Jesus’s exchange with Peter at the end of John is the most human, vulnerable moment in the gospels. And it is essential for us.
Charles Simeon | John 21:15–17
The gospel we ascribe to John ends with this remarkable and vivid exchange between Jesus and Peter. There is such humble adoration and deep compassion out there in the open. This is a moment of deep vulnerability.
I’m thinking of the times I’ve crossed that vulnerability chasm to tell somebody I love them. How hard it was to say, even as it filled my every thought. This is the stuff of countless romance, teen movies, and literary classics; a timeless human experience of frailty and hope.
Dare I ask you out on a date? We know that experience.
What if he says it to me? (the L-word). What will I say?
Jesus asking Peter at the end of the story, “Do you love me?” After all that came before. It resonates with that heat of human closeness. Of concern and affection. It resonates like a story that is familiar, even as we have no idea what that specifically is like. We aren’t Peter. But we know what it is to answer that question. As a human. The vulnerability of it.
It would be easy to dismiss the humanity from this moment.
We could look with hyper-rational eyes, dissect the exchange, place it into the metaphysical relationship of Jesus to the Christ Event. We could map these three declarations of love against his three denials and see this as the necessary reconciliation for the people of The Way.
There’s an easy thing we do as Christians, to paint these human moments into a crude scientific narrative of cause and effect. A kind of justified distance from the material of it, the humanness of following Jesus. The part that deals with emotions like love and hate and conviction and forgiveness.
We want the rigid certainty of structure, order, and essential truths to do all of the heavy-lifting, like we can outsource the hard parts. As if we could send the human stuff overseas, where poor people eke out a living by constructing our humanness.
It is tempting to do that with this most human of stories. To elevate the story’s theory and eliminate its profundity.
Two Loves
At the heart of the story are two people seeking understanding. It is an expression of great vulnerability and devotion to each other’s well being. It also has the marks of fear, on Peter’s part. Apprehension. Concern for psychological safety.
Jesus asks “Do you love me?”
And Peter might as well be Han Solo saying “I know.” It’s the same protective impulse to avoid simply saying “Yes.” Even, perhaps, out of fear of having to say the words in return. Like another famous cinematic response: “ditto.”
Peter’s frustrated, protective response could be summed up as “of course, yeah, totally. I’m in this thing.” Because he’s afraid Jesus isn’t that into him.
This, alone, makes me feel deeply for Peter. But there’s a second layer.
Jesus and Peter are using different words for love here. And this makes the distance between them seem even more tragic. The depth of the difference gets lost in the translation. We are put in a position to too easily speculate. And yet the difference between what Peter is saying and what Jesus is saying is, at its core, I think, about Peter’s fear of intimacy.
Jesus’s desire for all of us to let go of that fear.
A Story About Communion
Today we remember Charles Simeon, a priest and supporter of missions. Here is what the church tells us about him (p. 555):
It is surprising that a short biography about the life of one of the church’s saints would take such time to explore the inner struggle about receiving communion two times. I suppose it is fitting, if a bit uncommon.
As a writer, I know that this small story sets up the sense of vocation and establishes his evangelical character. But as an offering to the church, it paints a fascinating picture of our practical theology. And does no less than tee up our persistent rhetorical struggles of order versus conviction. A dance in which our public left and right can cast themselves as heroes. Both offering order. Or conviction.
For me, however, I think this gives us a renewed way into that story of Jesus and Peter. One that says we can’t appreciate what this story means without engaging with how the story feels.
The same goes for communion. An act of conviction rather than an expression of order.
Bound by Rules
I’ve encountered people who have so concerned themselves with the rules and the metaphysics of religion that it sounds so…impersonal. Like an exchange so sterile, rote, and without personal conviction that the story itself is of almost no consequence at all.
Something akin to paint-by-numbers. The artistry, the personal, the creative, all take a back seat to whether or not you put the right color within the right lines.
It is little wonder to me that a young man taking communion in that manner would get so little out of it!
And in a very real sense, this is what those very rules are warning against!
Prior editions of the Book of Common Prayer had such rules for the proper receiving of communion, which rendered the working of the heart and mind, in my estimation, lower than rules and requirements. It expected a “correctness” of certain beliefs that matched the rigid certainty of the era.
Simeon’s experience was one many have had, choking down the rigidity believing it is the only way.
Another Way
For many of us, and myself included, our experience of faith is enlivened by the experience of faith! That this is too easily swept into doctrine or doctrinal disputes of high and low church, or catholic v. Protestant is injurious to our witness. Because the power of communion with Christ is in relationships. Messy, human, interactions with an uncertain future.
We are on that beach, being asked Do you love me? Knowing in our heads that Jesus loves us with all of his heart. But its our hearts that are unsure! Our hearts which think we aren’t worthy of that love. The ones who don’t know if we love Jesus in the “right way” or in sufficient value. It’s what’s compelling us to crack open the rulebook to measure the boundaries.
This isn’t a legal battle at all. It’s a personal, internal, emotion-filled conundrum that we are too afraid to face. Jesus is asking a question we are too afraid to answer. He’s asking something of us we are too afraid to give him.
Intimacy. Vulnerability.
The things our culture demonizes and vilifies. Calling it weak.
That is the heart of the gospel and our faith. And it is where conviction pulls us into harmony with God. To overcome our weak heart’s devotion to strength so that we might embrace Jesus’s vision of love. As partners. Equals. All of us are siblings of the Son; the Children of God.