Friday in the Seventh Week of Easter, May 29, 2020

John 21:15-19

After Jesus had revealed himself to his disciples and eaten breakfast with them, he said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” Simon Peter answered him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” He then said to Simon Peter a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Simon Peter answered him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was distressed that he had said to him a 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. Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when he had said this, he said to him, “Follow me.”

The traditional understanding of these verses is that Jesus is giving Peter the chance to make right his denial of him on the night of his arrest.  I think that the Lord is testing him, too, and preparing him for the trials to come, since after the third time Peter tells the Lord he loves him, Jesus speaks of Peter’s own martyrdom in the future.  We find it irritating to be asked the same question over and over, especially when the answer seems clear to us.  Here, additionally, the Lord pricks the raw wound of Peter’s guilt in a most trying way.  Peter is well-aware that the Lord knows of his denials: “And the Lord turning looked on Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, as he had said: Before the cock crows, you shall deny three times” (Luke 22, 61).  Peter quails from the pricking, but he does not run away, as he did when he saw the Lord looking at him after the denials.  He is shaken, but he does not fall apart.  We see the hurt that Peter experiences here when we read that “Peter was distressed.”  The Greek here is much stronger: elupeíthei, which means “to be in great pain”, “to grieve”, or “to mourn”.  It is related to a word used in the Septuagint to describe the pains of childbirth (cf. Genesis 3, 16).  Peter was not feeling mere sadness; his heart was breaking.  It is as though what he has dreaded has come true, that his Lord no longer believes that Peter loves him.  The Greek verb here is in the imperfect tense, indicating that he “began to grieve”, or that “he was grieving”.  The imperfect is used to a show that an action was commencing or that it was continued for some time, as opposed to one that began and then was completed: “John was going to the store”, as opposed to “John went to the store”.  The implication is that Peter had been grieving all along since the cock had crowed Holy Thursday night.

Jesus does not seem to respond to Peter’s grief.  He simply repeats his command, “Feed my sheep.”  In fact, this is exactly what Peter needs to hear.  Jesus treats him as a servant upon whom he can rely.  Jesus does not tell him to help the other shepherds, or to do some other kind of work, but tells him to feed them, to lead them to good pasture.  Jesus is saying, Nothing has changed between us.  You are still the rock upon whom I will build my Church.  But then he speaks to him of how he will die, that he will be taken unwillingly to a place where he will “stretch out” his hands, in his own crucifixion.  We might wonder at him being led “where you do not want to go.”  St. Paul talks gladly of laying down his life for the Lord: “For to me, to live is Christ: and to die is gain” (cf. Philippians 1, 21).  An early tradition explains that Peter, condemned to crucifixion, did not feel worthy to die as his Lord had died, leading his executioners to crucify him upside down.  The words of Jesus, “Follow me” seem to call Peter to share in his Lord’s own Death.  Peter faces a choice here, just as he did three years before on the Sea of Galilee.  And he makes the same choice now as he did then.  And strengthened by the Holy Spirit, he will be able to carry out the promises he had made Jesus at the Last Supper: “I will lay down my life for you” (John 13, 37).

A note here: Some recent commentators have claimed that there is significance in the Greek words used here to express the verb “to love”.  One of the words can mean that sort of love that friends have for each other, and the other can mean a stronger feeling, and is used  to describe the love of the Father for the Son (cf. John 3, 25).  I do not agree with that opinion, as it is evident from the Greek of John 21, 17 that these verbs are used interchangeably here.  Also, there seems no special significance to the two different words used to describe the animals Jesus wishes Peter to feed.  When Jesus tells Peter to feed his (the Lord’s) sheep, he means to preach to them, to “feed” them the Sacraments, and to lead them by the example of a holy life to live holy lives themselves so that they might finally graze in the everlasting hills of heaven.