Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Fr. Bob Pierson, OSB
Pentecost Year C - Sunday, May 19, 2013
Acts 2:1-21
Romans 8:14-17
John 14:8-17, 25-27
When I was a child, one of my favorite Saturday morning TV shows was a program called, “You Are There.” Each week, actors would reenact an event from American history like the Signing of the Declaration of Independence or the Crossing of the Delaware, and we would be able to watch the event unfold just as if we were part of the scene as it was happening for the first time.
Since then, I have found myself thinking about the events of Scripture in a similar way. What would the coming of the Holy Spirit be like on “You Are There?” I think it could be pretty impressive. With computer graphics being what they are today, one could come up with a very convincing violent wind, and tongues as of fire would not be hard to reproduce at all. We have the speech that Peter gave and we have some idea what first century Jerusalem might have looked like. I think it would be really great, just like it really happened with us right in the scene.
There's one small problem though. We have two accounts of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, and the details of each scene vary dramatically. We heard the other account of the coming of the Holy Spirit a few weeks ago on the second Sunday of Easter, when John recounted his version of the story. Instead of the event occurring on Pentecost, 50 days after the Passover, John has the Spirit coming to the apostles on the night of Easter day, just a few hours after the resurrection. It's Jesus' first appearance to his disciples in the Upper Room. No violent wind, no tongues as of fire, no strange languages, just Jesus proclaiming “Peace be with you!” In Luke's account of the event in the Acts of the Apostles, Jesus has already ascended into heaven. In John's account, Jesus is with the apostles, breathing on them and saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven them.”
So, which account of the coming of the Holy Spirit do we give to our director for our reenactment? Which is the true account? They both appear in the Bible, and we say that the Bible is without error. Thankfully, we are not Biblical fundamentalists because, both accounts are true, and the differences between them make it difficult to pick one version as the “real” one. Each account has its value, depending on the particular point the author of that account is trying to get across in telling his version of the story.
John wants to connect the coming of the Spirit directly with the resurrection so that's why he places the event on Easter night. Luke puts it on the feast Pentecost, probably to connect the sending of the Spirit with the feast in which the Jewish people celebrate the giving of the 10 Commandments to the people of Israel. John has Jesus “breathe” the Holy Spirit on the disciples alone in the Upper Room, the place where the Last Supper occurred to link the event with the first Eucharist. Luke has the Spirit arrive in a powerful wind, calling to mind the wind that blew over the chaos “in the beginning” at creation and has the event witnessed by “devout Jews from every nation” because he wants us to remember that the gospel is not just for one group of people in one time and place but is the universal Good News for everyone to hear.
The one detail that both accounts of the coming of the Holy Spirit do have in common is that both accounts have the disciples becoming empowered by the Holy Spirit for their mission to the world. And that's the really significant point for us today, because we have also received the Holy Spirit in our baptism, and we too are called to preach the Good News of Christ's death, resurrection, and ascension to the world.
In a very real way, “we ARE there,” witnessing the power of the Holy Spirit in our midst, just as those disciples experienced the Holy Spirit in their lives. The Holy Spirit reminds us again and again that we ARE God's children, right now, and if we are God's children, as Paul tells us in Romans 8, then we are also “heirs of God.” We are adopted members of the GOD family, and we have the same Holy Spirit the disciples received to live out our call to serve, to preach, to heal, and to baptize.
God the Holy Spirit is our Advocate, our defense attorney, pleading our cause and teaching us everything we need to know to live the life of Christ today. Christ's peace is in our hearts as it was in the hearts of those disciples, and we are called to share that peace with the world. We continue to be empowered with the gifts of the Holy Spirit to be the body of Christ in our world today. We are anointed by the Spirit “to be prophets to [God's] people, to be apostles to the world, to be confessors of [the] Gospel and of the wonders [God has] done for us.” “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth.”
