Readings (Year C):
Acts 5:27 – 32, 40b – 41
Psalm 30:2, 4, 5 – 6, 11 – 12, 13
Revelation 5:11 – 14
John 21:1 – 19
Reflection: Tend my sheep
In today’s first reading from Acts, we join Peter and the apostles in front of the Sanhedrin. They have been arrested for continuing to spread the good news of Jesus’ resurrection and teaching in his name despite being told by authorities not to. Their defense? “We must obey God rather than men.”
This is a powerful statement, a literal “get out of jail free” card. It says right in the Bible that we don’t have to obey the law if it goes against God’s word, but we manipulative humans can twist Bible verses to say what we want them to. History is full of people doing terrible things to one another in the name of religion. Does that mean the law means nothing? How do we know if we’re actually obeying God, or if we’re deforming the Bible for our own purposes?
Before his second life as a preacher and activist, Peter and several of the other disciples were fishermen. It is there on the water that Jesus appears to them in today’s gospel reading from John. After fishing all night, the disciples have caught nothing. From the shore, Jesus tells them to drop their nets on the other side of the boat. They do, and catch more fish than the boat can carry. In this Jesus is revealed to them.
After eating fish and bread with them, Jesus asks Peter three times if Peter loves him. This is often seen as Peter’s chance at repairing his three denials of Jesus on Good Friday. But it is also instructions for Peter—and us—on how to obey God. Do we love Jesus? If so, we should feed his lambs, tend his sheep, and feed his sheep.
One example from history of someone who tended the sheep is Corrie ten Boom. A watchmaker in the Netherlands, Corrie and her family hid and rescued hundreds of Jewish people during the Holocaust, when many, Christian and otherwise, were afraid to defy the Nazis. Her family was eventually denounced, and she spent almost a year in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany before being released. You can read details of her story in her memoir The Hiding Place. Corrie, out of her love for Jesus, tended his sheep at great cost to herself.
We are seeing the rise of prisons that look a lot like concentration camps again today. We are also seeing widespread job loss, increased national and global food insecurity, and an increase in hate crimes targeting marginalized groups in the United States. There were about 300 million people on Earth in Christ’s day, compared to over 8 billion now. The flock has grown approximately 26-fold, and so has our responsibility as disciples who love Jesus. If the opportunity arises, are you willing to stand before the authorities and say that you simply had to tend to the sheep?
Add comment