John 21:15-19
May 15, 2011
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.”
I want you to imagine that you are founding an entrepreneurial venture, and that you are looking for an organizing president. What qualities do you look for? Do you look for experience? Do you look for evidence of commitment? Do you try to assess the person’s potential loyalty to you? Do you look for an understanding of your venture’s mission? Do you look for honesty? What are the key factors you look for?
If these are the factors we look for in a founding president, then there can be only one conclusion about Jesus’ efforts to hire a founding president of his entrepreneurial venture, the Christian Church: Jesus was a lousy entrepreneur.
I want you to think about who he chose as his organizing president. He chose Peter, and the fact is that this was a man who had no entrepreneurial experience. He had been a fisherman with little education or experience in organizing anything. He had a fairly shallow understanding of Jesus’ mission. Remember, he constantly misunderstood Jesus’ work. How often did Jesus have to say to him, “Get behind me Satan,” or correct Peter’s misperceptions, or point out Peter’s shortcomings? Peter also had a lack of commitment when times got tough, as well as a lack of loyalty. Think about how Peter reacted once Jesus was arrested. Three times people came up to him and said, “Hey, weren’t you one of the people following that guy Jesus?” And three times Peter said, “Naw, man, you got me confused with someone else. I didn’t know him.” Jesus sure knows how to pick ‘em.
Actually, Jesus did know how to pick them. Despite all the shortcomings of his founding president, Peter did a good enough job that the results speak for themselves. Look at their entrepreneurial venture today. It’s the most successful of all time. The church has grown by about 3,000,000,000% (if you take into consideration all present and past Christians in the world), it has lasted for 2000 years, it has cornered over 1/3rd of today’s world religion market, and it’s operations book, the Bible, has been the #1 selling book for 1500 years. That’s a pretty good entrepreneurial venture.
A lot of the success of the venture has to do with picking Peter as it’s founding president, and it shows the values Jesus looks for in us, as well as in Peter. For Jesus, it’s not about how perfect we are. It’s about how willing we are to change, grow, and to be unsinkable in the process. Our passage for this morning shows all this.
Jesus, who is appearing to them after his resurrection, has gathered the disciples by the lakeshore to teach them. He focuses in on Peter, asking him three times, “Do you love me?” Each time Peter gets more distressed at the question. “Why would Jesus keep asking him?” he thinks. “Doesn’t he know how much I love him?” What he doesn’t pick up is that Jesus asks the question for each time that Peter had previously denied him. Jesus is ramming home a point: “You, Peter, denied me three times when it mattered most, so I want to hear from you that you love me. I have something big for you, and I want to make sure that you are ready for it. I want to see if you’ve changed, if you’re ready for something very hard—a life lived in service to me.” In fact, at the end Jesus tells Peter that he is going to suffer for his service, saying that he will be led in shackles to where he doesn’t want to go. What Jesus says is true. Years later Peter was led in shackles to Rome, where he was crucified upside-down.
What this story tells us is that despite what we may think, God doesn’t look for us to be perfect. Instead, God looks for us to be like water. What does that mean? Think about how water responds to obstacles it hits as it comes down a mountain. It will either overcome the obstacle, find a way around it, or eventually erode it. Water can’t be stopped. God looks for us to be like water. It’s not a matter of where we come from. It’s a matter of how we face difficulties, struggles, and obstacles. Are we willing to always work to overcome them, with God’s help? Are we willing to get up when we are knocked down, look for hope when we are in despair, find God’s way when things look blocked? You see, with God, we aren’t defined by our flaws, failures, or sins, but by how we respond to them. Do we let them defeat us, or do we look to God to overcome them. Let me show you what I mean.
If you travel to the business district of New Orleans, you can find a statue of a woman named Margaret that was erected in 1888. It’s an odd statue, not like most statues you find in a city. Most statues in a city are of military, political, or financial men posed dramatically, showing their great deeds. This statue of Margaret is different. It has Margaret, an older, heavy-set woman in a crocheted sweater, hair in a bun, sitting on a chair with her arm around a small child standing next to her. The inscription on the base simply says, “Margaret.”
The statue is of Margaret Haughery, a woman who died in New Orleans in 1882. By the time she died, she had made a huge impact on the city. No one would have expected her to be remembered in marble when she was born in Ireland in 1814. At age six she migrated to America with her parents, settling in Maryland. Two years later, both parents died of influenza, leaving her an orphan. After a time in an orphanage, a Welsh couple adopted her. At age twenty-one she married and moved to New Orleans with her new husband. About a year or two later, both her husband and her infant child died of illness, leaving Margaret in poverty.
Eventually, she got a job washing and ironing clothes in a Catholic orphanage. It was there that she sensed her calling. One day she went to the head nun and committed her life to helping the orphanage financially. Saving as much as she could, she donated much of her salary back to the orphanage. With what she had saved she managed to purchase two cows and a small, wooden pushcart. She would rise very early in the morning and deliver milk to wealthy people and restaurants, often begging for leftover food so that she could give that to the orphans.
As her side business grew, she purchased more cows and hired people to deliver the milk. Out of her revenues she kept little for herself. She saved much of it, and gave much of the rest to the orphanage. As her business increased, she eventually sold it, and with the proceeds, both donated huge sums to the orphanage, helping them get completely out of debt. Then she bought a bakery. As the bakery business took off, she gave more money not only to the Catholic orphanage she had worked in years before, but also to Protestant and Jewish orphanages.
When she died in 1882, she left $30,000 to be shared with orphanages all over the city. By my best guess, that would be over $1 million in today’s dollars. All from a woman who could barely read or write, but who was willing to sacrifice herself for the benefit of others.
You’ve heard that God helps those who help themselves? That’s not quite true. What is true is that God helps those who look to God. Embedded in the Christian faith is a simple idea, which is that nothing can keep us down if we put our faith in God. It’s not about how good, or perfect, or strong we are. It’s about being like Peter. We might fail and falter, but if our faith is in God, we can overcome anything to do wonderful things.
Amen.
