“A Fire of Burning Coals”
John 21:1-19
Are there any smells that bring back memories for you?
Perhaps it is the scent of the perfume your grandmother used to wear.
For some, it might be the smell of freshly cut grass.
A friend once told me that he can hardly stand the smell of “musty books” because it reminds him of the first day of school.
The smells of Fall bring back memories for me:
The smell of wood burning in chimneys, leaves which crackle underfoot, and cool air on my cheeks can make me feel like a kid again and I want to run and jump and live!
Sometimes smells can trigger bad memories as well, memories from the past that we would rather forget.
Either way, smells do have the ability to transport us to a different time and place.
And I think that is one of the things that is going on in our Gospel Lesson for this morning.
And it begins with a charcoal fire.
Back in John Chapter 13 Peter insists: “Lord, I will lay down my life for you.”
But Jesus answers: “I tell you the truth, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.”
And sure enough, after Jesus is arrested and as the High Priest is questioning Him we watch helplessly as Peter denies even knowing Jesus.
And then the rooster crows.
And it all happens around a charcoal fire.
Think back to the smell of that fire.
Think about the memories it conjured up for Peter as the smoke rose through the air.
After denying Christ, the writer of Mark tells us that Peter “broke down and wept.”
And even though the Resurrected Christ has already appeared to him twice…
…Peter is still a broken and crushed man as are the other disciples.
I mean, the opening scene of our Gospel Lesson for this morning kind of reminds me of the days after a funeral.
Everyone just mills around in a sad fog without a strong sense of purpose.
Finally, Peter throws up his hands and says, “Enough with this, I’m going fishing.”
The other disciples go with him.
And even though they are expert fishers, they catch nothing!
What a low point in the life of these guys—especially Peter.
It’s been suggested that Peter felt guilty for having denied Christ.
I think it goes beyond that.
I think Peter felt shame.
Shame is different than guilt.
Guilt is focused on behavior, as in: “I did something bad.”
Shame is focused on self, as in: “I am bad.”
We all feel shame at some point or another.
We can experience fleeting shame by burping too loud in a crowded elevator.
Or we can feel chronic shame, thinking that, as a whole person, we are flawed and inferior.
Have you ever felt this way?
Perhaps you feel this way now.
“When they had finished eating,” and the coals on the fire were still hot and giving off that smoky smell that brought Peter’s most shame-filled memories to the very forefront of his mind, Jesus said, “Simon, son of John, do you truly love me?”
At first, his response to Jesus’ questioning seems evasive.
He doesn’t say, “I love you,” but only, “You know that I love you.”
And it makes sense when we really think about it.
After-all, in the past Peter had boasted to Jesus about how devoted he was to Him and how much he loved Him, but then when the rubber met the road he failed Him miserably.
Was Peter even sure if he loved Jesus?
I mean, how could he love Christ and deny Him all at the same time?
“Do you love me?”
Let’s all allow that question from Jesus to be directed at ourselves this morning.
“Do you love me?”
Sometimes my failures and feelings of shame can cause me to question my love for Jesus.
I have failed God in countless ways and so many times.
How about you?
When this question is put to us, perhaps there are times when the most certain response we can make to God is not “I love you,” but “You know I love you.”
And when we do that we are relying not on our knowledge of ourselves, but on God’s knowledge of us.
We aren’t relying on our own ability to love by on God’s grace.
I have experienced this when I have dealt with persons in the hospital or in life or death situations.
I may be going through a time, when, I myself don’t know what I am thinking or feeling, but then I am confronted with another human being in need and I feel God’s love for them, and thus for me as well, as I reach out to them in faith.
Does that make sense?
Whatever Peter thinks he knows about himself, Jesus does indeed know that Peter loves Him.
He knows all things—even the fact that Peter will be faithful to God all the way to his death.
This conversation between Jesus and Peter is one of the most awesome conversations in the Bible.
