REHABILITATED ~— RESTORED — REBORN

April 14, 1991

8:30 and 11:00 a.m. Worship Services
John M. Buchanan

- Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture _
Acts 3:1-10
John 21:1-17

"'...do you love me?... Feed my sheep.'"
-John 21:17 (NSRV)

Most of us live most of the time somewhere between our. expectations
of ourselves and the simple, unvarnished reality of our lives. We know,
most of us do, the pain which results when we fail to.live up to the
expectations others have of us - our parents, teachers, mentors, peers -— and
that deeper pain, perhaps the most profound pain of all, when we fail to
live up to our own expectations of ourselves.

Have you not been there?

A long time ago there used to be a day when parents were invited to
visit elementary school. It was called Parents' Day and students looked
forward to it with a wide range of feelings from excitement to mortal
terror. The high point of the afternoon on Parents' Day one year was to be
a spelling bee. It was the fourth or fifth grade. I had been doing very
well in spelling bees, finishing regularly near the top. Unfortunately I
had announced that fact ‘to my mother. In fact I had promised a repeat
performance which would make her proud on visiting day. The moment’
arrived. Supremely confident, I found my place near the head of the line
(my last name always placing me near the front). “The easy words came
first: the first one was “acre." I responded with the full confidence of
a nine-year-old -."a..c..e..r." IT remember: that moment with a terrible

clarity decades later.

Have you not been there? Of course you have.

If you have great expectations, you have known great disappointment.
If you have ever wanted desperately to win, you know how bitter defeat
tastes. If you have held high hopes for your nation, your team, your
family, yourself, you have known how deeply the pain penetrates when hopes

are dashed. [See Ernest T. Campbell, Locked in a Room With Open Doors,
p. 151] i

There was a classic moment after one of Adlai Stevenson's crushing
defeats in his presidential bids. A reporter asked how it felt. to be
defeated so decisively. Mr.Stevenson said he was "too old to cry but it
hurt too: much to -laugh.” oe . oo

and people who preach sermons understand the story about the minister
who traveled to another city to preach a candidate sermon for the pulpit

committee of a very prominent church. When she returned that evening her
husband inquired how the sermon had gone. "Which one" She asked. "The

one I prepared, the one I delivered, or the one [ preached in the car on
the way home?" :

This pain has two sources. The first is public embarrassment, It
hurts to try something and fail, to be humiliated in front of your
parents, peers, your employer, coach, conductor, spouse. The jury is in.
The terrible truth is out. You're not what they thought you were. It
hurts - but it's not fatal. You'll survive.

The second source is more complicated. It has to do with your
expectations of yourself. Maybe you didn't have much by way of
€xpectations for yourself; didn't think you could do much. And maybe it
took a while and some real internal fortitude to have some real
‘expectations that you might succeed. Maybe you had to work hard to build
enough confidence to give it a try. Maybe you created an expectation for
yourself higher than anything you ever hoped for. You started to believe
that you could do it. -And then you didn't. The moment of truth arrived
and you didn't do what you set out to do so confidently: your carefully
rehearsed rebuttal to the argument didn't come out right; you stuttered in
the middle of the sales presentation; you struck out with the winning
run on third; or you never parented in actuality as sensitively and
intelligently as you did late at night when you thought about it. There is
pain which results from not living up to your own expectations. It has a
way of becoming permanent, low-grade pain, emotional scar tissue, if you
will. And it has a way of suggesting a method of avoiding further pain;
nanely.a reduction of expectations, a lowering of self-image, a
diminishment of hope. Better not to expect too much of myself, we reason;
then I won't be disappointed when I fail,

Most of us live most of the time between our expectations of
‘ourselves and the unvarnished reality of our. Lives. And in.that space
there can be a. lot of pain. It is one of the reasons we find the story of -
Peter so compelling, ._He is, in many ways, the most accessible person in
the New Testament. And the account, in the 2ist chapter of the Gospel of
John, of his encounter with the risen Christ is, I have always thought, one
of the most human, and therefore one of the most powerful, incidents in the
Bible. It is certainly one which most of us have no trouble understanding.

American novelist, Reynolds Price, writing in a book of essays about
the Bible, says this passage at the end of the 4th Gospel has. the feel of
eyewitness reporting. :

"There are hundreds of invented scenes in Western
fiction that win our momentary belief. But nothing

I have encountered in a lifetime's reading, surpasses
the simple conviction, the pure-water flow of John 21."
{[Incarnation, p. 64] .

