John 21:1-19

Failure and Grace

Sermon preached April 27, 2014
Opening
There is a guy who calls himself the Professor of Blues who has produced a humorous
guide called How to Write the Blues. He says not everyone can sing the blues.
Like, breaking your leg while skiing in Aspen is not the blues.
Getting your leg bit off by an alligator in a Louisiana swamp is the blues.
He says, you have a right to sing the blues if your first name is a Southern state -
like Georgia....if youre older than dirt...if you shot a man in Memphis...if your
woman done run off with your best friend.
Most blues songs, the Professor says, begin, woke up this morning. If you didnt wake
up this morning, you will have trouble singing the blues.
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Peter has failed
In our reading, Peter as a case of the blues. Because he is a failure.
This is a head-scratcher of a passage, at first. Seven of the remaining eleven disciples are
together in Galilee, their home turf. And this is after the resurrection. They have seen the
risen Jesus. Thomas has seen the nail marks in Jesus hands and the sword wound in his
side. You would think theyd be singing Onward Christian Soldiers and have gone
marching off to the tell the world about Jesus. But what do they do? Led by Peter, they
go fishing.
Why would they do that? Well, to explain, I need to recap what happened to Peter.
Lukes gospel tells us that Peter first learned something of who Jesus was when he
used one of Peters boats as sort of a speaking platform - pushed out into the
water, the water reflects the sound and more people can hear you that way. And
after he spoke, Jesus told Peter, push out into deep water and let your nets down.
Peter grumbled that hed been fishing all night and hadnt caught anything but did
it anyway and when he did the nets were so full of fish they almost broke. And
Peter fell down before Jesus and said Lord, go away from me, I am a sinful
man! What prompted that, I think, was that Peter was ashamed of himself - his
sin, his moral failings, and in the presence of Jesus extreme goodness, he was
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ashamed.
But Jesus said, dont worry, from now on youll catch people. And Peter followed
Jesus and became the leader of the pack. Jesus nicknamed him The Rock -
something like calling him Rocky - a nickname that he never lived up to during
the three years of following Jesus except maybe for the thickness of his skull -
Peter was kind of a loud, brash, well-meaning but blundering doofus.
And then came his great failure. The night of Jesus arrest, at the Last Supper, Peter said,
Even if everyone else deserts you, I never will. Im the bestest disciple, Jesus, Ill
never let you down, I love you more, I am more loyal, than all the rest of these, and Ill
die with you!
And maybe you remember how well Peter lived up to that boast. After Jesus was
arrested, Peter followed and was warming himself around a charcoal fire outside
the place where they had detained Jesus - and a servant girl, a young teenager,
said, You were with that Jesus fellow; youre one of them. And Peter denied
ever even knowing Jesus, once, twice, three times.
Now, that would be one thing if Jesus had been executed and stayed dead. Because Peter
maybe could have rationalized that there was no point in having died for a failed cause.
But Jesus rose from the dead. Peter had not just failed a dead friend, he had denied the
Lord of all creation. Now thats a failure. And Peter has to wonder, now that Jesus is
living forever, if his failure is also going to live forever, if hes going to be known as a
coward and a failure forever.
So I think Peter is depressed and anxious and turned in on himself, not knowing what to
do next. And whats a good thing to do when youve totally screwed up and are confused
and dont know what to do next? You go fishing.
Our experiences of failure
Now just about all of us know what failure is like. And if youve read self-help literature
or listened to motivational speakers youve heard that stuff about youre not a failure if
you fail; youre only a failure if you believe youre a failure; that Thomas Edison failed
99 times for every one success; you may remember the line from Its A Wonderful Life,
Remember, no man is a failure who has friends. Or what Robert F. Kennedy said,
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. I could fill ten sermons
with quotes and stories like that and you might go away feeling better, but thats not the
gospel.
So lets think about failure for a while.
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Now, there are little failures that are kind of funny:
like the story of the pastor who was asked to do a funeral for a man who
started and ran a big company in his town. The funeral was going to be
packed with all kinds of important people, and so the pastor was nervous.
