text: JOHN 21: 15-19
15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” 16 A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” 17 He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. 18 Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” 19 (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.”†
BOUND TO BE LED
In this text, Jesus presents Peter with a real-world way to heal and atone for having denied Jesus three times. Three times Jesus asks him, “Do you love me?” and Peter stammers out his affirmation each time. After each incident, Jesus charges Peter to “tend his sheep,” making Peter’s pastoral calling most clear.
But is this calling to follow and serve Jesus just an appeal to our voluntary spirit? I think not, and this is made most clear in Jesus’ ominous pronouncement in verse 18:
Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.
This is in part a prophecy of Peter’s martyrdom, but it also suggests that the calling to follow Jesus and serve Him is something more than a mere appeal to one’s voluntary spirit. In this verse is the pattern for all Christian discipleship and all Christian maturity. When we’re “young,” we do as we please—go where we like and do whatever we wish—that is volunteerism and the voluntary spirit. But when we, like Peter, “grow old,” Another will draw us and take us where we do not wish to go. It’s fairly terrifying, and I’m saying it’s not just about Peter but about you and me as well.
This is Christian maturity: giving up our own will and being willing to be led by The Lord wherever He may lead us.
FROM THE BUBBLE
Last week, we talked about living in the suburban bubble. Suburbia is that safe place we create to live and raise our children in peace. We also acknowledged that it makes it easy for us to avoid facing so many of the world’s problems. In our suburban bubble, we don’t have to deal with Third World poverty and injustice, nor are we daily confronted by the onslaught of urban degeneracy. It is easy to keep so many of the world’s problems out of sight and out of mind. That is part of being “young”—going about as we like. In this way, the suburban bubble is designed to keep us young (in that sense) and prevent us from being drawn into a deeper following of Christ. In short, the suburbs all but designed to keep our Christianity shallow.
I’ll say again that our first duty is to be supremely grateful to God that we are able to live safer lives above the poverty line and away from so much of the prevalent dangers. We should be giving thanks to God in every hour of every day for the life we get to live.
Today, I’d like to add that mature Christian faith calls us out of our bubbles—our safe, comfort zones—in order that we grow deeper in faith, and and shape our witness in service as we trust in the Lord more completely.
Authentic faith always calls us out of our comfort zones.
The life of the Christian should not look like every other life. The quality of our lives should not be indistinguishable from that of atheists or agnostics. The difference our lives should display is what we call our witness. Our witness is effective precisely to the degree that it looks unlike the lives of everyone else who is just “going about, doing whatever they like.”
AGNOSTIC LIFE
We spoke a few weeks about about atheism and agnosticism. The atheist/agnostic life has come to look very much like any other life—even the Christian life—especially in the suburbs. They, like we, want peace, security, good schools for their children, lower taxes, lower crime, and a sane society to live in. They want the bubble as much as—if not more—than we.
The agnostic life seeks to maximize sweetness, beauty, and health while avoiding all of the hard obstacles—pain, suffering, and disease. For them, salvation means something like affluence—the empowerment to live as they like and to remain able to go where they like when they like. They just want to get through life with as few obstacles as possible—for themselves and for their children.
But this is just like us, isn’t it? What is particularly Christian about our lives in comparison? What does our witness look like? What about our lives are distinctive and look anything different than suburban atheism?
The fact that we can see little difference reveals that much of suburban Christianity is a form of functional agnosticism. By that I mean believe what you want, but if our core desires and longings are no different than our atheist neighbors, then we have no witness, no true distinctiveness. If our lives look exactly the same on the surface, what proof is there that in the depths there is any difference?
American Christians, hunkered down in their comfort zones, do not resemble the early Christians anywhere near as much as they resemble ancient Epicureans.
EPICUREAN AGE
Epicurus was a Greek philosopher who lived From 341 BC to 270 BC. He believed everything was made of minuscule solid particles floating around in a void. Even the gods, Epicurus believed, were made solely of matter. Epicurean philosophy is materialistic, discounting the gods and avoiding the reality of death. The good life is to do no harm, minimize pain and suffering, and otherwise try to enjoy oneself in the moderate pursuit of pleasure. Ethics derive from ideas serving the common good of the society.
I mention it today because I suspect it is presently the dominant philosophy of the Western world, certainly of today’s America. Furthermore, what I’m calling suburban Christianity looks much more like Epicureanism than the Christianity of the first Christians.
If “the pursuit of happiness” is regarded as a Christian value, then the Epicureans have nearly won. If Christians think Christianity is well served by this Epicurean code, then Christianity is gone.
Let’s be clear: authentic, mature Christianity runs directly opposite to Epicureanism. We believe that God is the center of all, the source of all and the end of all things is His glory alone. We believe the world is more than material; it is spiritual. We believe that unless death is answered by resurrection, then death is god. And we believe that the highest Christian virtue—agapé love—is that which sacrifices personal comfort and pleasure to benefit others. Jesus puts it all succinctly in Matthew 16: 24-25:
If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
Our role as Jesus’ followers is not to pursue our own happiness, security, and pleasures; our job is to get out of our comfort zones.
GETTING OUT
The pathway to authentic faith can always be found somewhere outside of our comfort zones. What this looks like in practical terms is simply doing the stuff that needs to be that nobody else wants to do. We are called to be servants—which is slaves—of the Lord, which means our witness is communicated by the distinctive difference of our intentional, downward mobility. No work is beneath us, no form of service too low—we do what others are unwilling to do as a sign of our adoption in Christ.
I know that sounds upside-down, but it is the upside-down life that points beyond itself and this world toward our loving Lord. But this isn’t all: not only should we embrace the forms of service that others shirk, but we do it with a smile. No slogging along long-faced, no “martyrs” in the simple sense of self-hatred or smug self-denial, but rather an eager embracing of our servanthood with joyful hearts and a warm, joyous disposition.
We are servants of Christ, willing to be “bound and led where we do not wish to go.” This points the world to a reality beyond ourselves—beyond self-interest, self-security, and the pursuit of happiness that defines suburbanism, Christian or otherwise.
Our maturity—our “growing older”—looks like our increasing capacity to be led where no one really wants to go. This is the path of the cross, the taking up of our cross, and to the world, it looks crazy. But that is also what makes it work.
Unlike functional agnosticism—the life of avoiding obstacles and making our way through comforts and self-interest—Christian discipleship seeks out those obstacles and plows through them! Where is trouble? Where is suffering? Where can you and I make a difference? Those are the obstacles the world avoids that the followers of Jesus actively pursue.
I can’t say how exciting it is for me to sit in on Serve Team meetings. A great mission group never asks for what is safe, easy, or economical—on the contrary, we find our hearts revved up by considering our calling to places no one else wants to go. Let other churches go where it is easy, but let us rather seek out a calling to places others fear to go. Saudi Arabia? Why not? Iraq? Iran? If we’re doing the Lord’s bidding, what could be more exciting? If He calls us, He will empower us. This is what we pray for.
That is why we are out looking for trouble, storming the gates—even of Hell itself—with the glad confidence that God is ready to work miracles through us—yes, even us—as we present our hands to be tied and joyously long to be led.
May we all come to that awareness that the Lord is near and that His eternity touches this present moment.
†