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Friday, April 26, 2013
Easter 4 C - Apr 21, 2013
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Sr. Shane Phelan, Companion of Mary the Apostle
Easter 4C - Sunday, April 21, 2013
Acts 9:36-43
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30
I don’t know about you, but I need a shepherd this week.
I need someone to tell me that love continues, that life continues.
I’ve been listening to NPR and reading the New York Times. You might have been watching CNN. I’m grateful not to have a TV this week, because I’d be watching and listening to those voices.
I need to hear my shepherd’s voice.
I need to hear Peter tell me to get up and get back to work.
I need to join the throng before the throne, lifting my voice in response.
To do any of that, I have to fight my way through the other voices. You know those fancy noise-canceling earphones? I want those.
I think of being in an airplane. You get earphones, and you can listen to music or movies, but you never really get rid of the sounds around you in the plane. To do that, to really enter the world of the music and the film, you need special earphones.
I want those.
This week has been unusually horrific for those of us who live in normally quiet places, places with housing and food and some sort of safety. But what we are facing with shock is other people’s everyday life. In Iraq, in Afghanistan, in some neighborhoods in Chicago, people are shot or blown up every day. In Greece, where unemployment is running at 27%, many people are too hungry to study or to work. In places where women are expected to stay hidden, many run the risk of rape or attack just to go to school or work. So this week I grieve for Boston and for West, Texas, but I also grieve for all those places where violence and loss and oppression are normal.
I need to hear my shepherd’s voice.
I’ve been reading Charles Taylor’s magnum opus, A Secular Age. He traces how Western Christendom came to the place where atheism seems not only possible, but reasonable. How did we get to a place where so many can’t hear God in their lives, where God became irrelevant? And what does that have to do with the violence around us?
There have been two stock answers to this question. The traditional, fundamentalist answer is that violence is a result of people turning away from God, that bad things happen either because God is angered (in the case of natural disasters and accidents) or because sinful people do sinful things.
The atheist answer is that religion is a cause of intolerance and hatred, that violence flows out of religion.
These two extremes, which seem like opposites, actually share a conception of God. In that conception, God is angry and quick to punish. God is allied with one tribe and rejoices in the destruction of others. People who hear the voice of that God are indeed likely to justify violence, at least when it comes on their behalf.
But the people who reject that God too often miss the shepherd's voice, the loving voice that calls us all. They put on the noise-canceling earphones, but they don't open the channel to the sound of love.
Taylor suggests that in fact the two sides, secularists and fundamentalists, share a drive to purge the world of evil, to erase the messy parts of us. When that drive is at work, we narrow our world into two categories: evildoers and victims. And that feeds our hunger for violence. The riot of violence on our TV and movie screens, in our schools and in our streets, testifies to the real, deep attraction of violence. Our desire to deny that in ourselves ironically plays into the need to purge, and so we become part of the problem.
As long as we need to purge, we will keep killing. Some will kill for safety, some for honor, some for the sheer adrenaline high. Some will kill in a sick version of religious ecstasy, the only form available in a world where sacred mystery is seen as superstition.
In such a world, we cannot hope to hear our shepherd’s voice.
For Jesus consistently went to people on the wrong side: not only the poor, but to the many who live their lives in a shape greater than evildoer or victim.
He came to Peter, who was not done with weakness and failure.
Through Peter, and through a chain of others, he came to Dorcas.
He came to the throng before the throne, who in their lives heard that voice and answered.
Jesus knew that violence lives in us. He did not seek to purge it. He transformed it. By undergoing violence, he transformed the violence. He overcame the fear of violence not by controlling it for his own ends, but by overcoming fear and offering himself. He faced into the violence with love, and in so doing he changed everything. The shepherd laid down his life for the sheep, and opened the gate to life.
The noise of the world tells us that our safety lies in revenge and extermination. It tells us that we need bigger gates and walls. It drowns out the voices of need, and silences the voice of hope and mercy.
