Some Ways to Tend Sheep (John 21:1-22)

The following is my manuscript for the sermon that I preached on Sunday, April 18 at Woodmont Christian Church’s outdoor Bridge service. As always, this is not exactly what I said, but it’s the gist.

My family had pets growing up. We had two Eskimo Spitz named Al and Buffy. We later had a German shepherd named Bear. My responsibilities with these pets did not go beyond occasionally filling up the dog dish. And this was in the days before dogs were treated like people. Now you need to tend to a dog’s every need, pamper it, make its bed, make sure it learns Spanish or has some other marketable skill. Pets in the 80s and 90s were far more low maintenance. 

The first time that I was solely responsible for tending to a living thing it did not go well. When I was in 3rd or 4th grade someone thought it would be a great idea to give a bunch of schoolchildren goldfish to keep. Because what better way to teach nine and ten year olds about the fragility of life. So I brought my goldfish home from West View Elementary School and was very proud. I had lots of big dreams and hopes for my young ward. He was in a two liter bottle that had the top cut off but I knew it was only a matter of time before we had a luxurious aquarium with coral, a sunken pirate ship, and a fellowship of fish friends. I fed him the fish food that the school provided and took care of him. Three mornings later I came into the kitchen and found my fish friend belly up. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if it was foul play. Regardless my stewardship of this fish had been a flop.

Today we are talking about taking care of others, why it is so important for people who follow Jesus, and how to hopefully do a better job of it than school-aged Christopher did of taking care of a goldfish. We are still in Easter season and so our story is a post-resurrection appearance by Jesus. The disciples were kind of in this weird in-between place. Jesus had come back from the dead, but his followers were drifting and uncertain of what to do next.

So a bunch of them decided to go back to what they knew which was fishing. And apparently they had been out of the game for too long because they fished all night and didn’t catch a thing. A little after dawn, a man showed up on the shore and told them, “Hey, you’re doing it wrong” and instructed them to drop their nets on the other side of the boat. When they did, they caught all the fish; the Bible actually gives the very specific number of 153. It was Jesus calling out to them on the shore.

When Peter realized this, he makes the very odd decision of putting his clothes on and diving into the water. While I don’t understand Peter’s decision to throw on his clothes and swim to shore, I do get his mindset. If the other disciples felt adrift and uncertain in this post-Easter glow, Peter was all the more lost. The last major conversation that he had with Jesus before the arrest, trial, and execution was about how Peter would never abandon his beloved teacher and then he did that very thing by denying Jesus three times. Peter knew that Jesus knew and the fisherman probably felt pain with every glance at his teacher’s face. 

Thankfully, Jesus offered Peter a chance at healing. Sitting around a fire on the beach with a breakfast of bread and freshly caught fish, Jesus asked Peter a simple but loaded question three times; one for each denial. Do you love me? Though this is not my overarching point this morning, I want to pause and say that God is always willing to offer us grace and restoration. No matter how bad we screw up, no matter what ways our actions might deny Christ, there is always a chance to come home. And that chance starts with this question that Jesus asks Peter: Do you love me?

Peter responds that he does love Jesus and his teacher responds with “Feed my lambs,” “Tend my sheep,” “Feed my sheep,” which is not something you should bust out on a date if your significant other professes their love for you. Jesus was saying to Peter, if you love me then please take care of others. Do not just profess your love with words but demonstrate it with actions. Love that is just words is a hollow and empty love. Even if we do not always live up to its promise, I think we all want the loves that we profess to be true. So that question that Jesus asks Peter is one that still resonates for anyone who would follow him today. Do you love me? And if our answer is, “Of course, Jesus, you know that I love you” then he is going to ask us to take care of those around us; not out of obligation but out of love.

So how do we feed Jesus’ sheep? How do we take care of others? How do we take the love that we have for Jesus and put it into action? There are many, many ways to do this. I want to highlight four big picture ideas, but this is just scratching the surface. After all, love is an infinite frontier and fences are few.

The first big picture idea is one I’m going to get out of the way because I feel a little weird talking about the topic yet it is important: Money. We are in the midst of our Stewardship Campaign in which we ask members to consider what they might give in the next year to help Woodmont in its mission of seeking God, sharing love, and serving others. Now I am not saying that if you love Jesus then you are going to give money to Woodmont because Jesus is way bigger than this church. Yet I also have to acknowledge that we live in a material world, taking care of people requires material goods, and often those materials are not free. Ergo the money you give to this church or to the Nashville Food Project or Unbound or anywhere else for that matter does a lot to help take care of people. 

If we are talking about feeding Jesus’ sheep literally, what you give to this church helps feed 40 or 50 students who will be here tonight for youth group. It helped feed volunteers from Hope Force International who stayed here a few weeks ago when they were helping so many in Nashville who were affected by the flooding. Of course most of the “feeding” that we do is metaphorical, but it is so important. Just one example of many: over twenty 5th graders were baptized last Sunday. Giving to the church paid for years of Sunday school curriculum and VBS materials and snacks and children’s staff and bouncy houses and Bibles and electricity and the running water that they were actually baptized in. It fed and raised and tended to that flock of 5th graders that followed Jesus into baptism and will continue to follow him. What we give to the church helps make all of that and much more happen. If you are able to give here and elsewhere, please do, because it can do a lot of good.

Yet taking care of one another within this church and beyond does not stop with money. We do live in a world with material needs, but there are many needs that go beyond the material. We don’t solely support our children or friends through finances. We share life with them. And it is my sincere hope that if and when you are filling out your stewardship pledge cards that you will prayerfully consider how else you can give out of love.