The story of Peter is woven into the narrative from the beginning.
What we know is that he was a Galilean fisherman, strong, rough; he had a_
wife, a family, a mother-in-law: he was aggressive, impetuous; he
~ frequently spoke first and thought about: it later;.-he became the leader,
the spokesperson for the disciples, and with Paul, became an eloquent and
strong ambassador for Jesus Christ and was-responsible for the extension —
and growth of Christianity. What we know about Peter is his humanness. He

4/14/91 a. 2 . /

was a man with a heart full of love and a record of not living up to his
own expectations.

When Jesus invited him to follow, Peter did, without hesitation. He
was one of those the narrative says simply, “laid down his nets and
followed." Along with James and John he became part of an unofficial inner
circle of close friends around Jesus. When Jesus asked them one day who
they thought he was, it was Peter who volunteered, "you are the Christ,"
and moments later it was Peter who demonstrated the difficulty the world
has always had with that affirmation by refusing to accept the
inevitability of Christ's suffering and death. And so it was to Peter that
Jesus said his harshest words, "Get behind me Satan."

He was on the mountain with Jesus and shared an experience of
mystical power and then made a tasteless suggestion that they build a
monument to the place and occasion. He was the one who voiced his emotion
and objected when Jesus washed their feet. On that occasion, the Last
Supper, it is Peter who demanded to know the identity of the betrayer. And
when Jesus predicted that they would all abandon him soon, it was Peter,
bursting with passion and love, who promised bravely, "Though everyone
abandon you, I am with you to the end. I will die with you.” That grand
gesture prompted Jesus to predict that, in actuality, Peter is going to

abandon him too. In fact, Peter will deny even knowing Jesus three times
before morning. ; :

When the guards come for Jesus it is Peter alone who resisted, wha
drew his sword and started to use it. That, I have always thought, was the
moment he would have died for Jesus, in the heat of combat, man to man.

Hours later, Peter alone is in the courtyard of the High Priest while
Jesus is inside, being interrogated and tried. It is late and cold. There

is a charcoal fire. A household maid recognizes him. "You're one of them,
aren't you?" “I am not," Peter said. :
Later, someone else asked, "Aren't you one of his disciples?" "I am

not," Peter said.

"But I saw you in the garden - you were the one with the sword,"
"Damn it, man, let me alone. I never saw hin before,” Peter said.

And the cock crowed and when they brought Jesus out, his. face swollen
from the beating, hands bound behind his back, their eyes must have met,
the last time Peter would look inta those eyes,

He did not die with Jesus. He did not stay with him. He did what
the rest of them did ultimately, saved his own skin, denied ever knowing
Jesus. How very far from his brave boasting, his endearing attempt at
courage, his idealistic expectation of himself,

Peter must have experienced the pain of Jesus' crucifixion more
exquisitely and certainly more personally than any other human being in
history. Can you imagine the guilt, the shame, the embarrassment? Can you

imagine how foolish he felt in the presence of his friends who at least had
the common sense not to boast about something they could not deliver?
Peter, I suspect, was filled to the brim with guilt. and self—disgust. -

4/14/91 3

So it is Peter who says, "I'm going fishing." Translate that...
I'll do something I know how to do. I'll go back to the life I left, the
predictable, secure, low-expectation, existence of a fisherman.

If you have ever enjoyed the luxury of a dawn walk on the beach, you
know that it is a peculiar time, almost mystical. The ocean is often quiet
in the early morning. There are a few gulls, usually a misty fog which

makes it difficult to see the horizon. . There are no colors yet; everything
is asoft, pale gray.

A voice breaks the silence:

"Boys," the voice says. "Lads" - it is an intimate term - "you
aren't catching anything, are you? Try the other side,"

“Who was that?" one asked, in the -boat, annoyed, startled, and
another. one whispered, "It looks like him!"

.And now Peter, working hard, stripped to the waist, dives in and
“swims the hundred yards to shore.

‘There is a charcoal fire, as there was in the courtyard. He offers
fish and bread. The writer wisely does not. describe what they said as
they ate, therefore leaving the impression that they said nothing -— just
stood there around the fire, eating bread; looking down at their feet,
shifting their weight from one foot to the other — waiting... And Peter
standing there with them, having again done something brash and impetuous,
dripping wet in the chill air, shivering in spite of his attempts to be
calm and strong. And finally their eyes meet again and Jesus, speaking to
him, asks: "Do you love me more than these?" It is, I think, a
gentle teasing. "Do you actually love me more than these others do?"

And Peter, damned by the reality of his denial, three times, does not
boast any Ionger. "You know that I love you" is all he can think to say.