The louder that noise gets, the more we need to listen for the shepherd. We need quiet time, prayer time, time with friends and family. We need to seek out the voices of forgiveness and reconciliation. And we need to add our voices to the choir of worship and praise.
What we do here, in this monastery and in this extended community, is life saving work. Helping people hear the shepherds voice is not just nice. It is part of repairing the world. In a world of meaninglessness and rage, the shepherd calls us to transforming love.
The only sound louder than violence is love.
We don't really need the noise-canceling earphones, as attractive as they can be. We need the ones that let us hear the cries of need, let us hear the chaos of the world, but still send us the sweet sound of our shepherd's voice.
We need the sound of love.
Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor
and power and might
be to our God forever and ever!
Amen.
Sr. Shane Phelan, Companion of Mary the Apostle
Easter 4C - Sunday, April 21, 2013
Acts 9:36-43
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30
 |
| Icon of the Good Shepherd. From the web site of the Oratory of the Good Shepherd. |
I need someone to tell me that love continues, that life continues.
I’ve been listening to NPR and reading the New York Times. You might have been watching CNN. I’m grateful not to have a TV this week, because I’d be watching and listening to those voices.
I need to hear my shepherd’s voice.
I need to hear Peter tell me to get up and get back to work.
I need to join the throng before the throne, lifting my voice in response.
To do any of that, I have to fight my way through the other voices. You know those fancy noise-canceling earphones? I want those.
I think of being in an airplane. You get earphones, and you can listen to music or movies, but you never really get rid of the sounds around you in the plane. To do that, to really enter the world of the music and the film, you need special earphones.
I want those.
This week has been unusually horrific for those of us who live in normally quiet places, places with housing and food and some sort of safety. But what we are facing with shock is other people’s everyday life. In Iraq, in Afghanistan, in some neighborhoods in Chicago, people are shot or blown up every day. In Greece, where unemployment is running at 27%, many people are too hungry to study or to work. In places where women are expected to stay hidden, many run the risk of rape or attack just to go to school or work. So this week I grieve for Boston and for West, Texas, but I also grieve for all those places where violence and loss and oppression are normal.
I need to hear my shepherd’s voice.
I’ve been reading Charles Taylor’s magnum opus, A Secular Age. He traces how Western Christendom came to the place where atheism seems not only possible, but reasonable. How did we get to a place where so many can’t hear God in their lives, where God became irrelevant? And what does that have to do with the violence around us?
There have been two stock answers to this question. The traditional, fundamentalist answer is that violence is a result of people turning away from God, that bad things happen either because God is angered (in the case of natural disasters and accidents) or because sinful people do sinful things.
The atheist answer is that religion is a cause of intolerance and hatred, that violence flows out of religion.
These two extremes, which seem like opposites, actually share a conception of God. In that conception, God is angry and quick to punish. God is allied with one tribe and rejoices in the destruction of others. People who hear the voice of that God are indeed likely to justify violence, at least when it comes on their behalf.
But the people who reject that God too often miss the shepherd's voice, the loving voice that calls us all. They put on the noise-canceling earphones, but they don't open the channel to the sound of love.
Taylor suggests that in fact the two sides, secularists and fundamentalists, share a drive to purge the world of evil, to erase the messy parts of us. When that drive is at work, we narrow our world into two categories: evildoers and victims. And that feeds our hunger for violence. The riot of violence on our TV and movie screens, in our schools and in our streets, testifies to the real, deep attraction of violence. Our desire to deny that in ourselves ironically plays into the need to purge, and so we become part of the problem.
As long as we need to purge, we will keep killing. Some will kill for safety, some for honor, some for the sheer adrenaline high. Some will kill in a sick version of religious ecstasy, the only form available in a world where sacred mystery is seen as superstition.
In such a world, we cannot hope to hear our shepherd’s voice.
For Jesus consistently went to people on the wrong side: not only the poor, but to the many who live their lives in a shape greater than evildoer or victim.
