Jacob, Jonah, and John

John 21.15-19

John 21.15-19

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.

Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But 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.” (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.”

It is tempting to go with the KJV and say that Jesus was saying “Simon, son of Jonah” rather than “Simon, son of John.” We certainly can’t take an unsupported text to support our argument, but it makes sense that Jesus was giving Peter this one last chance to not be a Jonah. He calls him Simon rather than Peter: his old name, before the rock. Jesus calling him “Simon son of John” seems a bit like scolding a child by using the full name. Jesus is asking him if he loves him. Using his full name for emphasis seems strange. Would you have a last, heartfelt talk with a close friend by using his full name?

So it makes sense that Jesus is saying “Simon son of Jonah” to warn him that he is too much a son of Israel and too little a son of God. He is saying: You are stuck in your beliefs, and that will leave you stuck in Jerusalem. Although you have been the first of the Twelve you are still no better than the others. I want you to love more then them, and more than even you think possible for yourself. It’s easy to compare yourself to them. Compare yourself to me. Love as I love.

I fear you won’t be able to do that. I fear you will forever and stubbornly see Israel as the true people of God and the Gentile as the outsider who will never be equal to the Jew. I fear you will never go as far as I need you to go: to understand that the Gentile is no less the people of God than the Jew. And more than that: that once again Israel will come under the judgment of God and once again, just like in the case of Ninevah, the blessing of God will lie not on Israel, but on its enemy.

No matter what happens to Israel, you, Simon, must stay the course. You have nothing to say about this. God will do what God will do.

Look at the nations, and see!

Be astonished! Be astounded!

For a work is being done in your days

that you would not believe if you were told.

Look at the proud!

Their spirit is not right in them,

but the righteous live by their faith.

Your own Scriptures tell you this is how God is. He did it before; he is doing it now. It is no surprise that God is acting as he always has. Being content with God only when you get what you want betrays a serious flaw in your faith. It is not for you to resist just because you don’t like it. The only thing that concerns you, Simon, is whether you will go with God or go with your people. Can you stand against the faithless? Or must you stand with them because it’s too uncertain and fearsome to go it alone?

Though the fig tree does not blossom,

and no fruit is on the vines;

though the produce of the olive fails

and the fields yield no food;

yet I will rejoice in the Lord;

I will exult in the God of my salvation.

It is for you to rejoice; it is not for you to question. Yes, it is desperately difficult, but others have done it... then and now.

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

I want you to love as I love, and so I am asking: can you do this? for me? Can you love me so much that you can love these unlovable ones? Or will you stand back, caring for the ninety nine but not the one that the Shepherd has gone to find? I am asking you, pleading with you, in pain: can you love me so much that nothing else matters? Can you love me so much that you will do what I say, even though it wars against everything you hold most dear?

Can you count it all garbage? for me?

It makes sense, but apparently the text does not support the idea that Jesus is bringing forward the image of Jonah, the reluctant prophet who had to be literally brought to the edge of death before obeying. And even after obeying he went up on that hill to sulk, asking for death now that Ninevah had been spared.

Instead he calls Peter “Simon, son of John”. Interesting. Perhaps Jesus is doubling down on the humanity of it—Simon (not Peter) son of John (apparently his father)—to highlight the problem. Jesus needs rock, not flesh, and so he emphasizes the frailty of the man he loves: a fraility that is almost impossible to overcome.

In the end, it doesn’t matter so much whether Simon is the son of Jonah or of John because Jonah was not the father of the hesitant; he was only the most spectacular.

Jonah was neither the first nor the last. Jonah was the son of Jacob; so also is Simon the son of Jacob. They both—they all—suffer the same genetic defect: they won’t listen.

When God was angry with Israel he called them Jacob: Jacob the son of Isaac, the man—not Israel, the chosen one: the father of the people of the promise. Jacob was unloved by Isaac but loved by God. Jacob was the second born but was promised the blessing, yet he couldn’t wait and took it by fraud. Israel, a family of one man, two wives, two maids, and eleven children: you couldn’t even call it a tribe, much less a nation. Yet this is the way it has always been with God: one man Abraham and his wife Sarah, two men Joshua and Caleb, one king David, one man Jesus, one son of Benjamin Paul. This microscopic thread could snap and bring the whole thing to an end if even one person failed to keep his place. But it thrived: not because it was big but because it was God.

