It has been a difficult week in so many ways. I don’t know about you, but my emotions this week seem to be all over the map.. Like you, I have been reading and watching and listening to the media coverage of the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech. Tears, when I read the stories of those who have been killed. Anger at some of the media coverage Disbelief when trying to comprehend the magnitude of it all. A real empathy that comes when you live in a college town and work on a college campus and look out at so many professors and administrators and students. More than frustration that welled up when listening to those who don’t want to talk about gun violence, or the gun lobby, or guns period. Mystified by those who so quickly tried to blame everyone, from campus officials to teachers to students to counselors who should have seen “warning signs” or should have responded differently ahead of time or in the moment.
      It was early that afternoon when I heard a radio host say something like “I’m not much of a believer, but I don’t see how you can believe in a God who would let something like this happen.” It might have been the next day when I saw a news anchor interview the local Baptist pastor there in Blacksburg. The journalist didn’t quiz him on the God question. He didn’t ask him how or why all of this could happen. The pastor had been helping university folks make phone calls to families. “It’s the most difficult day in 30 years of ministry” he said. He wasn’t searching for answers. He was caring for the brokenhearted.
      Decades ago, a courageous and honest preacher offered a sermon not long after his own son had been killed in a car accident. The preacher was William Sloane Coffin of Yale University and Riverside Church after that. In that sermon he tells of lashing out only a few days after his sons death at a woman who in trying to offer comfort made a feeble statement about not understanding the will of God. Coffin, by his own admission, responded with more than a bit of anger; noting to his congregation that he knew letting the anger out would do him good and “the instruction to her was long overdue”. Summing up his response to the well-intentioned visitor, Coffin explains his frustration, “Nothing so infuriates me as the incapacity of seemingly intelligent people to get it through their heads that God doesn’t go around this world with God’s finger on the triggers, God’s fist around the knives, God’s hands on the steering wheels.” He goes on in the sermon to tell of the abundance of letters he received, some of the very best and very worst coming from his “fellow reverends.” “A few of whom” Coffin suggests “a few of whom proved they knew their Bibles better than the human condition.”
      The people who offer the most healing, the most support, the people who come to your rescue after at tragedy, Coffin insightfully offers, are the ones who “simply want to hold your hand, not to quote anybody or even say anything, people who simply bring food and flowers–the basics of human life– people who sign letters simply, ‘your broken-hearted sister.’” In the end Coffin, himself a brokenhearted preacher, decides that some of his reverend friends were using scripture and searching for easy theological answers to “pretty up a situation whose bleakness they simply couldn’t face.”
      Questions that have no answers. Prayers that come with a shaking fist. Anger that comes from deep within. Hugs when no words will come. Clinging to one another when there is nothing else to do. Tears. Shouts. Food. Flowers. The basics of human life. Sometimes the best you can do is care for the brokenhearted. Because everything we have to give comes wrapped with this human condition.
      Ten years ago this month Cathy and attended the memorial service for her very best friend in seminary. Krissa baptized our son Ben. Krissa died after a year long battle with cancer leaving her husband, and her ten year old daughter and her six year old son. I remember sitting there in the pew during the service and realizing it can be a lot safer standing behind the pulpit; safer when it comes to one’s own emotions, grief, unanswered questions. At one point during the service, the minister led in prayer of confession. It wasn’t a printed unison prayer. He offered it on our behalf; maybe not spontaneous prayer, but his words nonetheless. Prayers of confession aren’t all that common in the liturgy of a memorial service. I remember it, though, not because it was unusual, but because of its content. “Lord, we need you to know how angry we are. And we know you understand. We don’t expect easy answers, nor do we want them really. But we just want you to know how mad we are. Because you alone can take our anger and transform it by the power of your Spirit, to give us a glimpse of healing, and hope, and eternity....” The pastor understood, no, he was living in, this human condition. And in that prayer of confession he was asking God to take what we had to give.
      God takes what we have to give. That’s what happened that morning on the beach with the Risen Christ. You remember the story from John’s Gospel. Just before the threefold exchange between Jesus and Peter that I just read to you, just before that the disciples had gone back to fishing. They had gone back to work, gone back to the ordinary and the expected, gone back to life. They had been fishing all night long but they caught nothing. After loaves and fishes and miraculous catches, I guess it was back to business as usual. Jesus stood on the shore within eyesight and earshot, but they didn’t recognize him. “Cast the net on other side” he yelled out. Sure enough, the nets suddenly overflowed. Peter then knew that it was the Lord and he jumped into the sea to rush to see Jesus. The others came in the boat with a net full so full of fish they could only drag it. Apparently it took 153 fish to fill the net to just shy of breaking. 153 fish. That’s what it says right there in the bible.
