The following three blog posts will delve into the story of the resurrection as told in John’s Gospel. Read John 20:1-18 slowly, and then enter into the story as we see John as the patron saint of the contemplative mind, Peter as the patron saint of right action, and Mary Magdalene as the patron saint of the affectionate heart.
Peter is the patron saint of action, frantically searching for his redeemer.
When I consider the narrative arc of Simon Peter, I see someone possessed by a sort of frenetic energy that catapults him from one event to the next.
Jesus first calls Simon and his brother Andrew as they are fishing on the Sea of Galilee (Mt. 4:18-20). Tradition holds that Simon Peter was the oldest of the disciples who most likely had fallen back into the family business when he was deemed unworthy of rabbinic study, the highest goal of any young man in Israel at the time. It is no wonder, then, when Jesus calls him to apprenticeship he immediately leaves his nets to follow him - this could be a second chance at a more noble life of spiritual leadership, a chance to bring honor to his humble family name. As we trace the thread of Peter’s story we find a man who always seems to be one step ahead or one step behind where Jesus is inviting him to be.
When Jesus asks his followers who they know him to be in the swirling midst of rumors and assumptions, Simon correctly declares, “you are the Messiah, the son of the living God” (Mt. 16:13-20). This revelation prompts Jesus to bestow upon him the name “Peter”, which means “rock”, as a sign of who he was to be for the Church. Yet somewhat hilariously in the very next passage, one can assume mere minutes later, it is Peter who shouts at Jesus for predicting his own death, to which Jesus replies, “Get behind me, Satan!” The Rock of the Church and the devil incarnate, all in one story! One almost feels sympathy for his compulsiveness - because of his anxiety Simon Peter is always adjacent to his proper place in the narrative.
Jesus’ ministry is magnified after he is transfigured upon Mount Tabor (Mt. 17:1-9). In another stunning conflation of biblical imagery, we witness what has been eternally true of Jesus now revealed in his human body. His face shines like the son and his clothes radiate white light. Moses and Elijah, representing the Law and the Prophets as the partial revelation up to this point in scripture, appear to venerate Jesus as the full revelation of God. It is an awe-inspiring mystical event, one almost ruined by Peter’s pragmatic attempts to quite literally box in the experience with shelters, much like someone who spends the entire time at a concert filming it on their cheap cellphone camera, unable to enjoy the experience of the moment. At this instant the Voice from heaven speaks affirmation over Jesus, the same affirmation at his baptism, that ruptures the disciples’ categories of understanding. All they can do it bear witness and believe.
At the last supper, Jesus stoops to wash his disciples’ feet as a symbol of his servant leadership, the pattern to which the Kingdom of heaven will adhere (John 13:1-11). “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God”, which is to say he was so grounded in both his origin and destination, his place in history and his purpose, that he could freely stoop to bless his own creation as a symbol of the eternal love of God. When it came time for our dear Peter to receive this eternal blessing, he balks at the act: “No, you shall never wash my feet.” Jesus makes another appeal for Peter to understand this bid for intimacy, causing the pendulum to swing completely in the opposite direction: Then, Lord, not just my feet but my hands and head as well!” It is hard not to read our own emotional reactions into the text, but I cannot read this story without seeing Jesus roll his eyes for the umpteenth time at his friend. Was this really to be the person through which the Son of God could establish a revolution of love?
The most tragic evidence of Peter’s frenetic energy takes place at the last supper, before Jesus is betrayed and handed over to the authorities to be tried as a criminal (Matthew 26:31-35; John 13:31-38). Even in the face of Jesus’ declaration that they will all abandon him, Peter’s hubris insists that he will never leave his side, that he is willing to die with Jesus. “Truly I tell you,” Jesus answers, “this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.” Sure enough, when confronted about his association with the errant heretic Jesus of Nazareth, Peter denies it three times. What has until this point been merely the compulsiveness of a man trying to find his place in the world has now collapsed into abandonment and shame.
I remember in a time of deep inner turmoil feeling quite literally dis-oriented; I often felt three feet to the right or left of where I was supposed be, almost geographically dislocated. The sense of fear and shame that I was not in the right place led to compulsive behavior, grasping at anything that would prove that I was okay, that I was in the right place. The need to get back on track, whatever that meant, caused me to overextend myself, or, conversely, to not enter into the flow of the moment that would accept my place in my own story. When I read about Peter I see so much of myself, that frenetic energy betraying the fear and shame that blew me off course into frivolous activity or overwhelmed inaction. There is a way of understanding the deadly sin of sloth, a somewhat antiquated word worth reviving, that has more to do with expending energy on things that don’t matter as a way to avoid the things that do.
