Your Mistake Is Not the Last Word on You

Before I preached this narrative sermon to my classmates, I read aloud from John 21:1-19 (NRSV), projected the image below, and lit one candle to bring into the chapel the faint but unmistakable scent of fire.

Your name is Peter.  You remember that night—the night that Jesus was arrested.  It was the night that you did that thing you said you would never do, became what you said you would never be.  How could you forget that?  You never will.

Over and over again the people asked, “Are you not Jesus’ disciple?” and over and over again you said, “I am not.”  Three times.  Three times, just like he said it would be.  And you didn’t just deny Jesus or that you knew who he was.  You denied who he said you were and what he called you to do.

Are you not Jesus’ disciple?

No. No, I am not.

When it happened, you were warming yourself by a charcoal fire.  The air is still thick with the smell of it, even when you aren’t by a fire, because you will never forget that scent.  It’s always been unmistakable, but now it’s the smell of the most humiliating moment of your life.  Every time you warm your hands you relive that shame a little bit more.

And where do you find yourself now but right here at another charcoal fire?  It’s the first time Jesus is sitting with you by a fire since the night you wrapped yourself in the protection of lies.

But that’s not what Jesus talks about.  “Come and have breakfast,” he says, and as he cooks the fish you breathe in the smell of sustenance and wonder if things between you will ever be what they once were, what they should have been.

Here you are sitting down to a feast like nothing has even changed between you.  You became what you swore you would never be and you two have never even talked about it and this silence is actually starting to weigh on you as much as the shame ever has and God—Are you ever going to talk about it?

Jesus breaks bread and gives it to you, and as you reach out to take it, you can still see the wounds in his wrists where they nailed him to the wood.  But the fish are hot and the bread is fresh and you are hungry.  So you let the whole meal go by in friendly conversation, and you don’t ask Jesus about the awful thing burned into your memory to this day.

But he knows, doesn’t he?

And after you’ve eaten together, he speaks.

Your name is Peter.  At least, it is to Jesus.  Isn’t it?

“Simon, Son of John,” he says.  It’s a little like when your mother used to scold you for teasing Andrew when you were kids.  Except there’s a look on Jesus’ face now, and even though all you can think about is the burning coals and the heat of shame, there’s this look on his face and you can’t describe it, but whatever it is means you’re not in trouble.

“Simon, Son of John,” he says, “do you love me more than these?”

You do.  You cherish him.  He tells you to feed his lambs.

Maybe some time passes. You can’t be sure how much, because all that matters is that Jesus turns to you again.

“Do you love me?” he says.

You do.  You cherish him.  He tells you to tend his sheep.

The next time he says it like he knows what hearing a question three times will mean to you.  He says, “Do you love me?”

Someday the story of this conversation is going to be written down in Greek, and many well-meaning preachers are going to focus on the use of different words for love—agape love, phileo love—and what they think those words mean.  Some will preach how this goes to show that, even now, you can’t get where Jesus is or where he wants you to be.

Poor Simon Peter, they’ll say, because they too will never forget the night you denied Jesus and everything you were supposed to be for him.  It will be easy for them to interpret the words to reflect what they already know about you: That you fall short and Jesus needs to meet you in your weakness.  They will shame you even in your redemption.

Maybe they wouldn’t preach it like that if they could hear what you hear.

You and Jesus don’t speak Greek.  You speak Aramaic, and what you hear is the very same question spoken three times.  What you hear is three opportunities to affirm your love and three instructions to cherish Jesus’ people the way you cherish him.  What you hear is Jesus calling you to be the disciple you were always meant to be.  What you hear is the emotion in his voice when his third question both breaks you open and restores you.  What you hear is the voice drowning out the crackle of fire.  What you hear is love.

Jesus calls you Simon, but you both know that you are and forever will be Peter.  You are the rock on which your beloved Jesus will build his church.  You are the one who will shepherd his flock.  You are the one who will speak to the Jews and the Gentiles.  You are the one who will die for them all—for Jesus, for his people.  You are the one who cherishes your friend no matter how ashamed you feel of your failure.

Peter, someday a Christian named C.S. Lewis will write about this kind of love between people who know each other the way you and Jesus do—that between friends, the question Do you love me? means, Do you see the same truth?  Do you care about the same truth?  Lewis won’t mention you or this conversation with your Lord, but if you could know what he would write, you might say, “Yes!  That’s what Jesus is asking of me.  Do we see the same truth?  Am I ready to care for his people as much as I care for him?  Am I ready to lay down my life?  Am I able to bear the name Disciple, to be the person Jesus made me and do what he called me to do?”

