Third Sunday of Easter

In “A Letter to the Church” Carlo Carretto begins by writing,  “How baffling you are, oh Church, and yet how I love you! How you have made me suffer, and yet how much I owe you! I would like to see you destroyed, and yet I need your presence. You have given me so much scandal and yet you have made me understand what sanctity is. I have seen nothing in the world more devoted to obscurity, more compromised, more false, and yet I have touched nothing more pure, more generous, more beautiful. How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face, and how often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms.”

I find his honesty refreshing and helpful.  But what I find even more valuable is what he says next:

“No, I cannot free myself from you, because I am you, though not completely. And besides, where would I go? Would I establish another? I would not be able to establish it without the same faults, for they are the same faults I carry in me. And if I did establish another, it would be my Church, not the Church of Christ. I am old enough to know that I am no better than anyone else….”  I love Carretto’s insight and humility here.  I can launch into complaints about the church, rants, judgmental attitudes and all the rest, but Carretto is absolutely right.  I would not be able to establish a church without the same faults, because they are the same faults I carry in me.  If I haven’t learned by now that I am no better than anyone else, I am only deceiving myself.  

Carretto goes on to say, “The Church has the power to make me holy but it is made up, from the first to the last, only of sinners. And what sinners! It has the omnipotent and invincible power to renew the Miracle of the Eucharist, but is made up of [people] who are stumbling in the dark, who fight every day against the temptation of losing their faith. It brings a message of pure transparency but it is incarnated in slime, such is the substance of the world. It speaks of the sweetness of its Master, of its non-violence, but there was a time in history when it sent out its armies to disembowel the infidels and torture the heretics…..”

“Those who dream of something different from this are wasting their time and have to rethink it all. And this proves that they do not understand humanity. Because this is humanity, made visible by the Church, with all its flaws and its invincible courage, with the Faith that Christ has given it and with the love that Christ showers on it.

“When I was young, I did not understand why Jesus chose Peter as his successor, the first Pope, even though he abandoned Him. Now I am no longer surprised and I understand that by founding his church on the tomb of a traitor.… He was warning each of us to remain humble, by making us aware of our fragility.”

Caretto’s perspective is a helpful one from which to look at today’s gospel passage in John 21.  The group of disciples have now seen the risen Christ several times.  A miraculous, awe-inspiring experience!  Still, there is a sense that they don’t really know what to do now.  Peter decides he’s going to go back to his ordinary job, fishing.  The other disciples figure they’ll go with him. After a night of catching nothing, a guy on the beach tells them to cast the net on the right side of the boat, and when they do they get a whole netful of fish.  The beloved disciple says, “It is the Lord!”  Peter takes off alone, jumping into the water to see Jesus, leaving the other disciples with the work of hauling the netful of fish and the boat.  

Jesus says simply, “Come and have breakfast” and he feeds them.  The disciples don’t dare to ask him, “Who are you?” because they know it is the Lord.  

Before the crucifixion, Peter had sworn that he was better than the other disciples, that he would never deny Jesus.  And before the cock crows Peter has denied Jesus three times.  Now, Jesus asks him a question three times.

Jesus asks Peter, “Simon, Son of John, do you love me more than these?”  Commentators have different views on what this question means.  It might mean, “Do you love me more than the other disciples do?” which was what Peter was bragging about before the crucifixion.  It might mean, “Do you love me more than you love these?  Do you love me more than you love these fishing boats and nets, or these other disciples, or the parts of your past that will be left behind?  Do you just want to go back to fishing or do you love me more than you love your old life?

The pre-crucifixion Peter had tried to insist that Jesus was wrong about him; Peter claimed he knew he would never deny Jesus, even if Jesus didn’t know that about him.  Now Peter says, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”  Peter has a different attitude now, about how much he knows himself, and how much Jesus knows him.  Peter knows with bitter regret how he has failed to love Jesus, and he sees that Jesus knows this about him and always has.  And Jesus loves him even with all his sins.  Knowing his failure, knowing Christ’s love for him even with his failure, Peter’s love now is a humbler love.

When Peter responds, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you,” Jesus tells him what to do next.  “Feed my lambs.  Tend my sheep.”  Since he loves Jesus, Jesus tells him, care for my church.  Care for the people carrying out my ministry.  Are they sinless?  No, they are not.  Just as Peter himself is not sinless.  And yet Jesus entrusts deeply flawed people, us, with this holy work.  We need each other.  We need to feed each other and to be fed by each other.  We need to tend and shepherd each other and to be tended and shepherded by each other.  These instructions from Jesus do not end with Simon Peter.  We in the church are all in this together.  Jesus instructs all of us to feed his lambs, to tend his sheep.  I am grateful that we have a variety of people here at St. John’s who give of their money, and of their time and talent.  We talk about giving “to” the Church, as if the church were a charity outside us.  But really, we are the Church.  The reason I address my emails to “Dear St. John’s” is that St. John’s isn’t a building: St. John’s is you.  We don’t exist without you, and we exist because in a wide variety of ways we feed each other, care for each other, give to each other, receive from each other.  The ways we do this vary, according to the gifts God has given us.  

Giving money is a really valuable form of feeding the lambs and tending the sheep.  Jesus teaches us that what we do with our money matters.  And when we are having conversations about what ministries we can do here at St. John’s, how much money parishioners give is a big factor in which ministries we can do.  When people increase their giving, our ministry can increase. 

Giving of time and talent is valuable too.  Some people literally feed others, by providing food and serving food for coffee hours, for the Saturday soup suppers, for bake sales at Maplefest, for funeral receptions, for a seder, for the pancake supper, for plenty of other events at which we break bread together.  Other people care for the sheep by providing technology help, or repairs to the building, or music, or administrative help, or caring for the children, or prayer and compassion when a parishioner is going through a tough time.  And we all benefit from the gifts of others who have strengths where our weaknesses are, as well as contributing our strengths where their weaknesses are.  We find God’s love flowing through us as we love one another, even when we sin, even when others in the Church sin.  

Caretto writes that we are the bricks from which the church is built, and says, “What matters is the promise of Christ, what matters is the cement that unites the bricks, which is the Holy Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit is capable of building the church with such poorly moulded bricks as are we.

“And that is where the mystery lies. This mixture of good and bad, of greatness and misery, of holiness and sin that makes up the church…this in reality am I.…

“The deep bond between God and His Church, is an intimate part of each one of us…”  God continues to love us even when we are unfaithful to him.

As Caretto puts it, “The Holy Spirit who is Love, sees us as holy, immaculate, beautiful under our guises of thieves and adulterers.… It’s as if evil cannot touch the deepest part of mankind.”

God re-establishes our innocence no matter how many times we have sinned. As Caretto says, “In this, God is truly God, the only one who can ‘make everything new again’. It is not so important that He will renew heaven and earth. What is most important is that He will renew our hearts. This is Christ’s work. This is the divine Spirit of the Church.”

Like Caretto, I often find the church baffling, and yet I love it.  It has made me suffer, and I owe it so much.  If I start to get puffed up that I’m better than the Church, like Peter does, it turns out that it’s only a matter of time until my own sins burst that bubble.  But Christ doesn’t give up on Peter, Christ doesn’t give up on me, and Christ doesn’t give up on you.  As we continue through all the ups and downs to feed Christ’s lambs, to tend Christ’s sheep, to love Christ’s church, God does renew our hearts.