Inaction and Frenetic Action vs Right Action
Simon Peter is all of us.
Much of our modern life is lived on the surface, a result of a societal structure that insists we must be productive in order to be happy. The American project, founded on Manifest Destiny, is a double-edged sword. On one hand our national history is full of incredible advancements in science and technology, improving the lives of countless millions, in the striving for a better future. Yet on the other, the ceaseless activity has wreaked havoc on our souls, causing so many pervasive anxiety. We cannot relax, we must be productive. Even in our local flavor of Christendom, we have translated this performative way of life into spiritual terms. I remember the day someone pointed out to me how cruel the language of being “used by God” is, as if we are merely tools in the hands of the Divine meant to accomplish goals. The language of our prayers often betray assumptions about what God desires from us.
I can almost guarantee as you are reading the above sentiment there is little surprising in it for you. You most likely know you are overworked, overly-driven, and allergic to rest. You know the incessant activity of social media and texting and emailing is hurting you. You are perhaps even keenly aware that the religion you inherited from Jesus Inc. that judges your fidelity to him by how often you read your Bible or pray, your church attendance or commitment to programatic faith, has not led to a deep abiding love for God as you were promised. The literary market is flooded with books and podcasts specifically addressing this tragic phenomenon in both American and Christian life, and I bless so much of it. Indeed I am contributing to the pile even as you read this sentence.
Diagnosis is not cure. While it may help to recognize the structures at work in our societal and religious lives, it does not inherently set us free from striving. I do, however, think one point of nuance that may be important to offer in this ongoing cultural conversation is the distinction between inaction and frivolous action.
I have come to realize, more often than not, it is our relationship to the practices of faith that needs to be reassessed, rather than the practices themselves. We know that constant activity, whether in the workplace or in church, does not inherently feed our souls; yet too often our response to frantic activity is to simply pull away and choose inactivity. We blame the rhythms and structures for our burnout without looking within and considering our motivations may be as much to blame as much, if not more, than the activities themselves. The pop-psychological meme-based world of social media champions ideas like boundaries and quiet-quitting without giving clear answers on how we can tend to our souls. We move from frenetic surface life to inert surface life, participating in supposed “rest” that does nothing to address the depths of the true self. We become weekend warriors, free from the toil of our nine-to-five jobs, yet still the “Sunday scaries” bubble up as we anticipate the next week. Have we skipped along gleefully superficial, only to crash into the next wave of work? Has our rest been restful, has our work fed the soul?
If I suffer from the “Sunday scaries”, either I have not tended to my soul on my days off, merely feeding my ego fixations; or my work is soul-sucking. “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” (Matthew 16:26).
Much of our frenetic activity and slothful inactivity is the byproduct of a society that keeps us on the surface of life, looking at the world around us for satisfaction. There is a pervasive scarcity mentality in the post-capitalist landscape that conditions us to operate in a cost/benefit analysis that often determines our behavior. Because we are trained to see a lack of resources outside us and an emptiness within, we orchestrate our spiritual lives by asking what is the bare minimum we need to do to still be considered “in”. To be Christian is a status to maintain with as little effort as needed to not fall out of God’s favor or, more likely, that of our community. So we participate in the practices of faith with an expectation they are probably taking from us and not bringing us to life, which becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. What if we were to leave behind the scarcity mentality of post-capitalism and instead ask ourselves, “how far into the depths of my soul might I delve in order to encounter God’s love?” Questions like this set us up to believe in the abundance of God’s life, which in turn can change our relationship to what will or will not do with the precious time we’ve been given.
We are not called to the sort of frenetic shame-induced action in the name of Jesus personified by Simon Peter; but neither are we to be lulled to sleep in frivolous inactivity that leads to a sort of waking nihilism. We are called to right action.
While Peter did not win the footrace to the empty tomb with his friend John, he was the first to stumble over the threshold and see the cloth that had wrapped Jesus’ body. Interestingly enough, John does not mentioned that Peter “saw and believed” before they returned home. This could be is an omission by the beloved disciple as he frames his own experience, or perhaps Peter was in such a rush he did not understand the potential ramifications of this dramatic discovery. Later that same day, Jesus appears to his disciples in a room filled with fear and anxiety. The door is locked to keep out accusers, and here is Jesus standing in their midst, speaking peace!