He came to Peter, who was not done with weakness and failure.
Through Peter, and through a chain of others, he came to Dorcas.
He came to the throng before the throne, who in their lives heard that voice and answered.
Jesus knew that violence lives in us. He did not seek to purge it. He transformed it. By undergoing violence, he transformed the violence. He overcame the fear of violence not by controlling it for his own ends, but by overcoming fear and offering himself. He faced into the violence with love, and in so doing he changed everything. The shepherd laid down his life for the sheep, and opened the gate to life.
The noise of the world tells us that our safety lies in revenge and extermination. It tells us that we need bigger gates and walls. It drowns out the voices of need, and silences the voice of hope and mercy.
The louder that noise gets, the more we need to listen for the shepherd. We need quiet time, prayer time, time with friends and family. We need to seek out the voices of forgiveness and reconciliation. And we need to add our voices to the choir of worship and praise.
What we do here, in this monastery and in this extended community, is life saving work. Helping people hear the shepherds voice is not just nice. It is part of repairing the world. In a world of meaninglessness and rage, the shepherd calls us to transforming love.
The only sound louder than violence is love.
We don't really need the noise-canceling earphones, as attractive as they can be. We need the ones that let us hear the cries of need, let us hear the chaos of the world, but still send us the sweet sound of our shepherd's voice.
We need the sound of love.
Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor
and power and might
be to our God forever and ever!
Amen.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Easter 3 C - Apr 14, 2013
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Adam D. McCoy, OHC
Easter 3C - Sunday, April 14, 2013
Acts 9:1-20
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21: 1-19
I love this morning’s gospel. There is something cinematic about this story. It’s like a guy film. Seven guys who don’t seem to know what they’re doing decide like guys do to go fishing – the big guy makes up his mind and the other guys follow along. Then, as is so often the case when a group of guys just sort of decides to do something, nothing happens. Hurry up and wait. Except that some man on the shore calls out to them – Hey, guys – Catch anything? No? So lower your nets on the right side. Suddenly so many fish they can’t manage. But who is that man on the beach? The leader of the guys is not the brightest bulb in the sign – it is John who recognizes Jesus, but it is Peter who acts. He puts on his clothes, jumps in the water, swims to shore, and hauls in the net.
We know, but the guys don’t, that the man on the beach is Jesus, and he is the reason the guys have been drifting. Condemned, killed and resurrected – two appearances already! – and the guys still don’t get it. They’re like lost boys. So Jesus helps them focus. He serves them breakfast, and then has a purposeful chat. Simon son of John, do you love me? I do Lord. You know I do. Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. Jesus gives Peter his new job description. But this time, no glory. No young hero stuff. This time the call is to get old and feeble and then get killed. Jesus seems to ask, Are you up to it? Then follow me.
This story is a call story. But it is so unlike the call story at the beginning of the Gospel. The first call is about excitement, about following an unexpected and emergent leader, about the prospect of initiating change and doing something new. But the call story at the end of John’s gospel - for our gospel today is from the very last chapter of John - this call story is about something altogether different. These guys seem not to be at the beginning of something filled with hope and expectation, but are like lost lads, drifting, unsuccessful, at the end of something but even what they are at the end of isn’t really clear to them. This is the third resurrection appearance, apparently – the third one! – and they still don’t quite get it. It bears repeating. So Jesus hammers it in.
The narrative line of this story is like a template for what is to follow: If you depend on your own efforts, if you rely on yourself, you will fail. No self-gotten glory, no fish for self-starters here. In order to make the catch you need to rely on the one who calls you, whom you don’t always recognize at first. This call will penetrate to the center of your soul, and will hurt you because it won’t accept your first or even your second answers, but keeps on until you cry out in frustration and anguish, until you declare your love from the depth of your heart. This call is for the long haul, fishing all night and catching nothing not just once but your whole life. And the big catch is none of your own doing. You haul in the big catch because of advice from somewhere, someone you don’t even know. And you don’t really know who it is until you sit down and share with him, with a stranger, who turns out not to be a stranger at all. This story tells us that we will find the Lord at the most unexpected times and in the most unexpected ways.