And Jesus thinks you are.  At Passover, you told him you wanted to follow him wherever he was going, but back then you weren’t ready.  Now, Jesus says, “Follow me.”  And you will.  The last word on you in this story is not your mistake.

And you don’t know this yet, Peter, but someday millions of Jesus’ people will put the ashes of burnt palms on their foreheads. Those sooty dark smudges will remind them that they are mortal and that they have fallen short of what Jesus has called them to be.  But there but for the grace of God, those ashes will mean so much more.  Through the ashes, anointed on each forehead in the form of a cross, Jesus will speak to their hearts: “My friend, do you love me?”

And if they can hear those words above the crackle of fire, and each and every reminder of fall and failure, then like you, Peter, the people you nourish and lead and all of their spiritual descendants—they too will know who they are and what they are meant to do . . .

If only they will hear love over the persistent whisper of shame.

1 Way to Focus a Reluctant Student

Sometimes you need to improvise.

One day, during a stint as a tutor in an afterschool program, I worked primarily with one fifth-grade girl who was at first very reluctant to open her New York State history book, explaining in no uncertain terms that she did not want to study New York.

At the time, I was studying American Sign Language, and what otherwise may have been a verbal battle of convincing the kid that she did want to crack the book and get to work took a turn for the lighthearted and stress-free.

"New York?" I asked, signing it into my palm. "I'm from New York. Are you?" As I signed the rest, her eyes lit up in a way that I hadn't seen before. She mimicked my gestures. I broke down the signs for her to repeat.

"What language is that?" she finally asked, and when I told her it was American Sign Language she simply smiled and opened her book.

I'm fascinated that teaching a distracted or reluctant student something new and somewhat unrelated can potentially help her focus. Why did it work? Was she simply ready in her own time, or was it just enough of a break in tension to ease her back into her studies?  Whatever it was then, I stand by the idea now that learning is best when we engage our senses of curiosity and play.

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A revision of an entry in my service-learning journal, October 2009.

Sometimes I Fantasize About Carrying Two Umbrellas

I do a lot of walking, and naturally, the statistics of getting caught in the rain increase exponentially the more you walk.  I’ve also found that we are 387%* more likely to get caught in the rain while traveling without an umbrella, though I may be biased or just habitually underprepared.

Either way, I’ve had my share of unplanned showers.

One cool summer day, I was so thoroughly soaked from the two-mile trek from church that all I could think about was getting home, kicking off my waterlogged flats, and wrapping myself in as many layers of warm, dry things as I could fit on my body.

I was so close I could taste the sweet Cocoa of Victory . . . only to be thwarted by the Gandalf of traffic lights.

While I stood there with rainwater in my shoes and the tease of imaginary cocoa on my tongue, the disagreeable light permitted passage to plenty of cars, but would not yield to button-pressing pedestrians at the crossroads.

So I waited.  For a lull in traffic.  For a light.  For a sign.

And then, just like that, someone with an umbrella leaned over to shield me.  It was generous and neighborly, of course, but it was also comical, because I was unmistakably drenched.  I may have said, “Thank you,” but I kind of wanted to say, “It’s too late for me.  Save yourself!”

It was one moment in time on a small town street corner, but after my bleary-eyed journey squinting between raindrops that I would never outmaneuver, it felt like the climax of a war film.  I was the would-be martyr resigned to self-sacrifice only to be slung over the hero’s shoulder as he limps to the barracks, except my hero had already outmaneuvered the enemy with a scrap of supported fabric.  Instead of limping to our glory, we stood still, side-by-side, two neighbors huddled under an umbrella for one, exchanging greetings and gratitude and smiling up at a traffic light as though to persuade it with kindness.

When we parted, my neighbor was apologetic, but the gesture and the brief reprieve had already brought me more than enough joy to accompany me home.

Within a month or so, I had the joy of paying the act forward twice, once at a bus stop where the rider had been waiting in the drizzle long before I arrived, and once at another street corner in a sudden downpour.  I’ve been learning both to accept others’ generosity and aid and to find joy in receiving, but it felt good to be able to offer others that neighborly love.

Then, whenever I walked in the rain with my umbrella, I became more and more aware of the other pedestrians: whether or not they had umbrellas or raincoats, whether or not the rain seemed to weigh heavily on their bodies and their spirits.