As the story continues, however, we wonder if even then Peter has come to terms with resurrection. Jesus appears to them again while they are fishing the Sea of Galilee (John 21). John’s gospel is ending where it began, with Peter and the others returning to what they know. Imagine the irony of a man who was told he would become a fisher of men, who has been declared the rock upon which Christ will build his church, settling back into his family profession. What is eating at Peter’s soul that he could not piece together the call of the resurrected Jesus and the task to which he has been chosen? John tells us this was the third time Jesus had appeared to them.
I believe the key to Peter’s redemption was not in simply seeing the risen Jesus, but in the interaction that follows. After eating together, Jesus asks Peter if he loves him. Peter responds, “you know that I love you”. Jesus asks again, Peter responds again. When Jesus asks a third time, Peter is cut to the heart; it feels to him like Jesus does not believe him. I do not believe Jesus was testing his friend. Instead, I think something altogether more beautiful is happening, and it is to be found in Jesus’ response to Peter each time.
Recall that Simon Peter denied his association with Jesus three times after his arrest. His fear and cowardice were the motivations behind his retreat. The same feelings of guilt and shame that prompted him to run to the empty tomb are what cause him to give up on a vocation in the Kingdom to slink back into being another average guy from the backwoods of Judea. Are we not driven likewise? Our shame and guilt for not measuring up to some sort of cosmic scoresheet provokes us to exert all our energies into things that don’t matter, or to retreat into mediocrity.
Jesus is offering Peter the forgiveness his soul so desperately craves. If Peter’s great sin against his Lord is cavalier action, the remedy must be right action. Jesus’ response to Peter’s love, “feed my sheep”, is not only the release from guilt that he requires, but also the inspiration to get back into the mix and do the right thing, the work to which he has always been called.
We do not truly grasp what forgiveness means if it only hovers over our heads as some vague spiritual concept. Forgiveness takes its root in our souls when we respond with tangible action. To be quite clear, we are forgiven unconditionally because the nature of God is to offer it freely and without need for payment. But for us to live into that gift, to truly receive it, we must learn how to act well. This is what it means when we are taught to pray “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us”. Do you want to create space in your hear to receive the forgiveness of God? Actively forgive those who have offended you.
I can think of no better example of what forgiveness looks like as right action than a story that appeared in the news on October 6th, 2006. Charles Roberts IV, a thirty-two year old milk truck driver, broke into a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. He held the children hostage for a time before shooting ten little girls and himself. Five of them died. The suicide notes he left behind suggested that Roberts had never recovered from the death of his own daughter immediately after her birth, nine years prior. He wrote about how he was filled with hate towards himself and God because of the incident.
If the circumstances of this tragedy were not extraordinary enough, the response of the Amish community in the face of such hatred sent a shock wave through our society with its modern sensibilities. Mere hours after the massacre, the Amish visited Roberts’ parents and widow, bringing them food and literal shoulders to cry upon. In fact, about 30 members of the community attended Roberts’ funeral, and they set up a charitable fund for his family.
There were, somewhat predictably, critiques of such radical acts of forgiveness from those on the outside. The perpetrator had not asked for forgiveness. The crime was possibly the worst one could imagine and not worth of such a quick effort to turn the other proverbial cheek. Does forgiveness deny the extremity of the original act, and deny the community the place to properly grieve?
I would propose that the Amish hold a theology of forgiveness that many of us, including in the larger Christian household, struggle to comprehend. For us, forgiveness is a feeling that we arrive at after we have processed all our other feelings. More cynically, forgiveness can be a form of control that we dangle in front of those who have hurt us, demanding justice first in an ongoing eye-for-an-eye cycle of redemptive violence. Yet the words of a father who lost his daughter in that schoolhouse tragedy challenges our sense of what is right action and what is not, "Forgiveness means giving up the right to revenge.” For the Amish, forgiveness is a discipline, an extension of the forgiveness God freely bestows us on, that releases us precisely from what we may very well deserve. Their commitment to radical nonviolence insists they forgive first, and work out the feelings on the other side through doing what is right in the eyes of God.
Soren Kierkegaard’s claim that, “life is to be lived forward, but understood backward” invites to to act in faith in such a way as we retroactively come to understand the forgiveness we have freely received from God. Right action, doing the things we know God is calling us to do with our precious energies, helps us to embody love, giving us greater understanding.
