Tending and Feeding

John 21:15-19

          There are great meditations to be done on this sequence of questions and responses, Do you love me? followed by "Feed my lambs", "Tend my sheep" and then "Feed my sheep".  We can however look at it also in a more simplistic way.

           It almost seems insulting that Jesus asks Peter three times in a row, "do you love me?". Possibly this is a foreshadowing of Peter's denial of Jesus three times. Whatever, the answers are quite telling.

           The questions are targeted and repetitive about loving God and what we are called do in response to our profession that we do in fact love Jesus and love God. If we love God we are to care for each other. There is no escape clause, no limits, no exclusions. If you take the varied meanings of feeding and tending into account, along with the very nature of sheep and lambs, we get a broader picture of what Jesus expects of us, what God expects from us. 

        I would not ask how will we carry out this mission but how are we carrying out this mission already? Where are we failing on a personal level, as a church , even as a nation?

         Go forth and love, tend and feed.

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ A second time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. 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 do not wish to go.’ (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’