By the time of the conversation presented in this Gospel Reading, the meeting with the Risen Christ is fairly well along. The meal is finished, and there is something of the notion that a kind of ease in the presence of Christ has been regained.  An after-dinner conversation springs up.

Somewhere along the line in that conversation Christ turns to Peter and asks simply, “Do you love me?”.

We can fairly easily picture Peter at that point answering spontaneously, gladly, “Yes, you know that I do”.  Christ responds to that, “Then take care of my people.  Feed my Lambs”.

At that moment, in that setting, to say “yes” must have been an easy thing for Peter to do.  With Christ so obviously alive, having so obviously overcome the worst that disbelief could do to him, even death itself, what further challenge to his kingdom could there possibly be?  Faith must have been an easy thing immediately after the Resurrection.

Too easy, really.  The exchange doesn’t end there. Twice more Christ repeats the question. “Do you love me?”.  And twice more, with what must have been a growing irritation, Peter answers, “Yes, I do, you know that, you know everything.  You must know that as well”.  And twice more the same response from Christ, “Take care of my people”.

We can almost feel the quiet persistence of Christ’s questioning, of the demands that he makes of Peter, and we can feel as well the temptation to impatience that faces Peter as he tries to respond to those demands.

“I have already said that I love you.  We have done this before.  Why do we have to keep going over it again and again?  What do I have to do to convince you?”.

Something like that must have been at the bottom of Peter’s impatience.  And Christ’s response is a sobering one.

“This is what you have to do.  Take care of my people. No matter what it might cost you.  And as it always does, it will cost you a good deal.  The enthusiasm of the moment is never enough”.

For Peter, as for any disciple, faith was an easy thing when the Risen Christ was standing right in front of him, and had only moments ago   filled his stomach and calmed his fears.  But it was not always to be so.  If Peter was to carry out his mission successfully, he would need a patience far greater than that demanded by Christ’s prolonged and repetitious questioning.  He would need a patience great enough to enable him to persist in the face of the dullness, the disbelief, even the hostility of a world to whom the resurrection meant nothing at all.

In John’s imagery, Peter, the Church, we ourselves, are sent out to care for God’s people in the world.  It really does not matter how successful we seem to be, how much sense it makes, how much approval we win.  All that matters is that we keep going.                                                                                                                                                                             Fr Andrew