An excerpt from:
http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Italian_Bishops_Christ_Risen_First_Fruits.htm
Finally, Peter. You are familiar, of course, with the story of the breakfast by the shore, and I’m sure you are aware that the charcoal fire in John 21.9 is meant to remind us, the readers, of the terrible moment in the High Priest’s hall by another charcoal fire (John 18.18), when Peter three times denied even knowing Jesus. No doubt the smell of it reminded Peter of that moment as well. If this little story is the beginning of the true Petrine ministry, as some have suggested, then we do well to notice that this ministry begins with confrontation and penitence. ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’
It is a question we all face, perhaps particularly those of us called to ministry and leadership within the church. If we know our own hearts – and woe betide a church that is led by people who do not – we know that we have all let Jesus down, that our hearts and minds have plenty of memories of our own charcoal fires, of the times when by our actions or words we have in effect denied that we even knew Jesus. Yet Jesus comes, and comes again, and asks us the same question. ‘Do you love me?’
The Greek text makes it quite clear that Peter’s response uses a different word. He can’t bring himself to say the word agapao, the word for that utter self-giving love that Jesus himself has shown on the cross. He uses the word phileo: ‘Yes, Lord,’ he says, ‘You know I’m your friend.’ That’s as far as he can go. Anything else would seem to be back in the realm of blustering, of boasting: ‘Yes, Lord, I’m OK, I can do anything for you.’ That’s what he’d said in the Upper Room (13.36-37). He is going to start further back.
But then the miracle: ‘Well then,’ replies Jesus, ‘feed my lambs.’ This is the moment we as pastors and church leaders need to note most closely, the moment when the risen Jesus becomes once more our uncomfortable contemporary. We expect, perhaps, a note of rebuke: ‘Why did you let me down?’ We might hope for a word of forgiveness: ‘Peter, you let me down, but I forgive you.’ What we do not expect is a fresh word of commission: ‘Feed my lambs.’ Here is the miracle of resurrection as it applies directly to vocation. All vocation to be pastors in the church of the risen Jesus comes in the form of forgiveness. Forgiveness and commission turn out to be the same thing. Forgiveness never simply brings us back to a neutral position; and commission can never be on the basis that we are good people, well qualified, fully prepared for what we have to do. That was Peter’s problem before. Now he begins again in the proper way: with penitence, forgiveness, and fresh commission. That is the gift of the risen Jesus to Peter, and please God to us as well.
But it doesn’t stop there. Jesus asks the same question a second time and gets the same answer, this time responding with ‘look after my sheep.’ But then, on the third occasion, Jesus changes the question. Peter has said, ‘Yes, Lord, you know I’m your friend.’ Now Jesus asks, ‘Simon, son of John, are you my friend?’ John, telling the story, indicates that Peter was upset that on this third occasion Jesus used these words. Perhaps he thought Jesus didn’t believe him, that he was challenging even the lesser claim that he had made. I don’t read it like that. I think Jesus is saying, in effect, ‘Very well, Peter: if that’s where you are, that’s where we’ll start. If you can say you’re my friend, we will build on that. Now: feed my sheep.’ And then, of course, he goes on to warn Peter of what is to come; this sheep-feeding business will cost him not less than everything, as it had cost the master Shepherd himself.
But this, for me, stands at the heart of the message of Jesus our contemporary, the one who is risen from the dead as the first-fruits of those who sleep. With the resurrection, a new creation has dawned, and in that new creation new possibilities are open before us. The resurrection is not the end of the story; it’s the beginning of the new one, precisely because Jesus is the first-fruits and the full harvest is yet to come. And we who are called to work within that new creation, from the Petrine ministry through to all other ministries, find those ministries not in a grandiose claim or the blustering confidence that Peter had shown in the days before Jesus’ death. We find our ministries given to us afresh day by day as we confess our own failures and yet come, humbly, and say, ‘Yes, Lord, you know I’m your friend.’ Resurrection and forgiveness are, after all, two sides of the same coin; to believe in the one, you have to believe in the other. As Ludwig Wittgenstein said, it is love that believes the resurrection. Here in John’s gospel, in Mary, in Thomas, and above all in Peter, we discover what it means to know the risen Jesus as our contemporary, wiping away our tears, answering our hard questions, but above all inviting us to come with the humility and the love through which the power of his risen life, his shepherding of his sheep, can go to work afresh in our own day. This is what it means to know the risen Jesus as our contemporary. ‘Yes, Lord,’ we say. ‘You know.’ ‘Well, then,’ replies Jesus, ‘feed my sheep.’
There are more interesting stuff in the link which talks about what it means when we speak of Jesus as our contemporary, the event and meaning of the resurrection and the kingdom of God on earth. I thought I'd put in these concluding words though, as a reminder for us to humbly acknowledge that we can never pretend to give to God as much as He has given us. Yet in our imperfections, in our inability to tell God that we love Him one hundred percent and will give our everything to Him, we go and feed His sheep.
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