Column: Of Peter and the Lost Sheep

By Drew Williams
Sentinel Columnist

When Jesus talks about “lost sheep” or “lambs,” I wonder if I have been inclined to magnanimously hear this as if He were talking about someone else: most likely those who do not yet know Jesus or possibly those who are young in their faith and might very easily wander off. That’s not completely wrong, but it’s not entirely right either. After all, we are “…all like sheep [and] have gone astray…” (Isaiah 53:6). I am certainly prone to losing the plot.

Speaking of going astray, the theologian and preacher Richard Sibbes (1577-1635) wrote, “[Jesus] was most familiar and open to troubled souls.” He continues, “Christ’s sheep are weak sheep, and [always] lacking in something or other: He therefore applies Himself to the necessities of every sheep. He seeks that which was lost, and brings back again that which was driven out of the way; and binds up that which was broken and weak.”

This has always been His promise: “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak…” (Ezekiel 34:16). In fact, His most tender care is reserved for the weak. “He tends His flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart…” (Isaiah 40:11).

Jesus’s love for the Apostle Peter is an incredible example of the tenderness described by Ezekiel and Isaiah. On the night of His betrayal, Jesus says to His disciples, “You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’ But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee” (Matthew 26: 31-32). Jesus is seeking to reassure His weak sheep that, notwithstanding their predisposition to scatter in panic, He will gather them back to Himself.

Peter will have none of it, declaring, “Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away” (Matthew 26:33). We know how the story unfolds. Watch how Jesus cares for this particularly weak sheep. First there is Jesus’ gaze of “wounded affection” in the courtyard as Peter realizes what he has done. But there was something else that caught my attention. In the first few moments of Jesus’s resurrection, Jesus is clearly still carrying Peter, the weak sheep, close to His heart. At the empty tomb, the Angel says to the women, on Jesus’s instructions, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; He is not here. See the place where they laid Him. But go, tell His disciples and Peter that He is going before you to Galilee” (Mark 16: 6-7).

Jesus knew that all of His disciples (His scattered sheep) would have been feeling wretched with guilt in abandoning Him, but the most miserable, heartbroken, inconsolable sheep would have been Peter. And in the tenderness of Jesus’s love, Peter is the disciple who Jesus expressly mentions by name: “…tell… Peter…”

At the moment of their reunion along the shores of the Sea of Tiberias in Galilee after Jesus’s resurrection, when they had finished breakfast, Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me more than these?” (John 21:15) That must have stung a little bit, because a few days before Peter had indeed claimed to love Jesus more than the rest of the sheep and then proved himself to be one of the weakest. Peter replied, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”

I hear in this, “Please don’t hold my betrayal against me. Please know that in spite of all my weakness, I do love you.” Jesus responded with, “Feed my lambs.” He does not begin with “build my church” or even “teach and lead my sheep.” He chooses His words carefully:  “Feed my lambs.” In other words, as I have loved you, Peter, as I have held you close to my heart in all your weakness and vulnerability, now care for such as these. At this moment in the church’s history, was there anybody who better understood how to love weak sheep than Peter?

Jesus’s most tender care remains for the weak and the vulnerable, and that is such good news because when He spoke of lambs and lost sheep, He was always talking about us. “He tends His flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart…” (Isaiah 40:11).

I pray you would encounter the tenderness of His love today and know that He holds you close to His heart.

The Rev’d Drew Williams, Senior Pastor of Trinity Church, has been living with severe, debilitating chronic pain for more than three years. He knows the desperation that comes with wondering if he would ever be pain free. At the same time, he shares, “By the grace of God, that desperation has also brought an increased intensity and honesty, as well as a deeper intimacy, in my relationship with God.” He now shares something of his struggle in a series of devotional writings for the Greenwich Sentinel.

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