Jeremy L. Berg

A sermon, especially for pastors. -JB

I don’t know about you, but my rooster often crows loudest on a Monday. I don’t mean to imply I deny Jesus on a weekly basis. The rooster I speak of is the inner critic, the ever-present whisper of self-doubt I try so hard to keep silent all week as I go about my pastoral work. The rooster crow can leave me questioning my call, my giftedness and my effectiveness as a pastor. We are wise to have plan of what to do when the Monday morning rooster comes a-crowing. 

A couple weeks ago we all witnessed again Peter’s famous rooster that I’m guessing sent him into a shame spiral. The rooster awakened him to his failure, his unreliability, his fickleness, all of his bluster and cowardice wrapped with a big shiny bow. The rooster shone a spotlight on Peter’s failure and made public his fall from grace. The rooster called a meeting of the board of elders and handed Peter his termination notice. The rooster sent him before the Board of Ordered Ministry to discuss his ordination status. 

CLOTHED BY GRACE

In John 21, the rooster’s crow seems to have convinced Peter it was time for a career change—a return to the fishing business. I imagine Peter is still hanging his head in shame, wanting to crawl into a hole and hide in humiliation. He doesn’t have a hole, so a boat and a lake will have to do. He fears his failure has disqualified him from ministry. Now the inability to catch any fish just reinforces the rooster’s accusing voice telling him he’ll never be a successful fisher of men either.

If I were Peter, the last person I would want to run into is the One I had turned my back on and let down. Which is what makes the scene so shocking and beautiful and illuminating. You know the story, Jesus stands 200 yards away on the shore, preparing a warm fire and mercy meal for his favorite sinner. Peter stands naked in the boat, stripped down for practical fishing purposes, but also as a   spiritual metaphor for a man laid bare by failure and weakness, feeling exposed and inadequate. Watch what Peter does when he is faced with the person he hurt and let down:

 So Simon Peter, having heard that it is the Lord, put on the outer garment, (for he was naked), and he cast himself into the sea” (John 21:7).

How many of us would have starting rowing the opposite way in search of a remote island to hide? This is what the human race has been doing ever since our first parents stood naked with the juice of forbidden fruit running down their chins. We’ve been hiding from God ever since, trying to cover our nakedness and shame with fig leaves and false selves.  

But instead of hiding in shame, Peter wraps himself as in a garment of grace, plunges himself into the waters of forgiveness, and swims toward the loving arms of his friend. Not just any friend. The Friend of Friends who sets a table of mercy and prepares a eucharistic meal for all who desire to feast on his menu of a thousand second chances. Peter believes Jesus will practice what he preached, forgiving Peter not just for his one big leadership blunder but 70 x 7 more blunders yet to come.  

The demands of ministry will eventually strip each of us down and leave us feeling vulnerable and exposed and inadequate—and the rooster will come a-crowing. On those days, will we believe God is in the business of preparing a warm fire and mercy meal in the wake of our leadership lapses?  

STRIPPING OFF THE EGO

But as soon as Peter is restored on the shore, we get a hint of another dressing down Peter must endure if he is to continue growing into spiritual maturity. The stripping away of the ego, and all of the fig leaves of our false selves we minister behind. 

Peter strikes me as a man of action. Driven. Ambitious. Practical and results-oriented. He’s a “git-r-done’ dude and that personality would prove to be both an asset and liability in his leadership and spiritual growth. Jesus’ last words to Peter, hinting at his future martyrdom, capture this struggle:

Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go” (John 21:18). 

I detect an invitation to deeper spiritual death in Jesus’ words, something like: “Peter, when you were a young pastor you called the shots, worked hard to control your circumstances, you pulled your ministry up by your own bootstraps, put in the long hours and thought results and performance were what counted most with God. But spiritually mature leadership will involve surrendering your agenda, stretching out your arms more often to receive from God and letting the Spirit lead you where you need to go, even when its not where you want to go.” 

