Sermon preached at Evensong on St Peter's Day 2025

Ezekiel 34: 11–16
John 21: 15–22

Some of you will have seen the blockbuster National Gallery exhibition, Siena: The Rise of Painting. Sadly, it closed last weekend, but if you missed it, you can buy the tremendous catalogue in the Gallery’s shop. Several of the most fascinating exhibits were re-assembled pieces which have been separated for centuries. Supreme amongst them, were several panels from the predella of Duccio’s gigantic Maesta altarpiece, made about 1308. The reverse of the great series of paintings contained a sequence which depicts Christ’s trial before the High Priest, and Peter’s three denials of Christ in the darkness of the night before Jesus died. At the top right of these four panels sits a solitary cockerel, beak open, crowing his accusing cry, representing Peter’s betrayal. It is as if we are supposed to hear this reminder on a loop echoing across all the scenes, as our eyes move around the busy paintings. In the bottom left panel – diagonally down from the crowing cockerel – burns a charcoal fire, around which Peter warms himself, holding up his hand in a shrug, as the High Priest’s serving girl points at him accusingly. There are all sorts of ways into this dynamic sequence of fearful and febrile events, at the end of which, we are told, Peter weeps bitterly for his own weakness and unfaithfulness.

This afternoon’s second reading is from the final chapter of St John’s Gospel. The conversation between Jesus and Peter happens on the beach by the Sea of Galilee after the resurrection, immediately after a miraculous, vast catch of fish, over breakfast cooked by Jesus for the disciples on a charcoal fire. Smell is an extraordinarily evocative sense, and the only other time we hear of a charcoal fire in the Gospel was on that night when Peter denied even knowing Jesus. It is from this highly moment, the senses heightening memory and regret, that Jesus asks Peter whether he loves him. Three times for each of the three denials, as Peter the bluff, spontaneous fisherman, is progressively disarmed by the three questions of the Risen Jesus around the fire, the scent of betrayal still lingering in their nostrils.

The conversation between Jesus and Peter is profoundly moving. Elements of the text are slightly ambiguous: is Jesus asking whether Peter loves him more than the others love him? Or is he perhaps gesturing towards the tools of Peter’s trade, the nets, the boat, his co-workers? ‘Do you love me more than all this?’ Either way, these questions are about commitment and priority. Where does Peter’s love for Jesus rank in the midst of it all. And this time, as Jesus asks his questions, he calls him ‘Simon’, not Cephas or Peter, the familiar names he gave him in the first Chapter of this Gospel, when Peter, Andrew and Philip were first called to follow Christ. This scene takes Peter back to basics: this is, if you like, the hard talk.

The original Greek text tells us much more than the English translation. In Greek, there are several words for what we translate as ‘love’, each reflecting different kinds of love, different facets of loving commitment. This conversation between Jesus and Peter reveals a kind of misunderstanding which needs to be settled. There’s a tension at play here. Jesus poses his question with the verb agapas – agape being the kind of love which is platonic, respectful, dignified. This is the love of charity, self-sacrifice. But Peter responds using a different verb – phileo. This is personal love, rooted in real affection, brotherly love, if you like, feeling. The conversation unfolds twice with this tension in play. And then something surprising happens. The third time he asks the question, Jesus gives in, and uses the verb Peter has used all along. He assuages Peter, and accepts not just the respectful love for a teacher or superior – indeed, the love we are called to have for God – but real human love, warm and affectionate. Jesus doesn’t insist on pushing the point of his own category; he speaks in Peter’s language, direct, fleshy, passionate. But even now Peter is grieved by the question being posed a third time, ‘Lord, you know all things’, says Peter, perhaps by now exasperated by his own guilt and longing for reconciliation with the man who showed him everything, ‘you know that I philo love you.’ Jesus brings Peter back to a personal depth of relationship in which they are once again brothers, friends, affectionate and loving. Peter can cope with this, and it is from here, that Jesus can say to him, once again, ‘Follow me.’ Follow me, with all your complexity, contradictions, mistakes, and humanity. Bring it all with you, indicates the one who in an earlier chapter of the Gospel had said to them, ‘I no longer call you servants, but friends.’

And all of this takes place by that charcoal fire. There is no escape from the truth, but there’s no need for escape, because memories can be healed, the clock reset. Peter discovers the Risen Jesus is master not only of the unpredictable Sea of Galilee, but also of the chaos which infects human life, of our unstable egos which seek to defend self and self-interest no matter what the cost. How Peter must have remembered the crowing of that cockerel and his subsequent remorse and self-hatred. How quickly confidence can be shattered.

But in this scene, the cacophony of betrayal and the accusing scent of the charcoal fire is healed by the warmth of love. Jesus doesn’t duck it, and he doesn’t allow Peter to duck it. Instead, Jesus takes Peter to the point of his deepest need, and from there administers to him the medicine of reconciliation. Because life in the resurrection age is not about papering over the cracks of failure, but allowing the victory of Christ’s love to enfold us; an uncreated life and light which is capacious enough to heal all creation and more.

Here in Westminster Abbey, at the heart of British parliamentary and public life, St Peter is our patron. We live in a society which does not easily forgive or turn a page, far less does it allow for patient, honest discussion of difference or failure, which is open to reconciliation. English would be a better language if we had more words for love, because we use it too easily, and yet not enough. Our memories – collective and individual – are too frequently prompted by offence taken, victory over others, violent disagreements nurtured and solidified. Countries and communities exist in spirals of resentment, bitterness, and revenge. We see this in the world today, as some to choose to define themselves by such patterns. The cockerel cries betrayal, as we resist straightforward, yet costly, acts of reconciliation, which can be shared as simply as breakfast on a beach.

‘Do you love me?’ asks Jesus. If so, feed my sheep, or in other words, share my mission, with all your frailties and contradictions. After this conversation on the beach, perhaps Peter learned where to put those memory of his denials, he perhaps learned its context, and how not to allow himself to be driven by it.  Perhaps he was no longer controlled by that memory of the cock crowing.  He found himself able to love, and knew himself loved. That love would lead him to a martyr’s death, as he fed the sheep with which the shepherd had entrusted him. In order to know the fullness of that love, he would need to share it, in radical ways.

Simon, son of John, do you love me more than all these? More than all this?’

‘Yes, Lord, you know all things, you know that I love you.’