#LOVE | John 21:15-19

Introduction

I love you. Three words that can get you into a great amount of trouble if not directed to the right person. Three words that are so overrated in popular culture that we have tended to gloss over its significance. In Western cultures, these three words are so easily, sometimes even loosely, uttered signifying a close bond between family, friends, and even beyond the human realm. In the East, however, we are either scared to say it or we're shy to say it and for these reasons, it has become taboo. Whatever be the case, the pleasant surprise is that these three words are found in our very own Bible itself! Exactly in the same construction! Not just once but a few times. Quite fascinating!

Love

The word “love” appears in the Bible in different forms over 800 times. It is one of the words used most often in our liturgies, hymns, and songs and yet, it seldom becomes our lifestyle. In our text today, Peter has a dialogue with the risen Jesus and is asked three times whether he loves him. John’s gospel, as most scholars agree, was written sometime in the 90s of the first century and we must understand that the community writing this story is writing with the luxury of hindsight. They have seen, they have heard and now they are writing about the whole Christ event. New Testament scholars have spent years of research and a majority has concluded that the whole of John 21 might just be a later addition to the original John’s gospel, either as an epilogue, a summary or a postscript. Regardless, John 21:15-19 is a story. It contains a plot and it is very important to us as a faith community because it talks about the love of Jesus.

Here’s an exegesis of this text:

Like any other Biblical story, this particular story has its different features and its different issues at the same time. It is a threefold dialogue of love between Jesus and Peter. In the first dialogue, Jesus asks Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" Imagine Peter's immediate reaction! If he knew his Scriptures, the Old Testament, well, he would know for sure that very rarely has anyone ever been asked by God whether God loved him/her! But here is Jesus, the son of God, in the consciousness of the Johannine community (John 1:34, 49; 3:18; 5:25; 11:4, 27; 19:7; 20:31), asking Peter whether he loves him! Peter must have been thrilled and he responds by saying, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you!” Jesus immediately responds “Feed my lambs”. A problem arises here with the interpretation of the word “these”. While some scholars, including Barrett and Carson argue that the comparison is between Peter’s love for Jesus and the other disciples' love for Jesus, other scholars, including Chennattu and Wiarda argue that the comparison is between Peter’s love for Jesus and Peter's love for other things, including his former life of fishing. Still others, including Brown and Bultmann argue that the comparison is not determinative in this dialogue at all. Let us come back to this in a moment. The second dialogue gets even more interesting. I would like to imagine Peter getting a little uncomfortable. Didn't he just tell Jesus that he loved him? But here is Jesus asking him again, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Maybe he realized at this moment that he may need to answer better, especially after having the reputation of denying Jesus thrice! (John 18:15-27) He responds in the same way and Jesus says, "Tend my sheep". Now comes the third dialogue. It's getting intense. This is the most difficult question. Peter felt “hurt” the text says and he answers in haste saying, “Lord, you know everything! You know that I love you!” Jesus responds and this time the response is really long, it is the whole of verses 17, 18, and 19.

Coming back to the issues in the text, as we analyze and look at these three dialogues, there is enough and more available for huge scholarly debates. First is the very Greek word for love used here, rather, “words” used here. Notice that the first two times, Jesus uses the word “agape” and then changes to “philia” while Peter maintains “philia” right through. Some scholars even suggest that the different word usage for love as well as the terms tend, feed, lambs, sheep are all mere literary constructions because Jesus in reality spoke in Aramaic and not in Greek! Second, almost all the scholars reflect upon this text purely on ecclesiastical grounds. However hard I tried to break my head trying to bring out a fresh epistemology based on a true exegesis of this passage, everything led to the conclusion that this text has to be talking about Peter’s installation as the head of the church! I then realized that theological research will sometimes only lead us to an a-priori understanding of love in this passage and one can never really comprehend the essence of love talked about here. But isn’t it is true that epistemology hinges both on a-priori as well as a-posteriori knowledge, both reason and experience?

