Meeting us at the fire

I love a campfire. I have a plethora of my own memories and stories from campfires on the beaches on the other side of Lake Superior when I was growing up in Duluth, to my time in seminary when during the height of Covid, one of the ways we could safely gather with a small bubble of friends was to be outside, processing the happenings of the world over food and a fire. Maybe you have similar memories of some kind. My husband shares a comical, heartwarming and slightly ridiculous story of camping at a favorite music festival in the mountains of North Carolina, and wandering with one of his best buddies,  a banjo and beer, into a neighboring campsite where  group of strangers wound up singing bluegrass around a fire and under the stars well into the night. Campfires, for whatever reason, are mesmerizing and stirring, a place where community, conversations, relationships have the potential to run deep.

Today our Gospel shares a story at a fire. The disciples have been out on the boat all night, attempting to catch fish. They’ve been called to shore by the same person who instructs them to try fishing off the right side of the boat, which works. The same person who, when the disciples get to shore, has fish on the fire and bread waiting for them. He invites them all to come and have breakfast with him. He breaks the bread with them, and the disciples recognize and perhaps more fully accept that this is Jesus. No one needs to ask, because they know. We hear that this is now the third time that Jesus has appeared to the disciples after he is raised from the dead.

The earlier times (and I am going to include Mary and say four times)—appearing to Mary at the tomb, the disciples in the locked house, and returning for Thomas—have all been in the recent shadow of the crucifixion. They were in Jerusalem, among the forces within the city—religious power, the Roman Empire— which contributed to the death of Jesus.

Now, they have left Jerusalem, they have returned to Galilee, home to many of them, the safety of the countryside, and where this journey with Jesus began. But even returning home, the disciples still seem disoriented, unsure what to do or how to act in the ripples of this tremendous tragedy, and the perplexing miracle of these appearances of Jesus after his death. Indeed, Peter’s proclamation at the beginning of the Gospel today, “I’m going fishing” and the disciple’s response “we will go with you” feels robotic, forced,  almost as if they’re attempting to figure out a return to their normalcy after the most abnormal experience any of us might be able to imagine. They are still in the middle of trying to make sense of this, when Jesus invites them around a fire to share fish and bread.

The last time John’s gospel shared a fireside moment with us is perhaps particularly memorable to Peter. After Jesus’ arrest, Peter finds himself at a fire in the courtyard of the high priest, warming himself. It is here that Peter does exactly what Jesus predicts he will do: Peter denies knowing Jesus, deniesbeing one of Jesus’ followers, three times.

To track Peter’s behavior in the last chapters of the gospel of John, after he has denied Jesus, is to see a man desperate to see Jesus again, to respond somehow to the shame that he seems to be carrying because of this denial —perhaps by making amends, or seeking forgiveness or reconciliation, or just the comfort of seeing his teacher again. He was not at the foot of the cross, but he is who Mary Magdalene comes to first after finding Jesus’ body missing. And then there are these almost comical physical races that Peter engages in to get to Jesus—He races with the disciple that Jesus loved to the empty tomb and comes up second. And today, when the disciple that Jesus loved names from the boat that it is Jesus on the shore, Peter throws on his clothes and jumps into the sea to swim a hundred yards, the length of a football field,  to the shore rather than stay in the boat to get to Jesus with the other disciples. His behavior seems frantic, maybe even riddled with anxiety at the hopes of a chance to smooth things over with the risen Jesus.

Jesus, in what could likely be an entire separate sermon, chooses when everyone comes ashore to first feed his disciples. After a night trying to fish, Jesus makes sure first—before further conversation or explanation of what is to come next— that his followers are fed.

Then, Jesus takes Peter aside. He asks Peter, “Do you love me more than these?” Peter says, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you” He asks this of Peter three times. Something we miss in our translation of this text is a fairly crucial piece to this text. In Greek, there are a variety of words for love. We see two of them here…Jesus asks, Peter, do you ‘agapaō’  love me?

agapaō love—what Jesus is asking of Peter—is the kind of love that the Father has for the Son, is what we might consider to be the highest form of love—a love that is sacrificial, universal, unconditional, compassionate, rooted in servanthood for God’s creation. It is the word that Jesus uses at the Last Supper when he asks us to love one another.

Peter responds with “Yes, you know that I phileō love you…The word that Peter uses here is love that is considered brotherly love, familial care, closeness, kindness. It is good, and pure, and holy love. And…it is not quite agapaō love.

Jesus asks Peter again, Peter, do you agapaō love me, and Peter responds, “Yes, Lord, you know that I phileō love you.”

And then, mirroring the three times that Peter denied Jesus, reclaiming in a way, renewing in a way, resurrecting this relationship between Peter and Jesus, Jesus asks a third time. But this time, Jesus changes his language. “Peter, do you phileō. love me?”

We hear at this, that Peter is hurt. Maybe he recognizes Jesus’ change in language, or he doesn’t understand Jesus needing to ask a third time, but it is again that shame or pain of letting Jesus down, or of not being able to fully convince Jesus of his love for him. As one scholar writes,

“Peter is hurt, perhaps because he feels embarrassed by Jesus’ lowered expectations. But in reality, he has no need for embarrassment: the point is that Jesus loves us enough to meet us where we are. If all we can offer is philia, then Jesus will meet us there, and keep walking with us. Jesus knows that the agape love with which God holds together the universe is more than enough to go around: it can make up for our deficiencies in love.”

The truth is, while Peter might have felt embarrassment or shame, Jesus saw in his response enough to pass on to Peter the role for which he would become known—the rock of the church, a shepherd to the flock, the one called to feed the lambs, tend the sheep, feed the sheep. The one called to continue following Jesus. Fireside, Jesus invites Peter to recommit himself to the call on his life; to be resurrected from his own denial of Jesus to the new life in following Jesus. It is a calling to us all: to be reminded that Jesus meets us where we are, regardless of what our relationship with him in the past has looked like, regardless of the anxiety or shame we might carry of not being enough, or doing enough, or believing enough, and offers us each this invitation of resurrection: Follow me. Amen.