Text — John 21:15-19

Some interesting Christian lore comes with our gospel lesson.  Three times Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?  Three times Peter answers, “Yes, Lord.  You know that I love you.”  This is often seen as Jesus reminding Peter of his threefold denial that he even knew Jesus back on the night of Jesus’ arrest. 

After each of these exchanges, Jesus tells Peter, “Feed my sheep,”  which is Peter’s commission to be the shepherd or pastor of the Christian flock.  This is part of the basis for naming Peter the first pope. 

But the words I want to focus on are these:    “ … when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and go wherever you wished.”  This sounds like adolescence.  The big thing early in life is getting to go where you want to go.  “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 don’t want to go.”

In Christian lore, this is Jesus’ prophecy that Peter would be also crucified.  “You will stretch out your arms” — that is, on the cross.  Tradition has it that Peter was crucified in Rome.  But there’s more in the words than that.   “… someone will take you where you don’t want to go.”  This is a haunting verse, but also a helpful one.

I started to its lesson (without knowing what I was learning) when I was around 10 or 12 years old.  My friends and I in the neighborhood sometimes did things that were unkind.  Of course, these were always my friends’ ideas. 

One summer night after dark, someone got the idea to play “ring doorbells and run.”  We decided to pick on the McGarvey sisters.  They seemed like an easy target.  We rang their doorbell, and then ran and hid behind bushes to watch them come out and look around.  We repeated this operation several times within an hour.  We thought this was very clever, but the McGarvey sisters were more clever.  Somehow they knew exactly which parents to call on the phone while these antics were going on, so by the time I arrived home all hot and proud of myself, my parents knew where I’d been.

The trial began.  It was a speedy trial.  Even without the advice of counsel, I pled guilty.  And my punishment was to go back to the McGarvey sisters’ the next day, alone, in broad daylight, to ring the doorbell once more, but this time to wait for someone to answer, and apologize face to face.  This was something I didn’t want to do.  The thought of it made me sick with dread.

Of course, the McGarvey sisters received my apology very graciously.  So this became a lesson in mercy too.  But mainly, it was a lesson in going where I didn’t want to go.   I learned it’s possible to go there anyway, and not only to live to tell the tale, but to feel good for going.

A few weeks ago at the mid-week Lenten service, I told about the first time I visited my mother in a psychiatric hospital.  I was in seventh grade.  This was the first of many such visits, because my mother suffered from severe depression for much of the last 38 years of her life.  I was shocked to see my mother in a place with so many sick, unhappy looking people.  This was another lesson in being taken where I didn’t want to go, but I gained food for a lifetime through that experience

Jesus is saying here what we all know.  Life is difficult, complicated, often very messy.  Whether it’s our fault or not, whether it’s by our own doing or through the people we’re connected to, we find ourselves mixed up in all kinds of struggles — illnesses, eating disorders, addictions to everything from alcohol and drugs to pornography and gambling.  People have affairs.  People lose their jobs.  Violence breaks out.   Marriages and families often fall apart.  In our pride, and embarrassment, we tend to keep these things a secret.  The trouble with that is, secrets isolate us and make he pain worse. 

The church is one place where we don’t have to pretend that our lives are easy, or perfect (whatever perfect is).  Many things are too private to bring up here on Sunday morning during the joys and concerns, but we can bring them up in our smaller groups and more intimate friendships in the church.  But even on Sunday morning, at least we can admit that these things do happen to all of us. 

This is where Jesus’ words come in handy:  When you were young, you fastened your own belt and went where you wanted to go.”  Youth is all about individuality, the ego, finding its own place in the world.  And we need to find our place in the world.  “But when you are older, someone will take you where you don’t want to go.” 

As we go through life, we come to see that we’re part of a bigger picture, the bigger picture I spoke about on Easter.  We’re a part of each other and we need each other — more than we like to admit.

One of the darker sides of this passage is that it makes me wonder if having a belt tied around me, stretching out my hands and being led where I don’t want to go means that someday I will lose so much of my strength and health that I’ll be tied into a wheelchair and will have to depend on someone else for my most personal needs.  I’m not looking forward to that sort of inter-dependence but I may have to face that too.  I imagine some of our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan know something about being led where they don’t want to go.

But there’s a brighter side to this lesson.  Hearing Jesus say, “someone else will lead you where you don’t want to go” helps me let go of the idea that my struggles — and by struggles here I mean all the frustration, disappointment, grief, loneliness, temptations and fears that we face — these struggles are not necessarily flaws in life.  They’re not just the price of admission we have to pay in order to gain access to the good times.

Struggle is really the essence of life.  Without struggle there is no life.  There is no passion.  There is no joy.  Struggle, passion, and joy are different sides of the same life.  When you find yourself having to go someplace you don’t want to go, that doesn’t mean it’s the wrong place to go.  It may be the right place to go. 

No one’s life — believe me — is as easy or charmed or struggle-free as it looks.  When we come to church, we like to look as if things are going well.  We need to have boundaries.  We can’t walk around with our guts spilling out.  But behind these boundaries, we’re all struggling with things we rarely talk about.  We don’t know how to talk about them.   It may feel dangerous to talk about them.  We don’t want to look bad.  We don’t want to bother other people.  We don’t want to be the focus of attention.  But we all struggle.  Our struggles can get us down.  Sometimes the future feels bleak. 

But the whole Christian message, the whole Easter message, is that life is infinitely worth living even with the struggle, even for the sake of the struggle if we’ve chosen the right struggle. Our struggles are all part of a larger struggle going on in creation.  I love the line from St. Paul, “All creation is groaning in labor pains” giving birth to something new.  This is what struggles mean, and there’s much joy in seeing them that way.  It can even help us have a sense of humor about our struggles. 

We’re not so unique.  To the extent that we can be open about our struggles it draws us together.  If we just get together to impress each other, that doesn’t get us anywhere in terms of really finding each other in the most authentic way.

Jesus tells Peter, in effect, “You can count on being led where you don’t want to go, but I’ve gone there before you.  I’m there with you.”   This is the risen Christ speaking.

At the Sunday morning Bible study awhile back, Bronwyn Commins said something that, for elegant simplicity I can’t improve on, so I’ll close with this.  “I used to wonder when the struggle would finally be over so I could start living my life.  Then it dawned on me that my struggle is my life.”