John 21.15-22

Stephen Andrews

Our telephone number when we lived in Cambridge was 321430.  We didn’t think there was anything particularly unusual about it.  But for some reason many of the people who dialled it did so unintentionally, and, I have to add, with annoying regularity.  Once or twice every day our telephone rang, and someone at the other end would say, ‘Hello, Parcel Force?’  We learned to be patient when this happened, and to explain that the number they wanted was 312430, not 321430, which is, in fact, what they had dialled, and why they had got us, and not Parcel Force.  People aren’t always grateful to learn that they have dialled the wrong number, and occasionally we wondered whether they held it against us for having a number which could be so easily confused.  It’s a shame we can’t refer such people to a helping organization, like the Telephone Dyslexics Association, but there you have it.  So perhaps you can understand why, when the telephone rang, we did not answer it with any great sense of urgency or expectation; rather, we were a little wary and doubtful.

John 21.15-22 recounts the story of ‘the call of St Peter.’  Of course, in beginning with the example of our misfortunes with the telephone, I am not about to develop the notion that communicating with God is analogous to placing or receiving a long distance call (though I have occasionally heard preachers use this comparison!).  But the image does rather fit some of our notions of the divine call.  In particular, when we have the suspicion that God is calling us to a particular task or function or relationship, we can wonder whether God has dialled the wrong number by mistake.  I’ve seen this often enough in the Church and in the office: ‘Me?  Teach Sunday School?  I can’t do that!  I’m no good with children.’  Or, ‘I couldn’t possibly be a reader.  I get so nervous about speaking in public.’  Or, ‘You want me to do that?  I tried it once before, but made such a mess of it.’  Or, ‘I don’t really think I’m the person to talk to him–I wouldn’t know what to say.’

A sense of our own inadequacies is often at the root of our inability to discern or respond to God’s call.  So thank God for Peter.  In some ways Peter seems the least likely candidate for the divine call.  He was proud and impulsive.  Jesus once offered to wash his feet, but he refused.  Then, when Jesus pressed him, he replied, ‘Well go on then!  And wash my head and hands while you’re at it!’  On the surface he was courageous. ‘I will lay down my life for you,’ he bragged on the eve of Jesus’ crucifixion.  But after Jesus’ arrest, when queried by a woman and a slave, Peter melted like wax and denied any association with Jesus.  No, Peter was anything but recruitment material from our point of view.

Indeed, when Jesus found him after the resurrection, Peter was a broken man. St John’s telling of the story is replete with allusions to Peter’s guilt and shame.  The coal fire over which Peter roasts his breakfast recalls the coal fire which earlier had illumined his face, enabling bystanders to recognise him as a follower of the condemned man.  Jesus’ words, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto thee, . . .thou shalt stretch forth thy hand’ echo his words on an earlier occasion, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow….’  The reference to Peter’s denial is most painfully and poignantly confirmed in the three times Jesus asks him, ‘Lovest thou me?’  Peter was grieved that Jesus should have to repeat this question.  But each time Jesus responded with a commission: ‘Feed my lambs;’ ‘Tend my sheep;’ ‘Feed my sheep.’

Though it was a hard reconciliation, Jesus’ directive constituted a gracious call as Peter became aware of the elements of forgiveness and trust.  We must not liken the divine call to the cold and impersonal marching orders of a drill sergeant.  Nor is it a timid and tentative request.  Rather, it comes in tenderness, understanding and faith – faith that must be met by faith in a kind of resurrection alchemy.  For Jesus’ call has a transformative power, changing debility into deliberation and fear into fortitude. 

How can ‎we follow him when we have tried and failed so many ‎times before?  How can we wait for him when we are so ‎desperate?  How can we tend his sheep when we are ‎scarcely in control of our own?  The answer is that Christ’s bidding comes to us where we are, not where we ‎think we should be, and that makes possible what he asks.‎  Calvin said, ‘No man will steadily persevere in the discharge of this office, unless the love of Christ shall reign in his heart, in such a manner that, forgetful of himself and devoting himself entirely to Christ, he overcomes every obstacle.’