That was when I began to fantasize about carrying two umbrellas.

I imagined giving one away to a different stranger in every storm.  I started spending long stretches of my walks pondering the ethical implications of carrying multiple umbrellas and giving them away.

Would it be cumbersome?  Wasteful?

Presumptuous?  Insulting?

A life’s mission?  An expensive hobby?

An overestimation of the trouble of rain?

An underestimation of folks’ contentedness in the rain?

If there was any way to overcomplicate the daydream, I found it.

Weeks later, in another storm, I walked my boyfriend to the train station.  We took my two umbrellas.  I almost sent one home with him, but he said he’d have little open-air walking to do after boarding the train and he would be fine.

Soon the passengers disappeared, and I was alone on the platform except for one older gentleman with empty hands.

It took a minute to register the circumstances, but then, without any guilt about the overabundance or uncertainty about the gesture, I offered him the second umbrella.

He didn’t speak English and I understood only enough Spanish to know that he was in awe of the storm, but we easily established that he lived along my way home.

As we walked together, he commented on the rain, and I agreed, wagging my waterlogged shoes over the ground to indicate that I could feel the water swishing around my feet.

We laughed.  I was laughing because I was doing a ridiculous dance, but I imagine it looked just as ridiculous to him.

It’s a beautiful thing to experience—that moment with a stranger with whom your only common language is life itself; the moment that you realize it’s more than enough.  What we couldn’t share in words we shared in umbrellas and grins and squishy shoes.

Once we arrived at his building, I almost told him to keep the umbrella, but when he handed it to me, I accepted it back.

These days, if I remember to carry an umbrella at all, I will try to carry two.

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*Research is ongoing.

And God Said, "Abracadabra!"

In celebration of AmenAbility's 100th post, behold! A fun (illustrated) fact:

The phrase "abracadabra" is derived from the Aramaic abra (אברה) and cadabra (כדברא), meaning, "I would create as I spoke."



In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,
the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep,
while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

Genesis 1:1-3 NRSV

The Male Stewardess Anomaly

About a month ago, I was with a great group of young adults at a swanky shake shop (and when I say swanky, I really just mean that there were shakes with Reese's peanut butter cups). Those on my end of the long pieced-together table were among the silliest, funniest people I'd had the pleasure of meeting for some time. I'd have suspected it was the sugar if it hadn't already started before they ordered.

I can't even recall most of what came up in the course of our conversation, but I'm sure we invented a few words of our own. The bizarre factor escalated enough that my boyfriend and the man across from him (who together bridged the Bizarre Table and the Fun But Far Less Troublesome Table) began a secret experiment, interjecting random once-off statements just to see where we would fly with them.

Come to think of it, that's where the jet-propelled cows came from.


Camo Cow is ace at hiding a jetpack.

In any case, at some point the chat came 'round to flight attendants. (No segue implied; trust me, there was none.) And in the midst of the tangent, someone dropped the phrase "male stewardess."

"There's a word for that," someone else interrupted: "Steward."

All perfectly true. While many people opt for a gender-neutral term like "flight attendant," both "steward" and "stewardess" are valid. For some occupations, I've noticed a potential increase in referring to women in the position by the traditionally masculine title, such as "actor" rather than "actress," what I take to be an intended neutralizer.

Such gender-specific nouns are their own breed of beast, but what I find no less debatable is the use of a modifier, as in a "male nurse." As long as we see this as necessary, there can never be understanding of neutrality.

I used to be (...am?) a word snob. I loved words - loved discovering them and learning how to use them. I loved definitions and connotations and semantics, and sometimes it seemed like spelling was the only test that didn't strike fear into my heart.

But as I've gotten older (and as my spelling skills have increasingly come into question), I've grown into a new sort of linguistic love.

I love the power of words: a phenomenal extension of definitions, connotations, and semantics. I love the power that they hold and the power that we are able to bestow upon them.

But people often assume that a word can have only a certain meaning, and sometimes they're afraid to bend it. It may be a way of honoring the tradition and background of the word, but it may also cheat it of a little bit of modern meaning. While we can't weaken all of our language with linguistic anarchy, we need to remember that we have power over how we use it. We shape our language as much as our language shapes us.

We limit people. We limit ourselves.

When we discussed this at the table, one person furrowed her brow in uncertainty. "'Nurse' for a male still sounds weird."

"It won't," I said, "if people use the word that way."