      Jesus had breakfast waiting for them when they arrive on shore. A breakfast of fish and bread over an open fire. Once again, they ate together, the disciples and Jesus. Once again the Risen Christ was present with them. Christ was present with them amid the sweat and the smell, the work, the frustration, the livelihood, the emptiness and the abundance. Christ was present with them when the nets were full of everything life has to offer. Nets so full of this human condition.
      When they had finished, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” Peter said to Jesus “Yes Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him “Feed my lambs.” The question is repeated a second time, and then a third time. It wouldn’t take a professor of literature to point out how Jesus was allowing Peter to reverse that haunting memory of denying him three times the night of his arrest. Or maybe there is something about the number three, how it is a perfect number in the biblical tradition. Perhaps Jesus was calling Peter to a three part affirmation of perfect love. The three-peat might also serve to emphasis the length and breadth and depth of Peter’s apostolic commission. Peter, the Rock upon which I will build by church. Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.
      Beginning students of the Greek New Testament quickly learn of three words in Greek for “love.” There is the “philo” of fraternal love. The “eros” of a passionate, intimate love. And the “agape” of a self-giving, self-emptying, sacrificial, complete, no holds barred, lay down your life for another, kind of love. When those same students come to this familiar interchange between Jesus and Peter at the end of John’s Gospel, there’s a fresh reading that comes. A fresh reading that comes in the nuance of which word in Greek is used for love.
      Jesus asks Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me with an agape love? Do you love me more than these? Peter responds “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you with a philo love, that I love you like a brother.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” A second time Jesus asks, “Simon, Son of John, do you agape-love me?” And Peter responds with an affirmation of philo-love and Jesus says “tend my sheep.” When the question comes a third time, the word changes. “Simon, Son of John, do you philo-love me?” Jesus asks. According to John, Peter felt hurt because Jesus ask him now three times. “Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you” Peter pleads, keeping with the philo love. “Feed my sheep”, Jesus says.
      Those same students of the Greek New Testament, then, take the time to ponder something new in a biblical text, something new in this three-fold examination on love. Question-Agape. Answer-Philo. Question Agape. Answer-Philo. Question-Philo. Answer-Philo. Something beyond what you can see in the English text. Then, while pondering something new that comes with only the most elementary of knowledge of the Greek, the student sets off to see what the scholars say about philo and agape and Jesus and Peter. It doesn’t take long for the balloon to pop, for the wind to come out of the sails. It would seem that most scholars think the difference in word choice probably means little or nothing.
      What if Jesus was asking Peter for agape and all Peter could give was philo. And by the third question, Jesus in asking Peter for philo, he was asking him, he was accepting what he could give. Even with the language wind taken out of the language sail, with just the same question repeated three times, maybe Jesus was digging deep into Peter’s soul for all that he could offer. What if God alone can take exactly what we can give, and transform it by the power the Spirit, to give us a glimpse of agape, and healing, and hope, and comfort, and eternity.
      Yesterday we gathered here for a memorial service for Ruth Wyatt; a service in witness to the resurrection. It was an hour full of tears and memories and singing and praying and hope and promise. Lauren McFeaters described it as moving from Good Friday to Easter in one exhausting hour. At one point a large volunteer choir gathered up here to sing. There were so many folks that we had to leave the chancel, which meant, then, that I could see from there in the nave. A choir of younger and older, a choir of many races, a choir of incredible singers and those who love to sing. So many that Sue Ellen Page had to conduct from a third of the way back standing on a pew. They sang a setting of the Prayer of St. Francis: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love, where there is injury, pardon, where there is doubt, faith, where there is despair, hope, where there is darkness, light, where there is sadness, joy.” You know the prayer is beautiful, and this piece of music was stunning.
      But what was incredible was watching the faces of everyone sing. And many, many in the choir were weeping. They were singing through tears. Not everyone, and not all at the same time. But when someone had to stop, those around them kept singing. “It is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” With tears and heavy hearts, “Lord make me an instrument of your peace.” The music was stunning. The statement of faith was beyond words.
      All we have to give comes wrapped in this human condition. And sometimes, maybe the best we can do is care for the brokenhearted. But God takes what we give, and God alone can take what we have to give and transform it into a glimpse of healing, and hope, and eternity.

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