Without God, nothing. God and enough.

RCL Easter 3C
18 April 2010

Saint Catherine’s Anglican Church
North Vancouver BC

Focus Text: John 21.1-19

“Do you love me?” “Do I what?” “Do you love me?” So begins the duet between Tevye, the milkman, and Golda, his wife, in A Fiddler on the Roof. If you know the story, all the action takes place in little Anatevka, a Russian village with a small Jewish community just before the First World War.

Tevye’s world is slowly coming apart. Russia is entering that revolutionary period that will reach its climax in the October Revolution of 1917. Anatevka is about to be torn apart by that ancient blood demon, anti-Semitism, as the local police chief will be required to rough up the Jews, just a little, so that everyone will know their place in the scheme of Tsarist and Orthodox Russia.

Tevye’s own family will undergo major trials. His eldest daughter will refuse a traditional arranged marriage with a wealthy butcher because she and an impoverished tailor have made their own arrangement years ago. His next daughter will fall in love with a secular Jew who is a teacher and a revolutionary. Their love will cause her to leave Anatevka on a solitary train trip to Siberia where her young man has been exiled. But the most strenuous test will come when Tevye’s youngest daughter falls in love with a young Russian, a Christian, whom she secretly marries, an act which is a breaking point for Tevye.

For Tevye, love, whether one’s love for God or for tradition or for family does not bring security. Love brings the balancing act of ‘a fiddler on the roof’ who plays with energy and passion the song that God has given the musician to play while straddling the ridge of the roof. Love brings change and embarking on paths unforeseen and, in some cases, even unwelcome.

“Do you love me?” “Lord, you know that I love you.” “Feed my lambs.” So begins Peter’s painful conversation with the beloved rabbi whom Peter had betrayed three times. Three times Jesus asks the same question. Three times Peter affirms his love. Who among us would want to be reminded of our greatest act of cowardice? It is no wonder Peter is a little annoyed with this exchange and, in the verse after the conclusion of today’s reading from the gospel of John, tries to deflect Jesus a bit by asking about one of the other disciples and his future, a ploy that Jesus sees through quickly and returns Peter to the main issue. Jesus is preparing Peter for the consequences of love. “If you love me,” Jesus seems to be saying, “then you will have as much security as a fiddler on the roof. But you will have enough. Come and follow me.”

Our assembly here today is proof of the power of Peter’s love for God made known to him in Jesus of Nazareth. I will not recount the tales of Peter that have come down to us from the many generations of Christians who have come before us, but I will say this. Peter’s love led him to follow Jesus and to leave behind all the familiar environs of his home in Galilee, from his family, community and religious heritage. Peter went out into the Mediterranean world of the Roman Empire to tell the story of God’s love to an audience he could never have imagined before that fateful Easter so long ago. Who would have imagined a Jewish fisherman travelling the length and breadth of the Roman Empire while telling tales about a Jewish rabbi abandoned by the Jewish religious establishment for blasphemy and executed by the Romans for sedition? Who would have thought that this story told by Peter and by others would continue to this very day to trouble the powerful and the comfortable even as it empowers the powerless and the distressed?

“Do you love me?” This is the question that God asks each one of us every day of our lives. This is the question that makes me shudder every time I hear it. Why do I shudder? Because I am convinced that what Jesus says to Peter, God says to all of us. “If you love me,” God says, “then you will be led where you do not want to go. You will be led to undertake tasks that you would rather not believe are really yours to undertake. At the very least, loving me will change you for ever. There will be no going back once you embark on this path. Do you love me?”

We Anglicans in the Diocese of New Westminster are confronting the greatest challenge posed by our profession of love for God since the Second World War.

• The structures that our community of faith has understood to be normative, and perhaps even necessary, for the conduct of our corporate life are stressed and might not be sustainable.
• To many of our neighbours our Christian faith is not only irrelevant to contemporary life but potentially harmful.
• Christians in Canada can no longer claim that we have a ‘common mind’ regarding the essentials of Christian faith, ethical norms and our relations with peoples of other religious traditions.

Just as Peter was led by his love for God to go where he could not have ever imagined going, so we are being called by our love for God to explore paths few of us ever thought we would tread. Some of the givens I accepted when I began theological college more than thirty years ago are not considered givens today.

• Women have been ordained to the episcopate, the presbyterate and the diaconate.
• Gay and lesbian disciples of Christ are slowly and painfully gaining their rightful place in the life of the Christian community.
• Non-stipendiary clergy, once considered an interesting and useful adjunct to ‘real’ clergy, are becoming more central to the church’s on-going strategy for ministry in the twenty-first century.
• Deacons, once considered ‘priests with training wheels’ or a ministry for well-intentioned and long-serving lay leaders, are now calling God’s people to go forth from our places of worship to serve others as Christ has served us and to work to change structures that continue to privilege the few at the expense of the many.

“Do you love me?” God sings this question to us with the breath of the Holy Spirit. “Will you come and follow me?” Christ beckons us to walk a path that promises resurrection even as we are led through the way of the Cross. Who knows what lies ahead for us as a diocese? Who can say with certainty what changes we may have to make to our manner of following Christ, our way, our truth and our life? Who can predict what treasures from our past will sustain our future and which will need to be left lovingly but firmly behind? But then, what did any of us really know when we first fell in love with someone, when we first love someone with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our soul and with all our strength? Which one of us really knew what the gains and losses would be when we gazed lovingly for the first time on the face of our first-born or any of our children?

“Do you love me?” Yes, Lord, we love you. We do not know fully the path you will ask us to walk as we journey to that reign of justice and peace your Abba, our Creator, has promised for all creatures. We do not know fully the gains and the losses we face, but we will follow. Pick us up when we stumble. Encourage us when we falter. Have patience when we dawdle or complain or even whine. Because we do love you and, more importantly, you love us. In the end, that is more than enough. Amen.