God, who says, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,” waits for Peter to accept the plan of God without hesitation. But Peter is the champion of the hesitant. We don’t need Jonah to make our case: Peter makes it all by himself.

It is a painful, desperate scene. Jesus is with Peter this one last time, pleading with him to continue his work. Feed my sheep. Love them. Bring them in. Do not despise them. Please Peter, please do this for me. Rejoice with me and the angels in heaven.

Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven.

If you interfere you will suffer for it. Can you not suffer for me instead? The sea receives those who resist: The people of Noah’s day. Pharaoh. Jonah. I desperately want to keep you from this.

If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea.

I have given you everything you need. You have my words, you have my Spirit. Why will you stumble rather than walk?

I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling.

Jesus is in distress. Please Peter, please do this for me. I have sheep. They’re mine. If you love me you will love them.

The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep.

It doesn’t depend upon you. The work of God will be done. But I want you to be part of it, because it is important. It is so important!

Gentiles, who did not strive for righteousness, have attained it, that is, righteousness through faith; but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained it. Why not? Because they did so not on the basis of faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written,

“See, I am laying in Zion a stone that will make people stumble, a rock that will make them fall,

and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

You will die Peter. They will take you to a place of killing and put you to death. They killed me too, but I died for them, not myself. Can you die only for me? Yes, I know you love me. Yes, I know you will lay down your life for me. But if you must die, don’t die for me: die like me. For them.

Greater love has no one than this: that he would lay down his life for his friend.

But I want you to surpass that: I want you to lay down your life for people you’ve never even met; people you might not even like. I want you to sacrifice for people, not because they’re your friends, but because they need it. I love them. You can’t say you would die me and care nothing about them. If you can’t do that, then don’t die for me.

“Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”

I want you to love as I have loved. I obeyed the Father perfectly: now you need to obey perfectly. That is love. Anything less is not perfect.

I died for you, but dying for me in return is not the right response. I don’t need to be saved. They do. If you love me, die for them. They need it, I don’t.

Of course, tragically, Peter didn’t love perfectly. Find one time that Peter says he loves the Gentile believers. It doesn’t exist. Jesus says he does; Paul says he does. Many times. In lavish terms. Why not Peter? Yes, he showed courage, endured hardship, and was devoted to his Lord to the end. An admirable life. But it wasn’t enough, because the measure of love is not suffering or even dying, but obeying.

What God has made clean, you must not call profane.

Peter understood the implication:

God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.

And he told this even to the Jews:

If God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?

Yet, after all this, Peter drops from the stage. Never again do we see him going to the Gentiles, except to interfere. He knew it was his job. With his own mouth he declared he was the apostle to the Gentiles:

You know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers. God gave them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and he has made no distinction between them and us. Now therefore why are you placing on their neck a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.

If it had depended upon Peter there never would have been a Jerusalem Council, for it was not Peter’s work amongst the Gentiles that sparked the debate, but Paul’s. Peter’s converts caused no concern because there weren’t enough to matter. Jesus had assigned him the field, but he stayed in Jerusalem. And shockingly, now that so many Gentiles have come to Christ through Paul that the Jews are in an uproar, he is content to only help decide how to handle the problem! Impossible. Contradiction piled upon denial piled upon absurdity, yet Peter sees none of it.

It is unimaginable that Peter would admit that the ministry to the Gentiles was his and then take a seat on the Council to discuss what to do about Paul’s work! Did the insanity of this not go crashing around inside his head, screaming to be let out?! Imagine you are the pastor of a church and you call a meeting with the elders to discuss a new church building. A member of the church has brought in 200 converts and you need more space. At some point someone in the group must ask why that person isn’t at the head of the table since he is the one responsible for this massive growth. The elders and pastors might even ask themselves why they haven’t also brought in 200 converts. The question has to be humiliating. No less so the answer.

How could Peter watch this unfolding before his eyes without seeing the lunacy of it? Nothing he did required a meeting. It was all Paul. Peter should never have publicly proclaimed that going to the Gentiles was his job. The only thing that saved him from humiliation was that no one else on that Council saw things any more clearly than he did.

Peter started well. He had the calling, the expectation, the opportunity, the equipping. But he stumbled. And so Christ chose another: someone who fed the sheep without being asked again. And again. And again. And then didn't do it.

Someone who loved them, and him, more perfectly.