But he conducted the service and on the way to the graveside for the burial
the funeral director came up and complimented him on the sermon and
asked him a few questions about how they would conduct the graveside
service. Well, the pastor felt good about the compliment - here was a guy
who listened to hundreds of funeral sermons and he said the pastorss
sermon was one of the best hed ever heard - and he got a little sidetracked
and lost his place in the bible where he had his scripture reading marked.
He stood at the front of the casket with the family and dignitaries
assembled there and he intended to read 1 Corinthians 15 - the resurrection
chapter. But instead he turned to 1 Corinthians 5, turned with great dignity
to those at the graveside and read, It is commonly reported that there is
fornication among you.
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But there are failures that dont feel at all funny.
Getting a pile of college rejection letters. Getting fired. A brief
indiscretion ruining a marriage. Striking out in the bottom of the ninth
with the bases loaded to lose the game. Losing soldiers under your
command because of a botched mission.
And sometimes, it feels like failures can stay with us forever.
There is a Museum of Failed Products in Ann Arbor, Michigan. At first
sight, the shelves and aisles look just like a supermarketexcept there's
only one of each item. And you won't find these items in a real
supermarket anyway: they are failures, products withdrawn from sale after
a few weeks or months, because almost nobody wanted to buy them.
It's the only place on the planet where you'll find Clairol's A Touch of
Yogurt shampoo alongside Gillette's equally unpopular For Oily Hair
Only, a few feet from a now-empty bottle of Pepsi AM Breakfast Cola
(born 1989; died 1990). The museum is home to discontinued brands of
caffeinated beer; to TV dinners branded with the logo of the toothpaste
manufacturer Colgate; to Fortune Snookies, a short-lived line of fortune
cookies for dogs; to self-heating soup cans that had a tendency to explode
in customers' faces; and to packets of breath mints that had to be
withdrawn from sale because they looked like tiny packages of crack
cocaine. It is where microwaveable scrambled eggspre-scrambled and
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sold in a cardboard tube with a pop-up mechanism for easier consumption
in the cargo to die.
All those are somebodys failure, on display for the world to see.
And our failures can feel the same way. Worse than that, we can feel like we are
defined by failure, that we are failures.
Peter and the Lord
I think thats how Peter felt and thought about himself. So lets see what Jesus does with
Peters great failure. And its brilliant, just brilliant, what the Lord does.
Peter and the others are out on the water, theyve been fishing all night and
theyve gotten skunked. No luck. Nada, zip, nothing. Dawn is breaking and
there is someone standing on the beach. They cant see who it is and that
someone yells out to them, literally in the Greek, Dont you have any fish? In
other words, This isnt working for you, is it?
John Ortberg points out that the question has a sting to it. Sounds like a casual
question but Jesus often used casual questions or comments to invite people to
examine themselves. And this question is designed to help them look at the
futility of staying where they are, of Peter staying stuck in his failure.
Now these guys are professional fishermen - theyve done this for a living - they
give him a terse, one-word answer, No, and probably muttered some other stuff
under their breath.
And the man on the beach tells them to put down their nets on the other side -
which is pretty ridiculous, the boat is maybe five feet wide, what difference will
that make - but they do it anyway - and come up with 153 fish. And Peter
remembers the first time this happened and he realizes who this is and he jumps in
the water and swims to shore.
And what Jesus does next to heal and forgive and restore Peter is amazing. First, note
that he doesnt try to brush it away.
Maybe this has happened to you - you wrong someone and you go to apologize.
And the person you wronged brushes off your apology by saying, It doesnt
matter, forget about it, but you know that it does still matter because what you
did was pretty rotten and what the other person has done by saying it doesnt
matter is really to withhold forgiveness.
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Jesus doesnt do that. Did you notice what Jesus is doing on the beach, what is there
waiting for them? Theres a fire burning there, a particular kind of fire - go ahead and
look back - its a charcoal fire. Well, so what? Think back to the scene of Peter denying
Jesus - he is outside the home of the high priest and he is warming himself around a
charcoal fire. Jesus is re-creating part of the scene from Peters great failure. And he has
prepared a meal of fish and bread - ring any other bells - the feeding of the five thousand -
and he has recapitulates the miraculous catch of fish from back when Peter first met
Jesus.
