“Follow me.”
Our gospel reading today ends with these two powerful words.
And this command of Jesus marks the beginning of the remarkable journeys of witness and service that the disciples would take because they loved Jesus and wanted to follow him.
Right now I’m reading a book called What if Jesus Really Meant What He Said? Red Letter Revolution, by Shane Claiborne and Tony Campolo.
Early in the book, Shane tells about a survey that Willow Creek Community Church did a few years ago. Shane describes Willow Creek as “one of the most influential megacongregations in the world.”
The point of the survey was to find out how well the church was doing at raising up “fully devoted followers of Christ,” to find out how the lives of the thousands of unchurched people who had made new faith commitments to Jesus and who had joined Willow Creek had changed based on their love for Jesus Christ.
And Shane goes on to say that what the survey revealed was heartbreaking—because it showed that the church was great at making believers, but that it had a long way to go in terms making followers of Jesus.
The gospel story we’ve just heard today, this powerful and captivating story of Peter and six more of Jesus’ followers is a story about how the disciples finally made up their minds to become followers. If they loved him, they realized that they had to follow him. Peter and the disciples believe in Jesus, but at the beginning of the gospel reading we find them unsure about what to do next as disciples. They haven’t yet figured out how to follow. So– they’re doing what’s familiar—they’ve gone back to fishing.
And they’ve caught nothing. They heed the call of a stranger on the shore who promises them that if they cast their nets on the right side of the boat they will find some fish. And they obey this command, and their net is so full and so heavy with a miraculous catch of fish, so abundant, that the fact that the net didn’t break is its own little miracle.
And then the disciples realize that it’s Jesus there on the shore, cooking breakfast for them.
After breakfast, Jesus talks with the disciples about what will be next for them—how will they deepen their loving commitment to Jesus, who has poured out such abundance on them?
Jesus asks Peter three times—do you love me? And three times, Peter answers that yes, that he does love Jesus.
And Jesus responds three times that in that case, if you love me, then feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep.
Peter is ready now, and he can say an unqualified yes to the implications of loving Jesus. Even when Jesus states that Peter will die a martyr’s death, Peter is now not only to believe in Jesus, but also to follow him by becoming a shepherd to those around him.
Now I firmly believe that God calls those of us who love Jesus to follow him, and to serve those around us in specific ways that are unique to each one of us in our own time and in our own places.
We could be martyrs like Peter, or we might be like the beloved disciple, who was a follower of Jesus and who lived to be an old man, or we might be like the other five disciples mentioned in this story–the disciples who did their loving work quietly and without drama or recognition in the ways that God asked them to serve.
On this past Thursday President Obama posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor to a man named Emil Kapaun. This military honor is generally awarded within two years of an act of valor, but sixty years have passed since Fr Kapaun served as a military chaplain in the Korean War.
Mike Dowe, Robert Wood, and Herbert Miller were at the awards ceremony.
These three men were in a Korean prisoner of war camp with Fr Kapaun, and for the past sixty years, they and other men who were prisoners in this camp have been calling for Kapaun to receive the military’s highest honor.
In the article about Fr Kapaun that appeared in this past Thursday’s Washington Post, these three men all say Fr Kapaun gave them the hope and the courage to live, and that they would have never survived without him, that they too would have ended up as one of the frozen corpses piled high in a stack outside in the yard of the prisoner of war camp where they found themselves.
The Post article and Thursday’s ABC news report on the awards ceremony give many examples of Fr Kapaun’s discipleship—this “shepherd in combat boots” who fought with faith and valor rather than with handguns and grenades– running through enemy fire to drag wounded soldiers to safety on the front lines, dropping into foxholes beside nervous riflemen during battle , handing out peaches, cracking a joke or two, and praying with each man before he moved on to the next foxhole, using a rock to shape a piece of metal into a bowl so that he could collect enough water to wash the hands and faces of the wounded.
Herbert Miller recounts the following act of courage on the part of Fr Kapaun. Miller was a platoon leader who found himself surrounded by enemy troops one night in a massive attack by North Korean and Chinese soldiers. Miller was hit by a hand grenade and, too injured to escape, lay in a ditch until daylight, when he was spotted by the enemy troops. A soldier held him at gunpoint and was about to execute him. “About that time,” Miller says, “I saw this soldier coming across the road. He pushed that man’s rifle aside and he picked me up.” Fr Kapaun carried Miller on his back and helped him survive what today is known today as the Tiger Death March, a trek of more than 80 miles to the North Korean POW camp, where the wounded and captured prisoners were taken. Fr. Kapaun had been ordered to evacuate, but he chose to stay with these men and go to the POW camp with them.
In the camp the wintertime weather was brutal and all the men had to eat was a few grams of cracked grain each day. Many died. Fr Kapaun traded his watch for a blanket and cut it up to make socks for the soldiers whose feet were freezing. He gave his food away. He risked his life by sneaking out of the barracks at night and stealing food from the guards. He washed the filthy clothes of the prisoners and cleaned their wounds.
And in the awards ceremony, Obama said that Kapaun tended not only to the physical needs of the soldiers but that he also tended to their spirits. “At night, he slipped into huts to lead prisoners in prayer, saying the Rosary, administering the sacraments, offering three simple words: ‘God bless you.’ One of the prisoners later said that with his very presence, Fr Kapaun could just for a moment turn a mud hut into a cathedral.” Fr Kapaun gave hope to the prisoners. It was that hope that kept a lot of the prisoners alive.
Ultimately, Fr Kapaun became so sick that the guards ordered the prisoners to carry him to the “hospital” which the US soldiers called the dying room.
Kapaun reassured the soldiers who carried him that he was going to a better place. Wood, who helped carry Kapaun to the dying room, and was one of the three men at Thursday’s ceremony, remembers that the priest then turned to the guards and said, “Forgive them, oh Lord, for they know not what they do.”
Obama described Kapaun as a man “who wielded the mightiest weapon of all, a love for his brothers so pure that he was willing to die so that they might live.”
And this love for his brothers was a result of Fr. Kapaun’s deep love for his risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
In our jobs, in our retirement, in our health, in our various illnesses, in our wealth, or in our poverty, in war and in peace, we want to do what God calls us to do for one another because of our love for God.
Like the disciples did, and like Fr Kapaun did, we will find ways to serve those around us, to feed God’s sheep, and to tend God’s lambs—to witness to God’s love and to serve in ways that may be dramatic or in ways that are known only to us and to God.
Let’s pray.
Lord, you know everything. You know that we love you. “So send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord.” Give us the courage to love you as fully devoted disciples. Give us the strength to say yes when you ask us to follow you and to serve our brothers and sisters. Amen
Resources:
Claiborne, Shane, and Campolo, Tony. What if Jesus really meant what he said? Red Letter Revolution. Thomas Nelson, Nashville. 2012.
“The priest who kept their faith.” The Washington Post, Thursday, April 11, 2013.
ABC News http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/saintly-army-chaplain-war-hero-awarded-medal-honor/story?id=18933324#.UWd51Dewe6o (By Mary Bruce and Luiz Martinez)
The Book of Common Prayer, 1979. Holy Eucharist II, post communion prayer, page 366.