And the most remarkable thing about it is that Jesus gives Peter jobs to do that will, over Peter’s lifetime, prove to Peter that he does indeed love Jesus!
“Feed my lambs.”
“Take care of my sheep.”
“Feed my sheep.”
Could it be that our love for Christ is so inseparable from our love for others that it is only in loving and caring for other human beings that we find out that we love Jesus?
Remember what Jesus says in the final judgment scene in Matthew Chapter 25: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.”
It’s as if our denials of God, in whatever form those denials take, are somehow redeemed by our loving encounters with God in the hungry, the poor, the suffering.
In 1 John Chapter 4 it says: “We love because [God] first loved us,” and, “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God, because God is love.”
We are told that Jesus appeared to the disciples many times over a period of forty days after His Resurrection and gave them “many convincing proofs that he was alive.”
Why did Jesus do this?
Could it be that He knew the depth of their grief and shame?
Could it be that even after the disciples were able to rejoice and believe that “Jesus is Alive,” it took time for them to heal and become strong enough to learn that they not only believed in Jesus, but they also loved Him and thus themselves and others as well?
When I was a teenager, I lost my way.
After high school, I moved out to California for a year and attended a community college.
It was during this time that I had a radical born-again experience as I totally and fully gave my life to Jesus.
I was sure—beyond a shadow of a doubt—that from that point on I would be living full-throttle for God.
I never dreamed that I would move back home a year later, and turn my back on my faith and my decision to follow Jesus.
But I did.
And thus, I began a ten-year period of shame and trying to regain the faith I thought I had lost.
After college and a short career as a television news reporter, I opened up a Rock and Roll Tee-Shirt Shop in a mall.
This tee-shirt shop was an instant success.
It was located right next to the biggest high school in town and after school kids would spend hours hanging out in my store.
During school, the kids who were skipping class would hang out in my store, and on the weekends, the kids whose parents seemed to use the mall as a baby-sitter would be in my store all day.
And as I came to know these kids and hear their stories, day in and day out, I began to really worry about them and care about them.
During this time, the most popular rock star for these kids was a guy named Marilyn Manson.
I sold more Marilyn Manson tee-shirts, stickers, patches, watches, hats—you name it—than all the other bands combined.
One night, Marilyn Manson, who claimed to be a Minister in the Church of Satan, was on the MTV Music Video Awards.
Before he sang his song, he got up in something that looked like a pulpit, tore up a Bible and said something to the effect of: “Christians are a plague on this earth and who would want to go to heaven anyway you would just be surrounded by a bunch of…” and you can fill in the blanks.
To say I was conflicted when I saw this is an understatement.
This was the guy who these troubled kids looked up to.
This was the guy that I was making most of my money of off.
That night, I made a decision that I was no longer going to sell Marilyn Manson merchandise in my store.
At the very least, I did not want to be part of the problem in these kids’ lives.
Of course, I wasn’t sure I would be able to keep this promise to myself.
The next morning, I went to my store.
And I started thinking.
And when you own a store in a mall that is open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. and you are the only employee, you have a lot of time to sit and think.
And the more I thought, the more I started to sense that I was getting my faith back.
Eventually, it came roaring back in such a way that I decided to give up my store, apply to seminaries and go into the ministry full-time.
Hearing Jesus ask Peter three times if Peter loves Him, helps us to remember Jesus’ prediction that Peter would deny Him three times and then remember the sad scenes when this prediction would come true.
John Chapter 21 reminds us that far more important than Peter’s denials is Jesus’ love and grace!
“Do you love me?”
“Feed my lambs.”
“Take care of my sheep.”
“Feed my sheep.”
Caring for other people, feeding other people, loving other people—these are the tangible ways that we come to know the love of Christ.
These are the tangible ways in which our faith is made real.
These are the tangible ways through which Jesus heals our hurts, rids us of our shame and guilt and frees from ourselves.
Isn’t it amazing?
Amazing grace that saved a wretch like me.
We can all relate to that, can we not?
