Why Jesus gave Peter his mission before he fell

Last week I told Peter's story briefly: a denial beside one charcoal fire, a breakfast beside another, and a sermon at Pentecost. I left out one sentence, and it may be the most hopeful thing Jesus ever said to someone in ministry.

It comes at the Last Supper, a few hours before the denial. Jesus turns to Peter and says, "I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers."

Read that slowly. Jesus knows Peter is about to fall, and in the same breath he gives him his mission. He builds the mission around Peter's turning back.

Why would anyone do that? If you were choosing someone to lead the Church's mission, you'd look for a steady person, someone who keeps their word and holds up under pressure. That night Peter was neither. The answer is what I most want us to carry towards 2033. I call it forgiven leadership: leading out of the mercy you've been shown, and passing that mercy on.

You'll remember the courtyard. Luke adds a detail that no other Gospel has. As the cock crowed after the third denial, "The Lord turned and looked at Peter." Peter went out and wept bitterly. When the Catechism explains conversion, it points to that moment and says it was the mercy in Jesus' look that drew Peter's tears.

Then comes the breakfast by the lake. Most of us know the outline: three questions, three answers, and "Feed my sheep." But something happens in the Greek that is easy to miss, and Pope Benedict XVI drew it out.

Two words for love go back and forth in that conversation. One is agapē (say it ah-GAH-pay), the love that gives everything and holds nothing back. The other is philia (say it FIL-ee-ah), the tender love between friends.

The first two times, Jesus asks Peter for agapē. Before the denial, Benedict says, Peter would have promised it on the spot. Now he knows exactly how weak he is, and he answers humbly with philia. In Benedict's words, he is saying, "I love you with my poor human love".

The third time, Jesus changes the word. He asks for philia, the love Peter has offered. Benedict read that change as Jesus coming down to meet him: "Jesus has put himself on the level of Peter, rather than Peter on Jesus' level!" Peter, he said, came to understand that "his poor love is enough for Jesus".

So that is why Jesus could give Peter his mission before he fell. Jesus built on the love Peter had, honest and small and forgiven. Peter was hurt to be asked a third time, and he answered, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus gave him the flock. Then he said two words: "Follow me."

Everything Peter did afterwards grew out of that breakfast and the Spirit who came at Pentecost. In his first sermon he offered the crowd the forgiveness he had been given on the beach. At the temple gate he looked at a man who had never walked and said, "I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you", and the man got up and walked. He went into the home of a Roman centurion because God had shown him that he should call no one unclean. Later he wrote to scattered Christians, "once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy". He spent his life giving away what he had received.

The Church's tradition holds that he died a martyr in Rome. Pope Leo the Great, preaching there four centuries later, said: "And you who had been frightened by the high priest's maid in the house of Caiaphas, had no fear of Rome the mistress of the world." Love, Leo said, had overcome his fear. The man who once said "I do not know the man" gave his life for him. The philia Jesus accepted on the beach had grown into agapē.

Last week I said most of us carry things we wish had gone differently. Maybe it's a ministry that faded, or a season when prayer went quiet and you kept going on habit. Jesus asks for the love you have today, and he builds on it. You can start with philia. He will take it from there.

Forgiven leadership looks ordinary when you see it. It's the youth leader who gives a teenager a second chance, because she remembers being given one. It's the parish team that welcomes back the volunteer who drifted away, or the priest in the confessional who remembers his own need of mercy.

Jesus gave Peter his mission before he fell, and asked him to strengthen his brothers. Your mission comes from your baptism, and Jesus has been interceding for you through every hard season. Six and a half years of forgiven people passing mercy on could change a great deal in the corner of the Church you look after.

So this week, find ten quiet minutes and read John 21:15-19. Let him ask you the question, and answer with whatever love you have. Then think of one person you serve who needs the mercy you've been shown, and offer it before Sunday, with a phone call or a second chance.

Shaun Austin

Shaun Austin has served with Jesus Youth for about twenty years and is a co-founder of StewardStack, which builds tools that take the admin load off parishes, dioceses, religious orders and ministries, so that more of their time goes to mission.