REDEEMING PETER IN US ALL
A Sermon by Dean Scotty McLennan
University Public Worship
Stanford Memorial Church
April 18, 2010
This morning's gospel lessoni is all about Simon Peter -- the great Saint Peter to whom
Jesus said, "On this rock I will build my church."ii The great Saint Peter who was the most
prominent of Jesus' Twelve Disciples, considered the first bishop of Rome, and therefore the first
pope.iii The great Saint Peter after whom the largest church building in the world was named,
located within the Vatican in Rome.iv But Peter seems a bit inept in this last encounter he has
with Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, in the gospel of John. Peter doesn't recognize Jesus at first and
has to be informed of his identity by another disciple. Then he leaps into the water, after
bizarrely putting his clothes on, and swims to Jesus, even though the fishing boat he's in with six
other disciples is only a hundred yards off the shore and comes in too. Then, he has to respond
to Jesus asking him three times if Peter loves him, no doubt reminding him of the fact that he
previously denied Jesus three times before the cock crowed on the day of his crucifixion.
In fact, this passage might remind us of how inept Peter has been in prior gospel
accounts. Earlier in the night before his denial, Peter falls asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane,
when Jesus has specifically asked him to remain awake as Jesus prays, for he is "deeply grieved,
even to death." As he emerges from prayer, Jesus is astounded: "Simon, are you asleep? Could
you not keep awake one hour?"v In a prior boat incident on the Sea of Galilee, Peter tried to
copy his master and walk on water, but instead he sank and had to be saved by Jesus, who then
calls him "You of little faith."vi He's had trouble understanding the meaning of Jesus’ parables,
asking Jesus to explain them, at one point evoking this response: "Are you also still without
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understanding?"vii And at a particularly low moment, when he's not understanding something,
he's rebuked by Jesus in these words: "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me;
for you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things."viii
The Catholic Encyclopedia describes Peter as "of irresolute character...rash alike in word
and act...easily accessible to external influences and intimidated by difficulties."ix Biblical
scholar Bart Ehrman labels him "fickle...vacillating, impetuous, unreliable."x Why, then, would
anyone want to follow such a person, either within the early church in Jerusalem or as the first
bishop of Rome? Ehrman explains it this way: "For Peter, the spirit was willing but the flesh
was weak. That has been the experience of many thousands of Jesus' followers in the centuries
ever since. No wonder it's precisely these characteristics that make the chief apostle so appealing
to those who, like him, want to do what is right but seem unable to do so."xi Peter is the one who
makes a lot of mistakes, blows it big time by saying he doesn't know Jesus after his arrest, and
then gets another chance to redeem himself. As an article in the last Christian Century magazine
put it, his gravestone could have read, "Simon Peter, Fisherman; Denied his Lord in 33 A.D."xii
But instead we have the story in this morning's gospel lesson where it turns around for him. Let's
look at it a little more closely.
Most scholars have seen Chapter 21 of John to be an appendix or epilogue added onto the
gospel,xiii likely by a disciple of the author, after John's gospel had been ended with these words
that come just before in Chapter 20: "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his
disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to
believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life
in his name."xiv Then Chapter 21 winds up again, "After these things, Jesus showed himself
again to the disciples..."xv It depicts seven of Jesus disciples as having returned to work in their
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former occupations as fishermen back up in the Galilee region of Israel after Jesus’ death down
south in Jerusalem.
As the Christian Century article puts it, "It sounds like a failed business venture. As the
partners shut down the computers for the last time, they say to one another, 'It was great while it
lasted. We gave it our best shot. There's nothing left to do but try to get our old jobs back.' But
Peter's effort to get back to his old job went from bad to worse. He and his friends spent the
night fishing and caught nothing. Now he was a double failure; he had muffed it both as a
disciple and as a fisherman."xvi However, a stranger shows up on the beach just after daybreak
and tells them where to cast their nets to catch fish, and they suddenly have more fish than they
can haul in.
It's a reminder of how Peter originally became a disciple of Jesus, as reported in the
gospel of Luke.xvii Jesus had gotten into Peter's fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee and learned
that he'd worked all night and caught nothing. Jesus had Peter put out into deep water and let
down his nets. So many fish were caught that the nets began to break, another boat had to come
to help them, and they began to sink with the size of the catch in both boats. But Jesus said to
Peter, "Don't be afraid; from now on you will be catching men [you will be a fisher of men]"xviii
As soon as Peter reached the shore on that day years before, we're told, he "left everything and
followed him [that is, he followed Jesus]." Presumably with his wife, though, because Peter was
married -- the only one of the twelve apostles to have a wife mentioned in the gospels.xix Paul
also describes Peter as being accompanied by a wife in his First Letter to the Corinthians.xx
So once Peter is onshore with the resurrected Jesus, according to today's gospel lesson,
and after they've had a fish breakfast, Jesus asks him three times whether he loves him "more
than these." Commentators debate whether this means "more than Peter loves the other
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disciples," or "more than the other disciples love Jesus," or "more than Peter loves these
accoutrements of his re-established life as a fisherman."xxi I think the last interpretation makes
the most sense, because I don't think it's in Jesus’ nature to pit one person against another.
Instead, Jesus has found Peter back at his old life again as a fisherman -- the very one Jesus
called him away from years earlier to become a fisher of men. Jesus is here to ask whether Peter
has terminally denied him and given up on the evangelizing task to which Jesus had assigned
him: "You're in danger of deserting the mission, Peter. That's why I'm here. To give you one
last chance to do the right thing. Do you love me or not?"xxii
Finally, Peter, answers with commitment, even as we're told he's hurt that Jesus has to
ask him three times.xxiii Jesus changes the metaphor too as he re-assigns Peter to his mission.