He denied Jesus three times; failed to live up to his own
expectations three times. So three times the question comes,

"Do you love me?" And three times the humble response, "Yes Lord,
you know that I iove you,"

And three times, the charge, the commission ~

“Feed my lambs." "Tend my. sheep." "Feed my sheep."

Peter spoke and acted bravely. In the first lesson we heard about
his bold witness in Jerusalem. Peter became what he wanted to be. And he

‘was faithful to the end,. He died, as his Lord died, tradition has it,
‘crucified.

But here, in the pale gray light of dawn, a devastated, guilty, human
being who is familiar to every one of us is Rehabilitated - Restored -
Reborn. : ; ,

Reynolds Price asks:

4/14/91 oo | 4 ~

"How can a rational life yield to an old and
preposterous pamphlet which asks no less than a seismic
change of mind and heart?" And then answers with this
story, "...the scene that most defeats my doubts, that
bears the homeliest signs of straight reporting."
[Ibid,, p. 65]

It is the undeniable humanness of this story (we have all been
there) and the miracle of grace and rebirth. Jesus doesn't criticize
Peter, doesn't even mention his miserable behavior, doesn't multiply _
Peter's guilt by calling attention to the obvious, instead demonstrates
the saving power of unconditional love. Forgiveness, acceptance,
restoration, are the first results of Easter.

And that, I propose, is very good news indeed.
You don't have to live out of your past.

You don't have to live out of your near misses or colossal failures.

You don't have to go on living out of your sin.

You don't have to live out of the shame you feel because you've never
been able to live up to the expectations others have imposed on _-you - or
your expectations of yourself.

You are loved - forgiven - restored - and if you will grasp this: if
you will stand there with that so very human fisherman, on the beach in the
early morning light, with nothing to offer but your. crushed hopes for
yourself, your intentions, your unrealized expectations, your love, you
will be welcomed and reborn.

How good it would be to stop now; to end this’sermon with

gracious acceptance and love all around, to sing "Just As I Am... 0 Lamb of
God, I come.

The trouble is the incident doesn't end here.
"Do you lové me?"

"Yes, Lord. You know I love you,’

"Feed my sheep."

The difference between self-fulfillment in the secular. sense, and
what the Christian faith means by salvation is here. Jesus forgives Peter
and in the forgiving "enabled" Peter to forgive himself, accept himself,
maybe even love himself again. That's what we want from the therapist.

But there is another dimension when Jesus is involved. It! s called feeding
the sheep. a ,

Fred Buechner wrote once: ; -

“This is why we try to make the tomb as secure as we
can. Because this is what he always says. ‘Feed my ~
sheep... my lambs.‘ This is what we would make

ourselves secure from, knowing the terrible needs of

4/14/91 og - a

the lambs and our abundance, knowing our own terrible
need." [The Magnificent Defeat, p.. 81]

So the point of this is not: simply feeling good about ourselves again
in spite of falling. short of. our self-expectation. The point of this is a
- new being, created in the unconditional love of Jesus Christ, and committed
to the tasks of feeding the sheep.

.. the terrible needs of the lambs," Buechner put it. You don't
have to look far for lambs that need feeding, sheltering, nurturing,
loving. All.you have to do is lift your eyes and see the human beings who
need help - lift your eyes to pictures of Kurdish children dying of
dehydration in a sea of mud, the lambs of Jesus in refugee encampments, in
ghettoes, in jail cells, dropped into garbage shutes, in nursing homes, on
city streets, in your apartment building, in your home.

It's not that there aren't plenty of sheep to feed, nor Ways to do
it -

* an offering on a Sunday morning,
* a program to tutor youngsters,
* a sheiter for the homeless, clothes for the

naked, a refuge for the abused, a center for
the troubled and alone.

The point is not merely feeling better about ourselves, nor is the
‘point merely engaging in doing good and showing mercy. The point is both.
The point is becoming a new being - in Christ.

And it begins when, like Peter, we acknowledge our nakedness, when
we know that standing before him we have: little to-commend us. But
nevertheless there we stand, shivering in the cool, pray light of dawn.

And when, like Peter, we know that he accepts us, forgives us,
welcomes us... ; ;

And when, like Peter, we connect that miracle of love and grace with
the tasks and responsibilities of living for others - which is ‘always,

living for him.

That's what Christianity is - the love of Jesus, and taking care of
the lambs. ;

"Do you love me?"

"Lord, you know everything, you know we.love you."
"Feed my sheep."
Tt's as simple as that.

Amen.

— AsMas9l oe 6