ALL OR NOTHING

 

SERMON for the THIRD SUNDAY of EASTER

 

WALL OR NOTHINGW

 

“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.’ He 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.’ He said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was grieved 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. Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go.’ (This he said to show by what death he was to glorify God.) And after this he said to him, ‘Follow me’” (Jn. 21:15-19).

 

 

Merciful Father, do not hide yourself from us, but, by the preaching of the gospel, reveal to us your true heart, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Dearly beloved: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

 

Y

ou don’t need to live in this old world for too long before hearing the sound of judgment. All around us there are voices swirling about that either excuse or accuse us, pronouncing our innocence or our guilt.  “Why did you do that?” “Why didn’t you do this?” “Who do you think you are?” “Who do I think I am?” “Didn’t I say that?” “Aren’t I right?” “That’s not fair!” etc., etc. To be alive in this old world is to be caught up in the Darwinian struggle for recognition, for approval, for justification—a struggle in which it seems that the one adaptation necessary for survival is “being right.” Our whole existence is consumed before this frenzied tribunal, wherein we all act as defendants, prosecutors, and judges; accusing and being accused, acquitting and being acquitted—and there’s no escaping it. In fact, every effort to escape only serves to prove it all the more! Even suicide, which we often define as the “free” and “voluntary” taking of one’s own life, can’t find its way out of the courtroom, but is itself judged as the ultimate act of self-judgment: a self-sentencing to death. This cacophony of judgments and self-judgments, this whirlwind of voices that surround us with their accusations and acquittals, have no hint of harmony, but ring out like cracked bells in a groaning and battle-scarred creation.

“Do you love me?” This question of Jesus, posed to Peter—not one, not two, but three times—doesn’t seem to have found the courtroom’s exit door either. The old being in us can’t help but hear the question as though it were in some way demanding Peter to justify himself before his resurrected Lord—the Lord he three times denied. It is a question that seems to plunge us headlong into the trenches of the war this old world never tires of waging—the war against time: to be found righteous before the last gavel falls. And so, naturally, we want to know: what is Jesus up to?

Is Jesus calling on Peter to climb the proverbial “ladder of love”—from the lowest rungs of eros (erotic love), to the middle rungs of philia (brotherly love), all the way up to the apex of agape (divine love)—as if Peter only needed to have his desires educated so that instead of wallowing in the lower forms of love like a pig in slop, Peter would fervently yearn to lift himself toward love’s “higher,” more “spiritual” forms?

Or perhaps Jesus is grooming Peter to be his first pope, his vicar or “stand-in” on earth—as if the ascension was not Christ taking his throne at the right of hand of the Father to fill all things in heaven and on earth (Eph. 4:10), but was instead Christ’s “leave of absence,” apparently requiring some old man in flowing robes and a funny hat to “stand-in” as his replacement?

Or maybe Jesus is litigiously balancing the scales of justice—as if Peter, in order to be reinstated as a disciple, needed to first compensate for his three denials by affirming his love for Christ an equal number of times?

And we could go on further: Jesus is offering Peter an “invitation to risk”; or challenging Peter to “think outside of the box”; or motivating Peter to “step up to the plate” and stop slouching in the corner of the dugout; and so and so on…

Of course, what all of this nonsense is finally after is a way to have Christ and his word according to the law alone. But Christ—much to the chagrin of our old sinful selves—is not in business of transforming animals into angels through the law, or of replacing his full and inviolable presence with a papal office, or of procuring his pound of flesh before he can bestow mercy on sinners. No. Rather, Jesus Christ is in the strange and scandalous business of calling into existence that which is nothing, and giving life to the dead (Rm. 4:17). Jesus Christ doesn’t want to be your coach; he doesn’t want to be your motivational speaker; he doesn’t want to be your spiritual guru; and—least of all—he doesn’t want to be your new Moses. Christ wants nothing other than to be your sin, and for you to be his righteousness—and he won’t have it any other way!

But this will no doubt appear to be an extremely unsatisfying set of alternatives for the old being, who finds such an unyielding insistence on this “all or nothing Jesus” to be far too “restrictive” and “exclusive” for its delicate sensitivities. “After all,” reasons the old being, “isn’t this ‘all or nothing’ talk a bit too drastic, a bit too ‘black and white’ for we enlightened moderns to take seriously? Doesn’t it fail to appreciate all those hues of grey in between? Doesn’t it fail to acknowledge the importance of inclusivity, diversity, and tolerance? Can’t we at least settle on some sort of ‘middle ground,’ some small space of neutrality where I can at least make my own personal decision on the matter? Or is this ‘all or nothing Jesus’ going to take away my free will too?!”

