Our readings for this Third Sunday of Easter are very rich. Among a number of other things, our Gospel features Jesus effectively forgiving Peter for the three times Peter betrayed him at the start of his Passion. Our reading from Revelation tells about the triumph of those who, by following Jesus, won by losing. Our first reading, taken from the Acts of the Apostles, ends with the apostles praising God, not for getting off lightly, which they did, but for the privilege of experiencing some indignity for Jesus's sake.
All of that sounds glorious or at least not too demanding. It is precisely because it sounds so non-threatening that I am hesitant to link it the church bombings that rocked Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday. Why? Because that is gruesome and horrific, not to mention very difficult. My sisters and brothers who arose to celebrate Christ's resurrection that morning had no idea that they would be killed and injured while doing so precisely for doing so. Where was God? Well, the body of God's only begotten Son was the target of the bombs. Therefore, I have to say that he was in the bloody middle of the blasts.
The whole idea of adding by subtraction and winning by losing is not attractive when you stop to consider what this really means. Rhetorically, it can be dressed up and used to indoctrinate people. Either way, the paradoxical nature of following Jesus, which requires you to make God's reign present wherever you are, thus making the kingdom present in a mustard seed-like manner, is a dangerous idea. When not dangerous, endeavoring to live the Gospel is often inconvenient. In short, being Jesus's disciple is not as glamorous as it sometimes sounds. For most of us, it consists of what the recently departed Eugene Peterson called "long obedience in the same direction."
As Jesus's disciple, you don't do good in order to feel good. You live life as if God's reign is already established. By doing this, you quickly come to the realization of how far away God's kingdom is, especially these days. The more good you do, the more you realize the overwhelming scope of what needs to be done and how little impact, in the aggregate, your own paltry efforts make. Nonetheless, your efforts make a world of difference to those who need your help.
Far from being cathartic, I imagine how painful it must've been for Peter each time the resurrected Jesus asked him "Do you love me?" It is easy to sense Peter's frustration when answering the question for the third time, he replied: "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." I can almost hear him mutter, "Geez, knock it off. Leave me be."
In querying Simon Peter for the third time, Jesus used a different word than he did the first two times. The first and second time Jesus asked Peter he used the word: agapas. Querying him for the third time, the risen Lord used the word phileis. What is odd about this is that phileis is a weaker word than agapas. Phileis means something like being fond of, or liking. Being derived from agapé, agapas means something like loving another in a self-sacrificing way.
In this exchange, Peter never says he loves Jesus using agapé. Each time he responds, Peter uses philos. This can mean a lot of things. Perhaps it means that you never love Jesus as much he loves you. Proof of this is that, like Peter, you can callously deny Jesus and he still loves you in an utterly selfless way. Maybe Peter grasped his own limitation and, being chastened by his lying about whether he knew Jesus, now feels compelled to be completely honest. Hence, he cannot bring himself in good conscience to say what he knows to be untrue. In response, Jesus meets him where he's at.
Isn't that the gist of it? It is never a question of whether or not Jesus loves you. It always a question of whether you love him and how much. You love Jesus by loving others as you love yourself, especially those who are on the margins.
Statue of Jesus flecked with blood in the church of St. Sebastian, Negombo, Sri Lanka- St. Sebastian, the patron of this church was himself a martyr
Today, I don't feel like I can tie this up into a neat little package. But then our tendency to tie scriptural readings up into neat little packages constitutes a good part of what ails us. I do know that in St. John's Last Supper discourse Jesus calls his disciples, not servants, but friends. The Greek word for "friends" in John 15:15 is philous. So, it seems that Jesus seeks to re-establish his friendship with Peter, a friendship Peter no doubt felt broken by his betrayals. In John's Gospel, the section that follows Jesus inviting his disciples to be his friends, the Lord tells them what this friendship might cost them (see John 15:18-27).
But you don't need to leap all the back to the Last Supper. All you need to do is keep reading to see what lay in store for Peter. In essence, Jesus bids Peter to follow him to the cross. Tradition tells us Peter did just that.
What would you not do for a true friend? What would a true friend not for you? Novelist E.M. Forster once quipped- "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."
Jesus doesn't just want you to be his disciple, which is something of a formal relationship, one of a master to an apprentice. He wants to be your friend. In turn, he wants you to be his friend. Then you, like the apostles after they were drug before the Sanhedrin, can rejoice when you suffer a little indignity for his name.
One of the hallmarks of those friends of Jesus who wind up enduring more than a little indignity, who suffer imprisonment, torture, and sometimes even death, is to forgive and ask God to forgive those who inflict these things on them. They do this because Jesus forgives them and restores them as his friends whenever they betrayed him by ignoring or denigrating the downtrodden, failing to stand up for someone who is being run-down, refusing or neglecting to assist someone in need, wittingly participating in the exploitation of others, etc. It's true, we usually sin more by omission than commission. This realization is what prompted Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was indisputably a friend of Jesus, to observe: "It is not the sins of weakness, but the sins of strength that matter."
There is a story attributed to St. Teresa of Ávila that expresse well what I am trying articulate. Someone who investigated the authenticity of this story, which is sometimes held to be apocryphal, found that it appeared in a 1912 English translation of a book entitled The Life of St. Teresa. The original seems to have been written in French by a Carmelite nun (see "St. Teresa of Ávila: 'If this is how You treat your friends…'").
Teresa describes the journey thus: “We had to run many dangers. At no part of the road were the risks greater than within a few leagues of Burgos, at a place called Los Pontes. The rivers were so high that the water in places covered everything, neither road nor the smallest footpath could be seen, only water everywhere, and two abysses on each side. It seemed foolhardiness to advance, especially in a carriage, for if one strayed ever so little off the road (then invisible), one must have perished.” The saint is silent on her share of the adventure, but her companions relate that, seeing their alarm, she turned to them and encouraged them, saying that “as they were engaged in doing God’s work, how could they die in a better cause?” She then led the way on foot. The current was so strong that she lost her footing, and was on the point of being carried away when our Lord sustained her. “Oh, my Lord!” she exclaimed, with her usual loving familiarity, “when wilt Thou cease from scattering obstacles in our path?” “Do not complain, daughter,” the Divine Master answered, “for it is ever thus that I treat My friends.” “Ah, Lord, it is also on that account that Thou hast so few!” was her replyWhat a friend we have in Jesus! I don't mean that (too) sarcastically. Being Jesus's friend means trusting him completely, no matter what circumstances you face. Jesus trusted the Father in this exact way when he surrendered himself to his Passion and he when commended his spirit to the Father as he expired on the cross (see Luke 23:46). Failing to do this renders "Jesus, I trust in You," which resounded so loudly last week, just another empty slogan.
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