As did Saul of Tarsus. History’s most famous convert. For once we are not entirely at the mercy of a thirty or forty year communal memory, a story told and retold and sharpened in the retelling and finally written down, the story we heard from Acts. Paul himself tells us what happened to him, in his own words, in the beginning of Galatians (1:11-24):
“For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus. Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him for fifteen days; but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord’s brother. In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie! Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ; they only heard it said, ‘The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.’ And they glorified God because of me.”
While Acts doesn’t contradict what Paul himself tells us, Acts tells a very different story, full of action and interesting detail, a little like the story we heard from John this morning. It is cinematic, strongly plotted, breathless even. Who doesn’t get caught up in it when they hear it? Who doesn’t put himself or herself into it, wishing perhaps to be chosen and transformed and given a world-changing task like Saul was?
But Paul’s own account is different. There is no light, no voice. There is something reticent, almost passive in Paul’s own account. The whole exciting narrative in Acts is summed up in a single phrase: When God was “pleased to reveal his Son to me”. No dramatic story, no Ananias sent to the street called Straight, no nursing back to health, no scales falling from the eyes. What Paul gives us instead is entries from his appointments calendar. Arabia, Damascus, Jerusalem, Syria, Cilicia. Years pass. Not much happens for three years, and then he gets two weeks with Peter and James. This doesn’t sound dramatic. This isn’t cinematic. Something happened. Then I went here, and then I went there, and then I met with people, and then I went out on the road again. It’s like listening to a friend we haven't seen for a long time tell us about what’s happened in his life, but it’s not an exciting story, it’s really just a list, and our attention maybe drifts just a little bit as we smile back as he drones on and on.
This sounds like real life.
These stories seem to say that the call itself is dramatic enough. Sometimes the haul is so big we can hardly manage what the Lord has given us. We meet the Lord in a stranger, we have an apocalyptic experience. But then it is back on the road, for years and years of slogging, till all of a sudden we’re old. We used to be able to spring up and get right to it, but now we’ve gone all creaky, and maybe the end is in sight. Paul didn’t begin his writing career till twenty or more years after the Lord revealed himself to him. Peter didn’t get the job description till he was broken down by the Lord’s persistent asking him the question Peter thought he had already answered.
Easter Day may be all joy. But the resurrection life is a long slog. Simon, son of John, do you love me? Lord, you know I do. Feed my sheep. Not once, not twice, but three times. Over and over. Once again, from the top.
Are we up to it? If you are, he says, Follow me.
Br. Adam D. McCoy, OHC
Easter 3C - Sunday, April 14, 2013
Acts 9:1-20
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21: 1-19
I love this morning’s gospel. There is something cinematic about this story. It’s like a guy film. Seven guys who don’t seem to know what they’re doing decide like guys do to go fishing – the big guy makes up his mind and the other guys follow along. Then, as is so often the case when a group of guys just sort of decides to do something, nothing happens. Hurry up and wait. Except that some man on the shore calls out to them – Hey, guys – Catch anything? No? So lower your nets on the right side. Suddenly so many fish they can’t manage. But who is that man on the beach? The leader of the guys is not the brightest bulb in the sign – it is John who recognizes Jesus, but it is Peter who acts. He puts on his clothes, jumps in the water, swims to shore, and hauls in the net.
We know, but the guys don’t, that the man on the beach is Jesus, and he is the reason the guys have been drifting. Condemned, killed and resurrected – two appearances already! – and the guys still don’t get it. They’re like lost boys. So Jesus helps them focus. He serves them breakfast, and then has a purposeful chat. Simon son of John, do you love me? I do Lord. You know I do. Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. Jesus gives Peter his new job description. But this time, no glory. No young hero stuff. This time the call is to get old and feeble and then get killed. Jesus seems to ask, Are you up to it? Then follow me.
