Do you love me?

THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER
Year C
April 18, 2010 – Ss. Peter & Paul
Human beings are born questioners. The interrogative is the grammatical mood favored by the very young. Parents take great delight in their toddler’s first words and then the delight begins to wear thin as the floodgates of questions open up. One “Why?” leaders to another, with no end in sight. As speech develops, the questions become probing and specific, and the typical 4-year-old is an uninhibited and persistent master of interrogation:
Why does that man have only one arm? How does the baby get inside the mother’s tummy? Who was the first person ever? Will you die some day? What happens when you die?
Soon the child is socialized out of asking questions—at least questions that really matter. He/she becomes discreet and learns subtlety and indirection. At the same time, he/she learns to be cautious about answering questions:
(That is: will my answer guarantee a good grade and enable me to apss the course?” Or will I reveal my deficiencies? Will my answer lead to reward or punishment? Most threatening of all: Will I reveal myself?
Jesus asked questions, too. His first recorded words are a question to his anxious mother: “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” And his last anguished cry from the cross, he asks, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
He had the habit of asking direct, probing questions: Whom do you seek? What do you want? What do you want me to do for you?
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How many loaves have you? Who do people say that I am? Do you know what I [as I kneel to wash your feet] have done to you? Why are you sleeping? His questions always required an answer, and he was willing to wait for it. His questions are never trivial. They get at the truth. They force us to know ourselves. They press us to articulate what we truly want. Jesus asks questions that challenge, open up new vistas, and lead us to the next step.
In John’s account of the breakfast on the shore, Jesus asks his final question, the most important one of all. Calling Peter by name, he asks, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Not once, but three times. He asks it of Peter, who had protested, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” He asks it of Peter, who had cowered in the courtyard, denying everything. He asks it of Peter, whose treachery was more wounding than that of Judas because Peter—like most of us—embodied that unholy muddle of love and betrayal.
It is immensely satisfying to be able to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys, to identify the villains and send them off to damnation. It is harder to live with the reality that, like Peter, we are unable to live up to our intentions. Like him, our love and commitment are genuine. It is easy to imagine his joy as he jumped into the sea, too impatient to wait for the heavily laden boat to travel the hundred yards to the shore where Jesus was waiting. Yet his joy must have been tinged with shame and guilt: how could he face the teacher whom he had denied? That’s something in Peter than I can identify with. Something in us—call it weakness, human fallenness or sin—leads us easily to betrayal, even when we are desperate to love.
Jesus’ question to Peter lies at the heart of their relationship. He asks it with love, but he is unrelenting. Each repetition inevitably and painfully recalls a denial of that relationship. Yet it is hardly an inquisition. It is rather a final, shared meal.
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How can we remember the Last Supper so vividly and enshrine it liturgically in this Eucharist, yet neglect the powerful message of the breakfast picnic? It is a homey scene, with Jesus presiding as cook and host. “[He] came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish.” And then, he institutes the Sacrament of the Second Chance:
“Do you love me?
Do you love me?
Do you love me?”
John Dear has commented that in the original Greek of these questions and answers between Jesus and Peter Jesus invites Simon Peter not just to profess love, but agape, “unconditional, sacrificial, nonviolent love.” The question is: “Do you agape me?” Alas, Simon Peter’s answer, we also note in the Greek, falls short. “Yes, I philia you, Jesus,” he says. Philia is the Greek word for “limited love,” the love for relatives, friends, and neighbors, as opposed to agape, the “unlimited,” universal love of Christ. Simon Peter doesn’t quiet get it, so Jesus asks him again, and again. Alas Simon Peter never offers agape. He tries, and so can we.
But there is no question of Jesus’ love; there has been no breach or rupture in his love for the most fallible of his friends. Our experience of human forgiveness is most often flawed. Even the most generous of us finds it hard to forget, and we are tempted to hold on to a bit of self-righteousness, even as we declare that the broken relationship is restored. Similarly, it is hard to accept forgiveness, maybe even more difficult than to forgive. Shame lingers, even when restitution is made and guilt is wiped out.
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But at the breakfast on the shore, restoration is complete. Peter answers the questions and passes the test. But it is costly. Love is always costly; perhaps that is why we fear it and betray it. Peter is given work to do: he is to feed and tend Christ’s lambs and sheep. There is such balance and symmetry in this part of the reading: the question, the protestation of love, and the command to loving service—all repeated three times. It’s neat and satisfying to hear.
But the story doesn’t stop with warm thoughts about sheep and lambs. What follows is a reminder of the inevitability of loss that is a part of martyrdom, whether ours is the witness of those who face the wild beast or of those who simply go on putting one foot in front of the other. It is a reminder that at some point we will return to the helplessness and impotence of infancy: someone else will dress us and carry us where we do not wish to go. It is a reminder that freedom in Christ is ultimately powerless.
“Phillip, do you love me?” “Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you.” Will I, like Peter, be able to follow?
[Help from Margaret Guenther, in Christian Century, April, 1995; John Dear in National Catholic Reporter, March 25, 2008, via Synthesis. Sermon, slightly altered, given at Trinity, Marshall, MI, April 26, 1998]