How much of our pastoral identity is measured by how much we do for God? Perhaps we need to balance what we do with Mary’s wisdom at the Annunciation that says, “Let it be done unto me” (Luke 1:38). If God is the Sculptor and we are the clay, we need to sit still on God’s workbench long enough for Him do his work in us. Imagine old Geppetto trying to put the finishing touches on his masterpiece, Pinocchio, if he were already a living boy, jumping up and down and running around the room. That’s many of the people we pastor and that’s many of us. Working too hard for God for God to work in us. Moving too fast for God to move in us.

Peter was a man of action. We might call him a high capacity leader. He pledged to be Jesus’ right hand man, to help Jesus expand his ministry, amplify his message, further his reach and he likely had an ambitious timeline for doing so. In the end, Peter’s action-oriented faith crashed up against his own human frailty. He didn’t “git r done”. His ambition outweighed his character. In John 21, Peter gets summoned to a meeting with the CEO of the cosmos. Would Jesus fire him on the spot for his leadership lapse? Would he revoke his ordination once and for all? 

THE ONE QUESTION

In his one-on-one interview, Jesus asks Simon Peter just one question that will determine Peter’s fitness for ministry. And the question is not: Are you a hard worker? Do you have good people skills? Can you preach barn-burning sermons? Do you know the Scriptures? Do you have leadership charisma? Do you have a seminary degree? Without diminishing the importance of any of these, Jesus asks a more foundational question of every would-be shepherd: “Do you love me?”  Then repeats the question until it sinks in that our best sermons, best leadership strategies, people skills—our entire fig-leaf portfolio of ministry accomplishments—are just noisy gongs and clanging cymbals if underneath it all Jesus doesn’t have our heart. 

Friends, the hardest work some of us will ever do as ambitious, dutiful, enterprising Christian leaders is to stop doing so much for Jesus and simply love and be loved by Him. We spend the first half of our life learning to “dress ourselves” with youthful vigor and “going where we want to go”—being patted on the back for how much we have accomplished for God and the Kingdom. The Second Half of Life is about letting go of the ego’s need to produce, allowing God to “dress us” with our true identity that’s not tied to our work, and letting the Holy Spirit lead us places we often don’t wish to go—often painful places where real inner growth and character formation occurs. 

When Jesus told Nicodemus that “Flesh gives birth to flesh and Spirit gives birth to Spirit,” was he warning pastors that “Fleshly or Ego-driven pastors give birth to fleshly ministries and churches; while Spirit-led pastors give birth to Spirit-powered churches and ministries? “He must increase” in my ministry, and “I [my ego] must decrease” (John 3:30). 

I speak as a recovering people-pleaser, confessing how badly I want God and others to be impressed with my “output” and efforts. I crave the words “Well done, good and faithful servant” more than I like living in Jesus’ simple question,“Jeremy, do you love me?” I so badly want to be used by God, while God so badly wants me to be just be loved by Him. I am slowly learning to sit still, like Pinocchio on God’s workbench, and let the Good Sculptor “carry on to completion the good work He began in me” (Phil 1:6).

To summarize then, I’ve highlighted both a need to be clothed as well as a need to be stripped. To those who are like Peter, feeling exposed and vulnerable in ministry, laid bare and inadequate in a boat of failure or shame as the rooster crows, be wrapped today in a garment of grace, throw yourself into the waters of love and swim to the table of mercy and be restored. If you love Jesus and desire to share His love with others, you are prime shepherd material. He wants your heart more than your gifts or perfect performance. 

To those of us prone to hiding behind or even flaunting our fig leaves of ministry gifts and accomplishments, may we begin the work of letting God gently strip away these layers of ego, in order to find our vocational identity not in what we can do for God, but simply in being His beloved. To both, I say today come to the breakfast table with Peter, linger there awhile, and hear Jesus saying to you: “Pastor, do you love me? Finish your breakfast, and go feed my sheep.”