And Peter is standing there around this fire and he remembers the time he stood before
that other charcoal fire and denied his Lord and friend three times, denied the one person
in the world who loved him more than anyone else and gave him the chance of a lifetime,
and then the person who needed him - and Peter failed him, and Peter denied him. His
whole time with Jesus, from beginning to end, is recapitulated there on the beach.
And it may seem that Jesus is being cruel, rubbing Peters nose in the failure. But Jesus
is doing the only thing that will bring Peter healing from his failure - having Peter look
squarely at it - go right back into it - which is exactly what therapists do to help people
confront and finding healing from painful memories. You dont run from them, cover
them up - you go straight at them.
Do you love me, Peter?
And then Jesus asks Peter, Do you love me? How many times does he ask him that?
Why three times? Well, how many times did Peter deny Jesus? Jesus gives Peter the
opportunity to affirm his love for Jesus three times which cancels out the three denials.
And the answer to that question - Do you love me? is all that matters. For Peter, and
for us. Notice that Jesus doesnt ask, Are you sorry for screwing up? If I give you a
second chance, do you promise never to let me down again? Love is all that matters.
And with Peter merely saying he loves Jesus, he is restored.
But please note - its not that Peter had to say that to be right with Jesus. Jesus had
already forgiven Peter. This didnt earn Peter forgiveness. All this was for Peters
benefit, so he would know his failure was forgiven and so he could move forward.
And it works the same way for us. If we have failed, you dont hide it, you dont pretend
it never happened - BUT - you dont let it define your identity and poison your future -
you admit it and take it straight to Jesus.
And no matter what it is, the only thing that matters, is, do you love Jesus? Because if
you do, that failure becomes like a drop of ink in the ocean. Because if you do, you are
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defined not by your failure but by your identity as a forgiven friend of the Lord of all
creation.
Peter gets a promotion
Now on to the second thing Jesus does for Peter. Jesus gives him a promotion. Not just
restoration - a promotion. A promotion to feed my sheep - that is, to be the shepherd of
the church of Jesus Christ.
What Jesus did for Peter and does for us is use our failures as a means to shape us into the
people and leaders he intends us to be.
Now Peter - you wouldnt think he was a natural choice to be the shepherd of the new
church. There was that little denial business - how reliable is this guy? And in the
gospels he comes across as a brash, impetuous, boastful loudmouth - not the kind of
person who shows he has a shepherds heart.
Yet Peters experience of failure and restoration changed him into just that shepherd of
the church. It gave him a servants heart, it made him no doubt compassionate towards
other people who screwed up and most of all it animated him with a love for Jesus Christ
that made him unstoppable. And it is said by Tertullian, who wrote in the second century,
that Peter ended up dying for his church, crucified upside-down in the year 64 AD by
Emperor Nero.
The American version of Christianity is often about how following the Lord Jesus leads
to success after success. The conferences Ive been to, especially about church planting -
always have the pastors with the biggest and hottest churches who speak to the crowds of
pastors who desperately want to emulate them about how they became a success.
But as Cheryl Forbes noted, We never see God in failure, but only in success -- a
strange attitude for people who have the cross as he center of their faith.
The way it works with Jesus is that if we plunge our failures into his grace they are not
only forgiven but used as a means to help us grow in faith and service and leadership.
Failures in the Kingdom of God are not disqualifications, but with grace actually become
qualifications.
Closing
Warren Bennis writes in his classic book on leadership about a promising junior executive at
IBM who was involved in a high-risk venture for the company. He ended up losing IBM $10
million as a result of a bad risk.
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1. Dynamic Preaching, April-May-June 2003, p. 25.
2. Dynamic Preaching, Oct-Nov-Dec 1999, p. 26.
He was called into the office of Tom Watson, Sr. Tom Watson, Sr., was the founder of IBM and
led it for forty years, a legend in the business community.
This junior executive is overwhelmed with guilt and fear. He just walks into Watson's office and
blurts out, "I guess you've called me in for my resignation. Here it is. I resign."
Watson says, "You must be joking. I just spent $10 million educating you. I can't afford your
resignation."
And thats how God works. If we turn our failures over to him, God always uses them as a way
to help us grow deeper, stronger, kinder, better. And so I wonder - any Peters here this
morning? Plunge your failure into Gods grace and head into the new future God has for you.
Amen.
Endnotes
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