{"id":13716,"date":"2022-05-01T00:00:38","date_gmt":"2022-04-30T23:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/turski.blog\/?p=13716"},"modified":"2022-05-01T00:00:38","modified_gmt":"2022-04-30T23:00:38","slug":"3rd-sunday-of-easter-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/?p=13716","title":{"rendered":"3rd Sunday of Easter"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m 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\u2019t 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 \u2018Eating with My Ex\u2019<\/em> – produced for BBC Three so admittedly I wasn\u2019t their target audience. For those of you unfamiliar with the show the BBC\u2019s blurb reads: \u201cEx-couples reunite for dinner with awkward questions and confrontations. Will they settle the score or rekindle the flame?\u201d<\/em> 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\u2019m at least twice the age of the show\u2019s target audience. Or – I can\u2019t rule it out – I am too dim-witted\u2026<\/p>\n

I recalled that show when I was reading today\u2019s gospel. It\u2019s a very similar premise minus the recording equipment and crew – although someone wrote it down\u2026 Hmmm\u2026What did that BBC blurb say? \u201cEx-couples reunite for dinner with awkward questions and confrontations. Will they settle the score or rekindle the flame?\u201d<\/em> It\u2019s an almost perfect description of today\u2019s gospel, except that Jesus and Simon weren\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

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: \u201cYou will all become deserters\u201d <\/em>as a result of his arrest, \u201cPeter said to him, \u2018Even though all become deserters, I will not. […] Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you.\u2019\u201d (Mark 14:27-31)<\/em> 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\u2019s 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\u2019s spontaneous swim to the shore to meet Jesus, but it didn\u2019t 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\u2019s have a closer look.<\/p>\n

\u2018Simon […], do you love me more than these others do?\u2019<\/em> The first question referred to Simon\u2019s earlier declaration: \u2018Even though all become deserters, I will not\u2019<\/em> 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\u2026 Simon\u2019s positive answer might have looked cocky, considering his fall from his high horse, second only to that of Judas Iscariot\u2019s. But the following phrase is pivotal: \u201cyou know I love you.\u201d<\/em> Simon didn\u2019t compare himself with others, he didn\u2019t try to mount his high horse again. He skipped over the comparative piece of Jesus\u2019 question and answered what he considered the most important part: \u2018Simon […], do you love me?\u2019<\/em> The way Simon answered was very telling: \u201cyou know I love you.\u201d<\/em> It appealed to Jesus\u2019 deepest knowledge of Simon\u2019s heart, as if referring to Jesus\u2019 understanding words that \u201cthe spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.\u201d (Matthew 26:41)<\/em> Based on the much wider context, it seems that Simon\u2019s 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: \u201cLord, you know everything; you know I love you.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u2019t \u201ca dinner with awkward questions and confrontations.\u201d <\/em>It\u2019s never a time to \u201csettle the score\u201d<\/em> but rather \u201cto rekindle the flame.\u201d<\/em> It\u2019s the time when we can make Simon\u2019s words our own: \u201cLord, you know everything; you know I love you.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Image by Terri Cnudde<\/a> from Pixabay<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m 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\u2019t 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 \u2018Eating with My Ex\u2019 – produced for BBC Three so admittedly I wasn\u2019t their target audience. For those of you unfamiliar with the show the BBC\u2019s blurb reads: \u201cEx-couples reunite for dinner with awkward questions and confrontations. Will they settle the score or rekindle the flame?\u201d 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\u2019m at least twice the age of the show\u2019s target audience. Or – I can\u2019t rule it out – I am too dim-witted\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon","category-year-c"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}