While I was in training for ministry, I was required to participate in a program called Profiles in Ministry. The program was designed to tell us and – perhaps more importantly – the church, what kind of spiritual leaders we would be. There was a lengthy questionnaire which each of us in the ordination stream had to complete, there were questionnaires that members of my lay support team in my parish placement had to complete and then there was…the taped interview. 
Of the two which I was directly involved in, the interview was by far the hardest. I found myself sitting across from a retired bishop, my answers not only heard by him but recorded so that a panel of “experts” could later scrutinize them to determine just where I fit on their chart.  With this taped interview, there was no simple checking of a box in a series of multiple choice questions. This was the real thing. Situations. Scenarios. What would you do if…? 

Interestingly enough, the only question I remember from that interview is this: “Would you be willing to go to jail for something you believed in?” I may not have the exact wording, but it’s pretty close. As I was reflecting on this question this week, I wondered why this was the one question I remembered. Yes I’m getting older and my memory isn’t what it used to be, but is that why I only remember this one question? I don’t think so. I probably remember this particular question because it’s the one I felt least comfortable with and the one for which there was no easy answer. 

Now, strictly speaking it’s a yes/no question, right? Either “yes,” I would be willing to go to jail for something I believed in, or “no,” I would not. The problem was that I didn’t know.  And so my response was something like this, neither yes or no, perhaps typically Anglican: “I hope that if I believed in something strongly enough, I would have the courage to go to jail for that belief.” 
It was the best that I could do…the most honest answer I could give. I just didn’t know.

After the interviews were over, I gathered in the common room with the other students, as we compared our experiences and our answers. While others shrugged off the “jail question,” I could not. I won’t say that it haunted me (that’s a bit of an overstatement), but I found myself asking it over and over again: “would you be willing to go to jail for something you believed in?” I still wasn’t sure. 

As I was preparing my sermon this week, in one of the reference books I use I noticed a quote by Nelson Mandela regarding his support of equality while apartheid was still in force. He did not say that he was prepared to go to jail for his belief in this equality. His words were stronger than that. He said: “it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” (Sundays and Seasons, p. 180)
Surely the church was looking for people like this, people of conviction, people who would stand up and be counted when it really mattered. Could I be that kind of person? 

I hoped so, but I just wasn’t sure. And it didn’t feel great.
So I can sympathize with Peter in today’s Gospel reading as he goes through his own Profiles in Ministry experience, of sorts. It’s a story we probably remember well. Following Jesus’ crucifixion and death, he appears to his disciples (according to John’s Gospel) on two different occasions one week apart in an upper room and then to seven of his disciples on the beach by the Sea of Tiberius after a night of fishing during which they caught nothing.

There is a miraculous catch of fish after Jesus advises the disciples to cast their net on the other side of the boat. They eat a breakfast of fish and bread together and then Jesus’ questioning of Peter begins: “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” To which Peter replies, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” 
A simple question. A simple answer. 

Peter is asked the question twice more and manages to say “yes” in some fashion. And so (or at least we have come to believe) Peter’s denial of Jesus has been reversed. For just as Peter denied Jesus three times before the trial which led to his crucifixion, so now he expresses his love. Peter is restored to Jesus and we have the happy ending we so crave…if we read the English, that is. 

If, however, we read a Greek New Testament, we hear something very different indeed… something which might make us completely re-think everything we have come to believe about this passage. And everything we have come to believe about the person upon whom the church is supposedly built.

In the Greek language, as you may know, there are many words used to talk about love: there is eros, the kind of passionate, all-consuming, egocentric love which is all about me and my needs and how what or who I love fulfills those needs. This word for love does not appear in the New Testament at all. There is phileo, a feeling of affection for another person, perhaps best understood in its use in the name Philadelphia, the city of “brotherly love.” This word for love appears occasionally in the New Testament. And then there is agape, a self-sacrificing, unselfish kind of love that is not about what I can get, but what I can give to others. It is not based on feelings of affection, but a decision of the will to do for others at any cost to oneself. This is the nature of the gracious, self-giving love that God has for us, the nature of the love that Jesus is talking about when he says earlier in John’s Gospel: “no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). And this, by far, is the word for love most often used in the New Testament. 