How else can you give? I’m glad you asked! The next big idea is your presence. We want you here! We want you to be a part of what is happening! And there are so many ways that you can be involved that go beyond you sitting right there, which is not to say that you sitting right there is bad. It’s awesome. I know that the children’s ministry is looking for Sunday school teachers. I am constantly looking for adults working with youth. And some of you may be thinking, “Teenagers wouldn’t want to be around me.” All teenagers probably wouldn’t, but we have lots of different students with lots of different personalities and I want them to know Christians from all walks of life and at all points of life.

You could be in the choir. You could come up with creative ideas for The Bridge. You could be in a small group Bible study. You might be wondering how being in a small group Bible study is feeding Jesus’ proverbial sheep. Your story and your perspective are valuable and they just might help someone else in their journey. Not all of you are going to be children’s Sunday school teachers, youth adult leaders, or in the choir, but there is somewhere here that you would make a difference, and maybe you just need to take a leap of faith and see where that is. 

And that is just scratching the surface with places where “official” ministry is done in the church. Do you know how much ministry is done on front porches? Over meals? With phone calls? I look out here and I see people who have ministered to me by just sharing their lives, their wisdom, their homes with me. Your hospitality and compassion for others, your listening ears can minister in ways that you would not believe. Through simple relationships you can demonstrate your love of God through caring for others. The stewardship theme this year is Rising Strong Together and you being part of this church and sharing your life with others is where the rubber truly meets the road for that idea. The more people who are sharing their honest pursuit of following Jesus helps all of us.

The third big picture idea ties into the previous one but it expands beyond the walls of this church and all the ways you can show your love of Jesus by caring for others. It is your passions, your unique gifts, your talents, your abilities. You might be good at writing encouraging notes, baking things, making quilts, fixing things at people’s houses. You might be a good organizer. You might have an analytical mind that can solve problems. You might be passionate about combating racial injustice or relieving poverty. You might create beautiful music or art. All of that can help take care of other people. Use what you have been given to bring care to the world.

The fourth way you can practice stewardship is to use your voice to help those who are vulnerable and hurting. Our two sons overheard EA and I talking about the killing of Daunte Wright as they were getting ready for school. As I was driving to drop them off they asked some really good and difficult questions that I was not prepared for at 7:45 in the morning. We had a good conversation and like most things in parenting, I hope I did an adequate job walking them through what’s going on in the world and why we should care. But one major thing that I tried to impart to them is that as Christians, we are called to care about others. Period.

The greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and the second is like it: to love your neighbor as you love yourself. So we need to listen when our black sisters and brothers say that they are hurting. We need to pay attention when people are suffering from gun violence and poverty and prejudice and everything else. Even if we are untouched by it—well, we’re not untouched by it. It is all part of our family, of Christ’s flock. If we love him, we will care for them. We’ll listen and use our privileged voice to help where we can.

Before wrapping up: a word about stewardship in all of these facets that relates back to our story with Peter. It can be easy to measure what we give stacked up against what others give. We might see people in the church who might be able to give lots of money while others may not be able to swing it. You might look at some people who have incredible gifts that get lots of notice: people who are charismatic or incredible singers or outstanding leaders. And you might feel like your gift is not that great. Avoid those thoughts. Comparison is thief of your ever-loving joy.

After Jesus said for a third time to feed his sheep, Peter looked over at one of his friends. In the Gospel of John, there is this actually somewhat amusing rivalry between Peter and the beloved disciple; thought to be John of Zebedee. “What about him?” Peter asked about John. And Jesus’ response was basically, “What is that to you? Follow me!” What is it to you what other people are doing or think of you? Follow Christ, tend to his sheep as best that you can. It may look different or weird or plain, but if you do it out of your love for God, it will be something worthwhile.

The first time I did something ministerially with this particular Bible passage was in college. I was in a program called Church Related Vocations or CRV, which was for students who wanted to explore the possibility of going into ministry as a vocation. You would do a different internship each year: you would work in a church, do a hospital chaplaincy, work for a social justice organization, or anything like that. For our freshman year of CRV, we mainly worked with the school’s chaplains and our main responsibility was to help plan and staff the weekly non-required-for-students chapel service. I say non-required because we weren’t a Christian school where students have to attend chapel. We were formerly associated with the Baptist church and not many students showed up to chapel at all. If we got thirty people, we were excited.

At Furman, there was this tradition that on the first weekend of May called Beach Weekend where students would skip Friday classes and go to the beach. And so, the freshman girls in CRV decided that they were going to participate in the Beach Weekend festivities and the freshman guys would help the chaplains staff the service on a weekend where the campus was nearly abandoned. Nineteen years later, I still don’t know how this happened.

So it was Beach Weekend and our passage for that Sunday was this story in which Jesus cooked breakfast for the disciples on the beach. The chaplain of Furman at the time was Dr. Jim Pitts, whom we sadly lost to Covid complications this past winter. Dr. Pitts was a man full of wise mischief and near retirement, so he let the three of us lean into the situation and have some fun. That Sunday, we all wore Hawaiian shirts. Instead of having everyone sit in the pews like normal, we put a circle of chairs up on the stage as if it were a group of people sitting around a campfire. We served fish filets and bread to everyone. It was a bit weird, a little different. It was absolutely one of my favorite Sunday church experiences of my life; just a dozen or so people sitting on a stage, munching on some fish, and talking about Jesus. 

It is amazing what kind of difference it can make when you do something out of joy or love rather than from a place of obligation. You and I have a chance to rethink what it means to be stewards every day. We get to dream up ways in which we can care for this church, our community, our neighbors, and this world. Think of the possibilities. Think of the wise mischief and holy fun that we can get into. Jesus asks us all, “Do you love me?” May we honestly answer that we do and when Jesus responds, “Feed my sheep” may we excitedly respond “Let’s do it!”