I’m not as avid a TV watcher as I used to be; nowadays my TV consumption is practically limited to a relatively narrow, carefully made selection of shows. The News at Ten is the main constant on my personal TV schedule as it usually wraps up my day. Quite often I do something else while watching the news – a rare occasion when I can do multitasking – and sometimes that job takes longer than expected. So, I keep doing it – I don’t like unfinished business – while the telly plays in the background. As a result, sometimes I come across something really interesting, sometimes something absolutely daft. I recall a show called ‘Eating with My Ex’ – produced for BBC Three so admittedly I wasn’t their target audience. For those of you unfamiliar with the show the BBC’s blurb reads: “Ex-couples reunite for dinner with awkward questions and confrontations. Will they settle the score or rekindle the flame?” I found it daft to talk in detail about a very personal, intimate, now-broken relationship surrounded by a lot of recording equipment, crew and with the knowledge that it would be shown on TV for everyone to see. I found this idea silly but – as I said earlier – I’m at least twice the age of the show’s target audience. Or – I can’t rule it out – I am too dim-witted…
I recalled that show when I was reading today’s gospel. It’s a very similar premise minus the recording equipment and crew – although someone wrote it down… Hmmm…What did that BBC blurb say? “Ex-couples reunite for dinner with awkward questions and confrontations. Will they settle the score or rekindle the flame?” It’s an almost perfect description of today’s gospel, except that Jesus and Simon weren’t a couple in the sense of the BBC show and it was breakfast, not dinner. Jesus asked Simon questions that the latter found awkward as he had to confront his bad choices, mistakes and even unfaithfulness. To understand it better we have to establish the wider context of this conversation.
Simon was among the first disciples called by Jesus and one of the closest, alongside his two friends, brothers James and John. They witnessed things that no other disciples did – we have a good number of stories in the gospel when Jesus took only those three to accompany him. Simon was chosen as the figurehead of the future community of the faithful, the Church. When Jesus predicted at the Last Supper: “You will all become deserters” as a result of his arrest, “Peter said to him, ‘Even though all become deserters, I will not. […] Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you.’” (Mark 14:27-31) And then he did, three times before the cock crow, as foretold by Jesus. Then Simon, like many others, struggled with the incomprehensible resurrection of Christ, struggling to believe the impossible. Simon’s fishing trip was a return to his previous, pre-Jesus life, as if the entire chapter of his discipleship had never happened – which we could dub as the fourth denial. We can admire Simon’s spontaneous swim to the shore to meet Jesus, but it didn’t prevent him from being confronted with his most recent past. However, the way Jesus conducted this very important conversation was very different to that of the BBC show, or in fact, our confrontational and accusatory ways. Let’s have a closer look.
‘Simon […], do you love me more than these others do?’ The first question referred to Simon’s earlier declaration: ‘Even though all become deserters, I will not’ as well as to the number of even earlier quarrels among the disciples about who among them had been the most important, influential and smartest – typical playground stuff… Simon’s positive answer might have looked cocky, considering his fall from his high horse, second only to that of Judas Iscariot’s. But the following phrase is pivotal: “you know I love you.” Simon didn’t compare himself with others, he didn’t try to mount his high horse again. He skipped over the comparative piece of Jesus’ question and answered what he considered the most important part: ‘Simon […], do you love me?’ The way Simon answered was very telling: “you know I love you.” It appealed to Jesus’ deepest knowledge of Simon’s heart, as if referring to Jesus’ understanding words that “the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:41) Based on the much wider context, it seems that Simon’s fall changed him; there was no more fighting for the prime position within the community. Painfully humiliated by his massive failure, Simon adopted humility as his new but authentic demeanour. The playground cockiness was gone, replaced by unpretentious maturity. We can see that when asked a similar, second question by Jesus, followed by the third one that upset Simon. Instead of childish, fervent assurances or evoking any external evidence of his love, he simply said: “Lord, you know everything; you know I love you.”
I come across many people who are frustrated with their repetitive sins, or weaknesses, or failures despite their genuine motivation and strong resolve not to do so. If you are one of such people, welcome to my world; you are in good company. Such frustration is completely understandable because it undermines our self-perceived and desired perfection and humiliates us in our own eyes. The Eucharist, the Sunday Mass, isn’t “a dinner with awkward questions and confrontations.” It’s never a time to “settle the score” but rather “to rekindle the flame.” It’s the time when we can make Simon’s words our own: “Lord, you know everything; you know I love you.”
Image by Terri Cnudde from Pixabay