He is risen, indeed. So, what?

(I wrote this with thinking it was my turn to give a meditation at church tonight. Whoops. Like everything I write I feel it is of the moment and so, I grant it to you all who follow me here. Enjoy. Be challenged. Be encouraged. Be about the Good Works He has prepared for you.)

He is risen!  He is risen indeed!  So what?  

As we move from celebrating Easter toward the celebration of Pentecost its important to take a moment and reflect on what affect Easter has on us, or SHOULD have on us.  Is it just another church and food based holiday that after the baskets are emptied and the candy wrappers are thrown away…what remains?  Are we changed by having remembered?  As we observe the holiday do we find that we are observers only?  Are we altered by what we observed or do we just return to our humdrum lives the same as before?

One of the things I forget is that after the Resurrection, Jesus did not just appear to the disciples once.  He appeared to them at different intervals for forty days before He ascended to heaven.  Twice He appeared to them in the middle of them, in a house that had all the doors and windows locked.  For some reason I have to imagine that Jesus got a kick out of doing that.  When He appeared He wasn’t a ghost, or an apparition.  He appeared among them bodily.  

In John 21, after two visitations by Jesus, there was apparently a lull where He hadn’t been seen for some time.  Having nothing else to do Peter appears to get frustrated and tells the disciples he is going fishing.  Five of the others decide to go with him and they spend the night fishing.  When dawn comes they have caught absolutely nothing.  A man on the shore called to them and asked if they had caught anything, and they replied that they had not.  The man on the shore suggests that they should try to cast the net on the other side.  The disciples comply and the net is immediately full.  John is the first to figure it out and tells Peter that the man on the shore HAS to be Jesus.  In his excitement, Peter puts on his outer garment and dives immediately into the sea to swim to the Lord.  Upon arriving, Peter sees that the Jesus has a charcoal fire going with fish and bread laid out upon it.  The Lord invites them all to breakfast.

What follows around the charcoal fire is the redemption of Peter.  There is only one other place in the scriptures where a charcoal fire is mentioned, and that is outside the Jewish court where Jesus was tried…where three times Peter denied the Lord.  On the beach next to the Lord’s charcoal fire, Peter is asked three times if he loves Jesus.  Each time Peter says that he does.  Each time Jesus responds with instructions to Peter on how that love is to be expressed, by him feeding the Lord’s sheep.

In the English translation of the Bible, this three time exchange is pretty straightforward.  “Do you love me?” “Yep.  I love you.”  “Cool, take care of my sheep.”  But when we look at the Greek words used there is something deeper going on than a simple reaffirmation.  The first two times Jesus uses the word “agape”.  Peter only ever uses the word “phileo” for love.

In the first exchange, Jesus asks if Peter loves Him more dearly than these.  What the “these” refers to is not specific.  It could mean the food.  It could mean the fish, the nets, and the boat…his former occupation that used to be the bedrock of his identity.  Jesus could even be asking Peter if loves the Lord more than the disciples that sit with them.  All of them have a special application that is well worth taking some time to meditate on.  Jesus is calling Peter, and by extension us, to a radically greater love, agape.  

Peter responds in a surprisingly honest way.  He says, “Yes Lord, you know that I love you.”  Like a brother, like a friend seems to be the implication in the Greek.  

The second time Jesus doesn’t even use a comparative.  He asks Peter if he agapes Him, flat out no modifiers.  Peter again is radically honest and replies that he loves the Lord with a brotherly love.  

The third time Jesus asks it grieves Peter.  It may be because Peter finally made the connection between the charcoal fire, his previous denial of the Lord, and now the third time he was being asked if he loved Jesus.  It may also be because here Jesus uses a different word for love.  He uses Peter’s own word.  Phileo.  “Simon, son of John, do you love me like a brother.”

For me, this year, this is where the Lord is leading me.  Like Peter, He calls all of us to a higher love of Him, a higher devotion to Him, to cleave ever more closely to Him, His Word, and His Church.  The greatest commandment, which is NOT the greatest “suggestion”, is that we love the LORD our God with all our heart mind soul and strength.  The second is like it, and is what Jesus gave Peter to do…love your neighbor as yourself…feed…my…sheep.  The Lord is always calling us higher, further up further in, to let the story of the Gospel infect our every waking moment and hour, so that we move beyond mere acquaintance with the Lord, enjoying how nice the idea of our sins being forgiven and we get to go to heaven sounds, and into truly having a relationship beyond mere friendliness to where He is everything, where we love Him with a burning Agape that recognizes Him as not “good teacher” but as Thomas recognized just a chapter earlier, as “My Lord AND MY GOD.”

Fortunately, Jesus is absolutely willing to start with you wherever you happen to be on this journey.  He will take our phileo love, instruct us to be about the business of feeding His sheep, and when we cooperate with the Holy Spirit, we will move and be moved towards the agape the Lord longs for us to have for Him.