Stay with me now as we delve into the abyss of experience.

#LOVE

I would like to begin by using UTC’s most frequent and famous line and I quote, “In our present contemporary context”, unquote, people are quite fond of hashtags! Social media has taken over our lives so much that one famous hashtag even reads #hashtageverythingtillidie. Humor aside, one can learn a lot about the current world by a careful study of social media hashtags. For those of us who are still wondering what hashtags are, they are a modern technique of classifying and organizing content on the Internet. It is an amazing way to build communities and to connect with people all around the world who share the same interest as you! The simple reason for this brief explanation on hashtags is to tell you that the most used hashtag today in the world is #love.

One may argue that #love is the most used hashtag on social media because it is the most common thing found in the world. But the reality is quite contrary to that. Love is famous not because there is a lot of love, but because there is not much love left here on earth. Stories from across the world continue to shock us day after day. Hate is on the rise in all forms. On one hand, nations are competing with each other in accumulating weapons while on the other there is no room in most of them for migrants and refugees. The future of planet Earth itself is at stake! People are being killed on the streets, tortured, abused, and tormented. Women and children are still “at risk”. People of varied sexual and gender identities are abused and ill-treated for being who they are and yet we claim to be in a postmodern world, whatever that word may mean! We Christians are no better. There is hate within the church as much as there is out there in the world. Sometimes we don’t seem to be able to identify with a Christian from another denomination. We want to be the best version of Christian possible, but we just seem to miss the point. We think we are ethically right, but continue to judge people based on what we subjectively think is right, giving little or no room for the other’s perspectives. To top it all, 2000 years and we still cannot share a meal together! Religion, Race, Color, Gender, Caste, Disability, the list goes on. We continue to be divided and we continue to hate.

Now we have our text and we have our context. So, what next?

An online article entitled “Social media: It’s so 1^st century BC” by Tom Standage brings out how social media is as old as 1^st century BC. The article says and I quote, “Letters were commonly copied, shared and quoted in other letters. Some…were addressed to several people and were intended to be read aloud or posted in public” and this includes “the circulation of letters and other documents in the early Christian church.” Friends, John being one of the popular gospels speaks much about love. Perhaps it is possible to wonder how the early Christians would have felt about a love relationship with Jesus. Jesus taught them what love actually was! While they may have had their own hashtags like #iamsaved, #heisrisen, #jesisislord, the more important ones would have been #jesuslovesme, #ilovejesus, #calledtolove and they would have gone viral!

Conclusion

The Greek has at least four words to define love. Storge which is love between family members, eros which is romantic love, philia which is friendly love and agape which is divine love. Each of us, in our own languages would have multiple words for love. There are multiple forms of love and each of them has their own place and each has to be celebrated. But are we going to blindly love just for love’s sake? Here’s where a balance needs to be in place between reason and experience. Let us go back to our text for one final analysis on the Jesus-Peter dialogue. Yes, they are talking about love. And what’s most overwhelming is that here are two “men” talking about love, one asking the other whether he loves him and the other answering with all passion! It's weird queer! This kind of love breaks all stereotypes and it is because this love is built on a strong foundation. They are conversing about love between the first person and the second person, but notice how Jesus completes each section with a return statement! Feed my lambs, Tend my sheep, and Feed my sheep! Jesus shifts Peter’s attention every time to the third person, the one who is devoid of love. This is the good news of this passage. Yes, it is important to love oneself and one’s own, but it is even more important to love the unloved, for all of us were first loved before we could ever love! Jesus’ words, “Follow me!” at the end of this passage point us to the Cross that stands right in front of us as the perfect way to love and to always be at the loving service of others, for this is the greatest form of love, that one would lay down his/her life for another, completely abstracting from individual preferences! The world is in need of love. We are standing in the breach between “I” and “You”, between “self” and “other”. When Jesus asks “Do you love me?” he asks on behalf of all those who are crying out and longing for some love. Are we ready to say I love you?