            Here we arrive at the heart of the matter: what the old being wants—what it wills and is bound to will—is to have Christ at arm’s length, at a safe and comfortable distance, just enough to provide the necessary elbow room to work toward its highest aspiration: to justify itself. But Christ does not send a preacher to you in order to appeal to or persuade the old sinner’s dearest—albeit imaginary!—friend: the “free will.” Instead Christ sends you a preacher in order to lay hold of your conscience and to take his rightful place in it. This—the laying hold of the conscience—is what Jesus is up to when he asks of Peter: “Do you love me?”

But first let’s be clear as to what we mean when say the word “conscience.” The conscience, contrary to what most of us who grew up engorged on Walt Disney films have been trained to think, is not a little cricket whispering sweet moralisms in our ear. Nor is the conscience, as the old cartoons depict it, a faculty of judgment located between your two shoulders: on one a tiny devil tempting you to vice, and on the other a puritanical angel admonishing you to virtue. Rather, the conscience is like the handle of a basket, like the scruff on the back of a kitten’s neck by which its mother carries it to and fro. Your conscience is the throne of you, or, as Luther liked to put it, the saddle upon which you are ridden—and by only one of two riders: Jesus Christ or Satan. As such, the conscience is either free or in chains. Now when the bound conscience tries to free itself, it will only become self-conscious, and end up like the caricatures we’ve just described, with voices scolding it from each shoulder, commanding it over and over again to be become righteous according to the law, but having no power to accomplish it. The bound conscience, like a detainee, can only be made free by someone coming to it from the outside, bringing the key that can turn the lock and swing wide the prison door.

What Jesus wants to give to us is “all or nothing,” but what Jesus wants to get from us is “all and nothing.” Christ is out to get all of you by giving you all of himself. You do nothing in this blessed exchange. It’s all given to you. And so, when Christ asks Peter, “Do you love me?” Peter does not respond “I know that I love you, Lord,” but rather “You, Lord, know that I love you.” Even after the third time Jesus asks him, and Peter becomes sick with grief over the memory of his betrayals, and irritated by his total inability to justify himself anymore, still Peter responds, “Lord, you know.” Recall the difference between this confession and the boast Peter once made to Christ: “I will lay down my life for you.” This promise never did belong in Peter’s mouth—in which it was a lie; it belongs in the mouth of Christ himself and alone—in which this promise becomes, not a lie, but a truth more sure and certain than life itself.

And notice the command that Christ three times gives to Peter: “Feed my sheep,” as if to say: “Yes, Peter, three times you did betray me—just as I said you would. And now the law is here, accusing you. It has moved out of your old sinful flesh—where it belongs—and into your conscience, where I alone belong. You are trying to preach to yourself, Peter. But when you preach to yourself, you only hear the law’s voice saying to you: ‘You are a betrayer of Christ, your Lord!’ Now your troubled conscience may well call you all sorts of names: ‘traitor,’ ‘hypocrite,’ ‘deserter’—but you are not to direct your ear to any of them. You are what I call you—you direct your ear to my mouth—because my word alone is true. So listen up and listen good: You were once in bondage to the law, and to sin, and to death, but no more! I myself have made you a new creation, and I now give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, to preach the good news, to tear down the prison walls, and to set the captives free.”

And so it was in that very moment in which Peter’s conscience was being attacked by the accusing voice of the law, that Christ was there—ready and waiting—with the loosing key in his hand and a sermon on his lips: “Very truly, I tell you, Peter, that when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt 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.”

Now if Christ would have stopped his sermon here, it wouldn’t have been of much use to Peter. Ended here, the sermon seems to be nothing less than a dreaded foreboding of some nameless, faceless stranger who will one day appear and lead Peter where he doesn’t want to go: to his death! But Christ doesn’t stop here. Instead Christ pulls away the mask of the mysterious executioner to reveal to Peter the face of the one who will lead him: “Follow me.” Not “follow me” if I’ve persuaded you; not “follow me” if you find my offer appealing; not “follow me” and try to keep up as best you can; but “Follow me, Peter, because here I go—and you’re coming with me! I’ve got you by the scruff of your neck and I’m taking you where I want you: to the sinner, to the nobody, to the dead. You used to be afraid of this Peter, remember? But you need not be afraid anymore. For now I, your Christ, the one you betrayed, am with you and will never leave you. I am in the saddle—giddy-up horsey!”

And Christ has come today, dear sinner, for you—to get all of you and nothing from you, by giving you all of himself. He has come to end the war you have been waging; to tear the veil away from the mystery of what that final verdict will be when the last gavel falls; to bring to an end your struggle to be found righteous in yourself. He has come to make you righteous in him! And he has come to give it here and now. So cast the law far from your conscience, because Christ your King has come to take his rightful throne. Your sins are forgiven! There you have it. That’s the sound of the last gavel’s strike. Hear it every day; and know this: that when all is given, nothing can be lost.  

And now may the peace of God which surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus to life everlasting. AmenW