To the Leader
“Do you love me? Feed my sheep,” asks Jesus of the one who would be his leader.
The story closes with this familiar litany. Peter is still God’s man of the hour, still the chosen leader of the band. For Peter, for all the disciples, for all of us in leadership, the moment is highly significant. There is a seamless connection between hearing the words and becoming the words in the lives of others. Intermingled with freedom is responsibility and service. We are invited to hear these words for ourselves and then to offer them to those to whom we are called to minister and lead.
Peter would later write to his widespread flock reminding them that they were “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.” His declaration echoes the old familiar strains of Israel’s ancient identity – “you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” These were the very first words delivered to God’s people, the nation of Israel. They are for us today. To be a priest is to carry in your flesh and person the good news, the good words of God’s redemption.
The words of the liturgy were pronounced over me in the act of my ordination as an elder in the church. These words are for all believers today. We we are a community of priests, a body of servants to the world, men and women called to “be God’s instrument of benediction to His church.”
Close your eyes. All around us are people in desperate and hungering need of a good word from God, not the utterances of our mouth that have no power, but the presence of ourselves and Christ in us.
Picture the faces of your friends, coworkers, your family, the ones you see there waiting and longing. Who are they? What are their names? Maybe you are you one of them yourself. What are the familiar situations in which they are trying to make a go of it alone?
The mother battling cancer, the elderly parents unable to be cared for, the teenage son who has committed suicide; the marriage on the brink of utter ruin. Who are the ones hiding in the shadows, too ashamed of the depth of their own failure and fears to step out? Who are the ones hiding on the boat trying to get it done and knowing it to be futile the whole while?
People needing to hear the words – do it my way, come and eat with me.
I see my friends, my flock. The young married couple struggling with debt, finding stability and freedom for the first time. The young single man unjustly jailed and struggling to understand a world that seems to cave in on top of him. My friend struggling to let God put the pieces of his life back together.
What are the words of benediction for them? The very real person of the risen Christ Jesus through the Holy Spirit in you and me! Our very bodies, our selves, us!
Hear one more time these words of the risen and present Christ even for your own life right now:
No fish? Cast your net to the other side.
Come and eat breakfast.
Do you love me? Feed my sheep.
