supper and had said, ‘Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?’
When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, ‘Lord, what about him?’
Jesus said to him, ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come,
what is that to you? Follow me!’
When Peter, the martyr, asks Jesus about the beloved disciple, John, a man who did not die a martyr's death, the problem of how one loves Jesus is placed before the reader. Is the beloved disciple's witness and discipleship less than perfect because his life ended without his laying down his life in love? As noted, Jesus' combination of rebuke and commission Peter suggests that such questions and comparisons are beside the point. Peter is to be about the business of his discipleship and the beloved disciple is to be about his. Indeed the beloved disciple's witness is invaluable to the life of the faith community.
That Jesus repeatedly calls his disciples to a life of love shaped by his own gift of his life is incontestable; yet not all discipleship will be marked by the disciple's laying down his or her life. The extent of the dilemma is readily seen because the beloved disciple, the figure through whom we, the readers of this Gospel, have a distinctive connection with Jesus, was not martyred. How is the church to live with this dilemma?
It is critical that both side of the dilemma be acknowledged. On the one hand, it’s very easy in the contemporary Western church to soften Jesus' call to lay down one's life" in love, to see it as a figure of speech or an ideal far removed from day-to-day reality and struggles of the life of faith. However, the history of the church is full of people who knew that Jesus' words were real, who answered the call to love Jesus and one another fully with their lives. Nor is such love a relic of the church's past. Love that knows no limits, including the limit of one's own life, also shapes the discipleship of the contemporary church. When one pays careful attention, we regularly hear stories of Christian disciples who give their lives in love: clergy who have stayed at their ministries Africa, knowing that it will cost their lives; doctors and nurses in hospitals and health-care facilities in impoverished and embattled countries around the world who will not leave those for whom they care; martyrs of religious persecution across the globe. It is crucial for us to remember this form of discipleship.
On the other hand, it is easy to minimize all forms of discipleship that do not involve laying down one's life. What, we are tempted to think, is the significance of my personal struggle to live the love of Jesus in small ways when compared to those who lay their lives on the line daily? What is the worth of my witness when weighed against the example of someone's death? The words about the beloved disciple insist that his love for Jesus was not to be devalued because his witness took the form of reporting the traditions about Jesus and not martyrdom.
The stories that we have read today begin, not with Peter's call to martyrdom or the praise of the beloved disciple's witness, but with a story of Jesus' gracious gifts. Jesus gave gifts to all of the disciples in the boat: Peter, the martyr; the beloved disciple, the witness; Thomas and Nathanael, who wanted to see to believe; to the sons of Zebedee and the unnamed disciples, about whom the Gospel records nothing except that they are disciples. For all of these people, whose discipleship would take varied forms, Jesus provided a miraculous catch of fish and hosted breakfast on the beach. Those who will give up their lives in love, those who struggle daily in what may seem the smallest places to bear witness to Jesus’ love, all receive Jesus' gifts. The discipleship of the believing community begins with the declaration and celebration of the gifts of God in Jesus. How we give form and shape to that graciousness in our life of faith provides the measure of how faithful our discipleship is.
1. The sermon constructed using the New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol XII, Abingdon Press, Nashville.1998