This story is a call story. But it is so unlike the call story at the beginning of the Gospel. The first call is about excitement, about following an unexpected and emergent leader, about the prospect of initiating change and doing something new. But the call story at the end of John’s gospel - for our gospel today is from the very last chapter of John - this call story is about something altogether different. These guys seem not to be at the beginning of something filled with hope and expectation, but are like lost lads, drifting, unsuccessful, at the end of something but even what they are at the end of isn’t really clear to them. This is the third resurrection appearance, apparently – the third one! – and they still don’t quite get it. It bears repeating. So Jesus hammers it in.
The narrative line of this story is like a template for what is to follow: If you depend on your own efforts, if you rely on yourself, you will fail. No self-gotten glory, no fish for self-starters here. In order to make the catch you need to rely on the one who calls you, whom you don’t always recognize at first. This call will penetrate to the center of your soul, and will hurt you because it won’t accept your first or even your second answers, but keeps on until you cry out in frustration and anguish, until you declare your love from the depth of your heart. This call is for the long haul, fishing all night and catching nothing not just once but your whole life. And the big catch is none of your own doing. You haul in the big catch because of advice from somewhere, someone you don’t even know. And you don’t really know who it is until you sit down and share with him, with a stranger, who turns out not to be a stranger at all. This story tells us that we will find the Lord at the most unexpected times and in the most unexpected ways.
As did Saul of Tarsus. History’s most famous convert. For once we are not entirely at the mercy of a thirty or forty year communal memory, a story told and retold and sharpened in the retelling and finally written down, the story we heard from Acts. Paul himself tells us what happened to him, in his own words, in the beginning of Galatians (1:11-24):
“For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus. Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him for fifteen days; but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord’s brother. In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie! Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ; they only heard it said, ‘The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.’ And they glorified God because of me.”
While Acts doesn’t contradict what Paul himself tells us, Acts tells a very different story, full of action and interesting detail, a little like the story we heard from John this morning. It is cinematic, strongly plotted, breathless even. Who doesn’t get caught up in it when they hear it? Who doesn’t put himself or herself into it, wishing perhaps to be chosen and transformed and given a world-changing task like Saul was?
But Paul’s own account is different. There is no light, no voice. There is something reticent, almost passive in Paul’s own account. The whole exciting narrative in Acts is summed up in a single phrase: When God was “pleased to reveal his Son to me”. No dramatic story, no Ananias sent to the street called Straight, no nursing back to health, no scales falling from the eyes. What Paul gives us instead is entries from his appointments calendar. Arabia, Damascus, Jerusalem, Syria, Cilicia. Years pass. Not much happens for three years, and then he gets two weeks with Peter and James. This doesn’t sound dramatic. This isn’t cinematic. Something happened. Then I went here, and then I went there, and then I met with people, and then I went out on the road again. It’s like listening to a friend we haven't seen for a long time tell us about what’s happened in his life, but it’s not an exciting story, it’s really just a list, and our attention maybe drifts just a little bit as we smile back as he drones on and on.
This sounds like real life.
These stories seem to say that the call itself is dramatic enough. Sometimes the haul is so big we can hardly manage what the Lord has given us. We meet the Lord in a stranger, we have an apocalyptic experience. But then it is back on the road, for years and years of slogging, till all of a sudden we’re old. We used to be able to spring up and get right to it, but now we’ve gone all creaky, and maybe the end is in sight. Paul didn’t begin his writing career till twenty or more years after the Lord revealed himself to him. Peter didn’t get the job description till he was broken down by the Lord’s persistent asking him the question Peter thought he had already answered.
Easter Day may be all joy. But the resurrection life is a long slog. Simon, son of John, do you love me? Lord, you know I do. Feed my sheep. Not once, not twice, but three times. Over and over. Once again, from the top.
Are we up to it? If you are, he says, Follow me.
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