And this is also the word for love that Jesus uses when he asks Peter the question to which Peter replies “yes.” The problem is that it is NOT the word Peter uses in his reply. 

Translated with these different meanings of the word “love” in mind, the exchange between Jesus and Peter goes something like this.
“Simon, son of John, would you give up your life for me?”
Peter replies: “Yes, I am your friend” (or “I am fond of you…”).
Jesus asks again, “Simon, son of John, would you give up your life for me?” 
Peter replies: “You know that I am your friend” (or, “I am fond of you…”).
The third time, Jesus changes the word for love that he is using from agape to phileo, the word found in Peter’s reply. According to the Life Application Bible, by the third time Jesus asks the question, what he’s really asking is this: “Are you even my friend?” To which Peter replies: “Lord, you know everything. You know that I am your friend” (or, “…you know that I am fond of you”).

No wonder it says in the passage that Peter was troubled when Jesus asked him this question the third time. Maybe it wasn’t because he thought Jesus wasn’t listening or that Jesus didn’t believe him. Perhaps it was because he realized that Jesus understood him all too well. Could he give up his life for Jesus (which perhaps in the context of agape really meant could he give up his life for others)? Maybe he just couldn’t be sure. And so, while he was quick to jump into the water that morning to greet his Lord on the beach by the Sea of Tiberius, when asked this demanding question he just couldn’t commit. And so, rather than this being a reversal of his denial of Jesus three times, a chance for Peter to redeem himself, perhaps it is – instead -- another sign of his human frailty. Perhaps it is – instead -- another sign of Peter’s weakness. 

In light of this new understanding, we might easily judge Peter for trying to dodge the question. But I think perhaps we should applaud him instead. No longer is he the first one to jump in with quick assurances: “I will follow you wherever you go…I will die with you.” Now that the crucifixion has happened, Peter knows full well what might be expected of him, and who can blame him for not being so sure that he is able to commit? 

I don’t know about you, but I am thankful for Peter’s response. Because if Peter is the rock on which the church is built, we can see that the foundation might be a little shakier than we thought. And that is something which should give us hope. Because it means that as people of faith we don’t have to be superheroes. It means that, like Peter, we will sometimes find it hard to do what Jesus asks. It means that, like Peter, we will not want to be hemmed in, we will not want to be forced to make a response to that demanding question: will you give up your life for me, for others? It means that, like Peter, we will know all too well that the best we can do most times is to simply say “I hope I will have the courage to do what you ask. I just can’t be sure.”

Peter did find the courage to give up his life for others and for what he believed. Like Jesus, he would stretch out his arms on a cross to die. In the end, when it mattered, he was able to say “yes” to that difficult question that Jesus asked. 

And while our choices are not likely to ever be that dramatic, still we are faced – day by day – with choices of how to live out this life which Jesus has called us to in his name. Perhaps we will find the courage and strength to do this by simply doing what Jesus says in the final words of this passage: “Follow me.” If we can’t be sure that we can love the way that Jesus loved us, we can follow…we can try to model our lives after the life of Jesus. And we can seek God’s help to do just that.
Every week during this service we hear again the two great commandments which Jesus said were the summary of the Law and the Prophets and we ask God to write these laws on our hearts: “love the Lord your God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength…. And …love thy neighbour as thyself.”

 We may not realize it, but every week we are asking God to make us willing to offer ourselves completely and unselfishly in service to one another no matter what it costs. That’s what those words for love mean. We are asking God to give us courage to answer “yes” to that question Jesus asked Peter: “do you love me?” the one that caused so much anxiety. I hope and pray that – with God’s help – someday we may indeed be able to answer “yes” to that question – not only with our lips, but also with our lives. Amen.