THE LOVE OF JESUS

When Jesus asked Peter after breakfast whether he loved him “more than these,” I think he was speaking more than about fish and bread.  “Yes, Jesus, I love you more than the groceries.”  And he was asking whether he loved Jesus more than the other disciples, he was not doing that.  “Do you love me more than these other people on the beach that morning after Easter?”  “Yes, Jesus, I love you more than Nathanael did and Zebedee’s sons and my friends and companions.”  We know that now, but it’s not so clear that Peter knew it at the moment, because the exchange between the two of them seemed to indicate that, as usual, there was a depth to Jesus’s words, a depth that his friends were very slow to pick up on.  None more than Peter.  “No, Peter, I’m not asking whether you love me, but whether you love me.”  This is not merely about affection or preference. This is a love that will be difficult and demanding and dangerous.  “In fact it will require the sacrificing of your very life, just as it did for me.”  Jesus invited Peter to leave everything.  That’s love, the whole of one’s existence.  This is not a love that seeks or rejoices in pleasure.  Love does not mean that which makes me happy.  Love, instead, means making me faithful – faithful to the very end.  That’s what Peter wasn’t willing or able to do in the Garden of Gethsemane, or at the cross, at the moments that it mattered most.  And it’s why Jesus had to put the question not once to Peter, after the resurrection, not once, and it’s why Peter seems to be surprised and upset by the need to do this.  Here all this time Jesus and Peter had been using the same word, love, when they had been speaking a completely different language one to another.  It’s what happens whenever the quality of a relationship isn’t all that you’ve been presuming that it’s been up to now, and suddenly changes.  One person has been in search of security, here, and friendship, while the other has been seeking something quite different, quite a bit deeper and more intimate, and therefore more risky.  It still happens; we’ve all been there.

And now in this season of Easter this is the time to re-evaluate the quality of our love with Jesus, as Peter was forced to do.  Just who is he for us, and what does he demand?  Is he only the provider?  The safety net when all else fails?  Is he something greater than the soothing companion or the port in the storm?  Is that love, really?  What does that require of us?

Or is he life itself, who expects to get much, as deeply as he has given us? And, just to remind us, that means nothing other than suffering unto death.

We have been told what the word “love” means for Jesus.  It is now time for us, here and now, to do a bit of soul searching, right there at the baptismal font, right here at the Eucharist today, in order to see whether it means the same thing for us that it did for him.  As we are touched again today by these waters, let it permit us to call out of ourselves that which Jesus calls out of us, the precious gift of divine love.  Love - all of it.