We are blessed with a glimpse into the later life of Simon Peter through his letters to the early church in Asia Minor. He writes to them as the bishop of Jerusalem, the fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy that he would become the Rock upon which the Church is built. What I hear in his two surviving letters is a man who has received forgiveness from his Lord and inhabited a life of right action because he finally knows who he is and what he is called to do. Perhaps the central premise of Peter’s writings is his claim that we are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, [and] a holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9), which is wonderful Jewish language that speaks of both a collective identity and a collective vocation. The young man whose frenetic energy kept him one step ahead or behind Christ is now firmly planted in his true self, at rest in God, which in turn enables him to proclaim what is true to others who may struggle with finding sure ground beneath their feet in a topsy-turvy world.
To be chosen is to recognize that our first understanding of ourselves comes from the eyes of God, and not from within. Peter reminds us that once we were “no people”, which is to say, we lived devoid of a meaningful history or place to call home. I cannot help but be reminded of an analysis the ethicist Stanley Hauerwas often sneaks into his critique of the American project:
“America is the exemplification of what I call the project of modernity. That project is the attempt to produce a people that believes it should have no story except the story it chose when it had no story. That is what Americans mean by freedom.
The problem with that story is its central paradox: you did not choose the story that you should have no story except the story you chose when you had no story. Americans, however, are unable to acknowledge that they have been fated to be ‘free', which makes them all the more adamant that they have a right to choose the god that underwrites their ‘freedom.’"
The illusion of the “self-made” man or women tries to divorce us from time and space by saying our true self is whatever we determine it is; our identity is something we have the right to manufacture. In fact, any sort of definition implied on us without our consent is anathema to freedom and therefore to be avoided at all costs. Tragically, we buckle under the pressure of self-determination, which leads to frenetic attempts to earn our place in the world and all the accolades that can make us feel seen, or to a resigned lethargy in which we float through space and time like a cosmic jellyfish.
Peter reminds us our identity is a gift we receive at the core of us, not something we achieve, perform for, or behave our way into. Moving from “no people” to “God’s people” means we are now located on a timeline of Divine action, the same one that enabled Jesus to stoop and wash his disciples’ feet. We know Who our source is, and we know what our destination is; the present moment we receive by faith to do the thing asked of us. Peter furthers his message to the early churches in the phrases “royal priesthood” and “holy nation”, again echoing the language of the first covenant that God makes through Abraham and his descendants. For me, holiness is a word that acts as a bridge between identity and purpose. It means quite literally to be “set apart” for a task, a result of being chosen in the first place. We will understand what we are called to do, what right action is, to the degree we understand who we have been created to be. As the ancient Hebrews were chosen and set apart to bridge the gap between Yahweh and the rest of the human family, so we now as the Church are called to present the forgiveness of God to the world, and to reconcile the world back to God.
Naturally, this will illicit all sorts of questions about what we should and should not do with our lives, whether it entails our careers, relationships, political involvement, or any other sphere of daily life. But I believe the formative response to “what am I supposed to do or not do?” is “who do you believe you are?”. Peter could not lay hold to right action until he understood in the deepest part of himself who he was in Christ. The young man who ran to witness the empty tomb, to be absolved of his guilt and shame, finally finds rest in God; and, in doing so, a firm foundation from which to act rightly. The royal priesthood look to feed Jesus’ lambs; not to earn forgiveness but to inhabit it.
“Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (1 Peter 2:11,12)
What does it mean to love God with our actions?
It does not mean we behave ourselves to earn God’s favor.
It does not mean we commit to the biggest, boldest dreams and aspirations we can whip up to make ourselves feel special.
It means attunement to that which actually brings our Beloved delight in order to magnify love.
I wonder if we were the ones Jesus asked, “do you love me?” how we would respond. We often think of love in sentimental terms, as feelings and inclinations. The Greatest Commandment, however, is an imperative to close the gap between our vague aspirations and the material reality of how we lives our lives; to bind the heart, mind, and body to our soul. I think here is is especially important we remember that Jesus does not ask us questions like this to bring us shame, but rather, to come to terms with this gap.
Love is an action. When I move towards my beloved, I have to attune my attention to her needs and desires. Rather than spraying loving gestures into the wind willy-nilly, I must learn - what can I do to love my beloved as she actually is, not the illusion I have built in my heart and mind? Sentimentality refuses to take an honest assessment of our actions, and it gives little heed to to desires of the object of our love.
My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
- Thomas Merton