Here’s a meditation for the season of Easter, reflecting on how the risen Christ demonstrated to Peter how he was wholly forgiven for the way that three times he had denied Jesus. It’s taken from my book No Ordinary Man 2.
Three times he asked me
Read
When they had breakfasted, 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.’ He said to him a second time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ He answered, ‘Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Look after my sheep.’ He asked him a third time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ It wounded Peter that he asked him a third time, ‘Do you love me?’, so he responded, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.’ John 21:15-17
The meditation of Simon Peter
Three times he asked me,
three times the same simple yet searching question:
‘Do you love me, Peter?’
And I was getting fed up with it,
not to say a little hurt.
After all, he should have known by then, surely?
I’d followed him for three years,
and I thought we’d become close –
he gave that impression, anyway.
The ‘Rock’, he’d called me,
the one on whom he’d build his Church –
an expression of trust, if ever there was one –
so how could he doubt me now,
let alone question my love?
But then, of course, I remembered that bold, brash promise of mine:
‘Though all become deserters because of you,
I will never desert you’ –
and suddenly I understood.
He’d known I would fail, even as I said it,
not only abandon but deny him,
and he knew too how sick I’d felt,
how wretched and ashamed
when the knowledge of my failure finally sunk home.
But there was no anger from him,
no recriminations,
no rebuke.
His concern was for me, not himself,
his sole desire to wipe the slate clean and start again,
and this was my chance to deal with the guilt,
to exorcise the demon once and for all.
Three times I’d denied him,
three times he put the question,
and at last I could put the record straight,
declare to him what I should have declared to others:
‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’
We couldn’t change the past, we both knew that,
but with his help we could put it behind us and change the future,
and that’s what he offered me that day;
a new beginning,
a fresh chapter,
life dawning for me as surely as it had dawned again for him.
I was restored,
cleansed,
forgiven,
the ghost finally laid to rest,
and I owed it all to him,
the man whom I abandoned so freely,
yet who refused to abandon me!
Prayer
Gracious God,
we try so hard to put the past behind us,
to let go and start again,
but all too often mistakes we imagined long buried
return to haunt us.
We do our best to make amends,
but there are times
when even if we can learn to live with the wounds,
others can’t, scars running deep and hurts hard to forget.
But you are always ready to offer us a new beginning,
no matter how foolish we have been
or how many opportunities we have wasted.
Whatever we may have done,
you grant us free and total forgiveness,
a new page on which to start a fresh chapter.
The past is done with, the future before us –
and nothing can ever change that.
Receive our thanks and lead us forward,
in the name of Christ our Saviour.
Amen.