Not a fisher of men now, but a shepherd: ""Feed my lambs... Tend my sheep... Feed my sheep."
The imagery changes from nautical or piscatory to pastoral. Early church members hearing the
gospel of John knew only too well what Peter did next. He went and tended to the church in
Jerusalem, nurturing and building it. He went out as a shepherd well beyond Israel, finding and
feeding new sheep in the gentile world, ultimately as far as Rome. It was widely known among
Christians in the late first century before the gospel of John was written that Peter suffered a
martyr's death in Rome, killed along with Saint Paul, during the time that the Emperor Nero was
blaming Christians for the Great Fire of Rome in 64 A.D. According to tradition, Peter was
crucified upside down.xxiv Note Jesus’ words to Peter at the end of today's gospel lesson:
"'When you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around
you and take you where you do not wish to go." The reading continues as follows: "(He [Jesus]
said this to indicate the kind of death by which he [Peter] would glorify God.) After this he said
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to him, 'Follow me.'" And from then on Peter does follow Jesus -- all the way to his own
execution by the Roman Empire that killed Jesus.
So, in the end it turns out to be Peter who collects Jesus’ disheartenened followers after
Jesus’ crucifixion and forms them into a Christian community. Unless he had done this
immediately, Jesus’ message would not have survived for others like Saint Paul, who never met
the historical Jesus, to continue to spread.xxv Indeed, it turns out to be Peter upon whose rock
Jesus’ church is first built.
For us now, Peter's story has so much resonance, I think, because of how hard we know it
is for us to follow in Jesus footsteps. As Bart Ehrman explains, "It is easy to want to be faithful;
hard to attain the goal; easy to make promises to God, hard to keep them; easy to display
religious bravado when the sailing looks smooth, hard to pay the price when things get rough;
easy to think you'll withstand persecution, hard to stand firm when the implements of torture are
laid out in front of you."xxvi Peter is marvelously human, as I've said: irresolute of character,
rash in words and actions, easily influenced, intimidated in the face of difficulties.xxvii However,
he weeps inconsolably after he denies knowing Jesus. However, he turns back to follow Jesus
after his crucifixion. He's forgiven by the risen Jesus after he professes his love, and he's sent
out to be the good shepherd who will tend and feed Jesus’ flock. Biblical scholar N.T. Wright
describes Peter as coming into a new kind of love than he's ever known before, as hopefully we
can too: a new world of personal invitation and challenge, a new way of life, a new following of
Jesus which is both wider and more dangerous than what has come before.xxviii
For us, as for Peter, the risen Christ can show up where we least expect him. When we
fail in our faithfulness, we can discover "that the love of God is deeper than our denial and the
calling of God is stronger than our failure to live up to it."xxix As was exclaimed in the reading of
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Psalm 30 this morning, "I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up, and did not let my
foes rejoice over me...O Lord, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from
among those gone down to the Pit...Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the
morning...You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and
clothed me with joy." In an Easter sermon, my college chaplain, William Sloane Coffin,
explained that "Christ is risen to convert us not from this life to some other life, but from
something less than life to the possibility of full life."xxx Jesus, the ultimate good shepherd,
didn't give up on Peter. The biblical promise is that he will do the same for us. He will never
give up on a single one of us.
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NOTES
i
John 21: 1-19.
Matthew 16:18.
iii
The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), p. 659.
iv
Columbia Encyclopedia, p. 743.
v
Mark 14:37.
vi
Matthew 14:31.
vii
Matthew 15:16.
viii
Matthew 16:23.
ix
Johann Peter Kirsch, "St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles," The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 11
(New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911), http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11744a.htm,
retrieved April 16, 2010.
x
Bart D. Ehrman, Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and
Legend (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 21.
xi
Ibid.
xii
James Harnish, "Living by the Word," Christian Century (April 6, 2010), p. 21.
xiii
Harold W. Attridge (ed.), The HarperCollins Study Bible (New York: HarperOne, 1989), p.
1853.
xiv
The Jerome Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968), p. 464.
xv
John 21:1.
xvi
Harnish, "Living by the Word," p. 21.
xvii
Luke 5: 1-11.
xviii
Luke 5:10.
xix
Peter Calvocoessi, Who's Who in the Bible? (London: Penguin Books, 1999), p. 147. See
Mark 1:30, Matthew 8:14, and Luke 4:38.
xx
I Cor. 9:5.
xxi
Bradford B. Blaine, Jr., Peter in the Gospel of John: The Making of an Authentic Disciple
(Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), pp. 163-164; Oxford Bible Commentary (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 999.
xxii
See the analysis in The Interpreter's Bible (New York: Abingdon Press, 1952), Vol. VIII, p.
803.
xxiii
John 21:17.
xxiv
Kirsch, "St. Peter"; Ehrman, "Peter," p. 84; Calvocoessi, Who's Who, p. 147.
xxv
Michael Grant, Saint Peter (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1994), p. 166.
xxvi
Ehrman, Peter, p. 21.
xxvii
Kirsch, "St. Paul".
xxviii
N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of
the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008), pp. 72-73, 241.
xxix
Harnish, "Living by the Word," p. 21.
xxx
William Sloane Coffin, as cited in Harnish, "Living by the Word," p. 21.
ii
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