Lord, What About Him?

Peter and Jesus have just had a beautiful moment, there by the fire on the shore. Peter had denied knowing Jesus three times on the night of Jesus’s arrest, and now Jesus has asked Peter three times, “Do you love me?” Peter is restored as Jesus doesn’t just forgive him but also commissions him to ministry, “Feed and tend my sheep.” Wholly forgiven, restored, and reinvigorated, Peter is breathing deep the sea air mixed with the smoke of the coal fire. Jesus is risen and there with them. Even though he doesn’t know what is next, it seems like the turmoil of the last few weeks has all worked out.

Then Jesus says, “Honestly, I am telling you, when you were young, you were free. You got up, you fastened your own belt and went where you wanted to go. But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands (a euphemism for crucifixion), someone else will fasten your belt and carry you where you do not wish to go.

Now, if you have more than one child, or if you have a sibling, or if you work with other people and you have the same boss, or if you are the boss of two or more people, you can relate to what Peter said next, “Looking around, he saw the disciple whom Jesus loved and asked, ‘Lord, what about him?’”

We don’t know for sure which disciple was the one to whom Peter was referring. Only the Gospel of John describes a disciple as being the one Jesus loved. We know that Peter, James, and John were often the three that were named with Jesus at critical moments – on the mountain with him when Elijah and Moses appeared, in the Garden with him as he prayed the night that he was arrested. Three other times he is specifically identified with Jesus: at the Last Supper, when the disciple Jesus loves is reclining next to him and Peter has him ask which one Jesus means when he says that one of them will betray him, and as Jesus was on the cross, when he sees to the care of his mother by saying, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the beloved disciple, “Here is your mother,” and from that point on, she was part of that disciple’s household, and the third time the beloved disciple is mentioned was on the boat that morning when Jesus told them to put their nets back down on the other side of the boat and they suddenly found themselves hauling in a massive catch after catching nothing all night long, the beloved disciple recognized Jesus in the repeat of the day that he had first called them away from their nets and shouted, “It is the Lord!” So, what we know for sure is that the beloved disciple is not Peter, and it might be likely to be James or John because the three of them are named as being with Jesus separately from the others.
The last verses of the Gospel of John give us one more clue as to the identity of the beloved disciple and tell us what his call was, “This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things, and who has written these things; and we know his testimony is true.” Acts tells us that James was the first, after Judas, to die; King Herod ordered him to be executed with a sword. Church history tells us that John was the last to die, sometime in the 90s. So, it might be that John is the beloved disciple, and perhaps even gave himself that identification. Or perhaps the name came from the other disciples, maybe even Peter, as they squabbled over who would be greatest in Jesus’s kingdom.

Regardless of how this disciple got to be known as the beloved disciple, he is the one Peter points to for comparison, “Lord, what about him, the one you love?” I imagine most all of us have been part of a similar conversation at some point in our lives. A tough assignment has just been given, and the natural reaction is to point out that it might need to be reviewed by asking what someone else’s assignment is, and it never hurts to throw in that you suspect favoritism.

Take for example: If you say to your daughter, “I want you to go outside and rake the front yard” and she is going to want to know what about her brother, (point) “What’s he going to do?” At least, that was true when my dad told me to go rake leaves – I definitely wanted to know what my brother was going to be doing! As I recall, my parents’ response was usually, “Don’t worry about your brother.”

When Peter asks what about the beloved disciple, Jesus says, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!” Jesus isn’t saying that he will live until Jesus returns, he is saying, “What my will for him is, is not your business. Your business is for your path to follow me.”

Every disciple’s path is different, and every disciple’s business is to follow Jesus as he leads them, because by following Jesus our lives glorify God. We do not exist for ourselves. As Rick Warren so famously said in Purpose Driven Life, “It’s not about you. The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness.”
How you will be called to follow Jesus, glorifying God with your life, and how I will be called to do that will not be the same, nor will yours be like his, or his like hers, (point around). Our paths will not be the same, Jesus will lead us all down different paths, God’s call to each of us will be unique. As we follow Jesus, we are going to encounter obstacles in the path, the circumstances of our lives will not be the same, our burdens will not be the same, our suffering will not be the same, and what those obstacles are isn’t a reflection of our faithfulness or God’s will for us.

I’ve told you before in a sermon what my “fingers on a chalkboard” encouraging saying is: God won’t give you more than you can handle. It’s not in the Bible. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that “God won’t let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, God will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” Temptation is not suffering. Temptation is not sin. Temptation is having an opportunity to make a decision “yes” or “no” – and God will not let temptation take away our ability to say “no.” God will even provide a way out for us to say “no.” God gives us more than we can handle all the time, but God doesn’t abandon us to handle it alone. If we could handle all we ever faced, we wouldn’t need God. But how we handle our obstacles, how we let those obstacles deepen our faith, deepen how we trust God, deepen our connection to our church community, can bring glory to God.

Paul also wrote in his letter to the church at Rome, “We know that God works all things together for good for the ones who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Not because everything that happens to us is good, or even will turn out to be for good. Paul isn’t talking about suffering or the circumstances of our lives. He is talking about our sin and our salvation. All the stuff of our lives, he says, will be conformed to Christ’s image. All our wrongs – who can convict us? This is where the Assurance of Pardon that I so frequently use comes from, “Who is in a position to condemn us? Only Christ. And Christ died for us. Christ rose for us. Christ reigns in power for us. Christ prays for us.” Who can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus? Nothing. That is the good that God works in our lives. All things work together so that we are never separated from God’s love.

Peter, even though he denied Jesus three times, was not convicted by Christ. His denial did not separate him from God’s love. He became a great orator and evangelist, sharing with many his faith and bringing others to faith in Christ, and when he faced martyrdom again, he was surely tempted to deny his faith again in Rome, but this time he relied on God and his faith gave him courage as he followed the path Jesus said he would walk. Peter was martyred by crucifixion in Rome by Nero around 64, tradition records that Peter argued that he was not worthy to die the same way Jesus died, so they tied a belt around him and crucified him upside down. The beloved disciple’s path was different. He preserved the story, bearing witness to the truth of the gospel.

Who gets what and why is such a natural, human question. Lord, what about him? Jesus refocuses us though. Instead, may we learn to ask “Lord, what about me? How will my life bring you glory?”