500 miles from home

It is a lovely if not haunting conversations/stories in John's Gospel.

You remember it. Jesus appears to his disciples a last time on the Sea of Galilee. They are fishing because they had spent time with the Lord Jesus but he isn't around and what does a fisherman do when a fisherman has nothing constructive to do but fish? They have been fishing all night, as they often if not always did. They had caught sqadoosh, nada, nothing. Nothing but net, as they say.

At dawn, Jesus is standing on the beach, with a charcoal smoke lazily lifting behind him, but the disciples (despite having a dollop of the Holy Spirit in them from when the Lord had breathed on them) didn't recognize him.

He hollers to them, 100 yards or so out in the lake, to throw out on the right side of the boat (proving, of course, that He was an early Republican), and suddenly it is catching fish instead of fishing. Catching instead of heaving. Catching instead of dragging empty nets back into the boat. Catching, 153 fish, for someone reason.

Peter recognizes Jesus, jumps out of the boat (proving, of course, that he was an early Republican), and somehow walks to the shore, shoving murky water out of the way with every step. When the rest of the disciples and the boat arrive at the shoreline (proving, of course, that they were early Democrats), fish is being smoke on a gas grill (okay, made that part up).

Jesus serves the disciples fish and bread (sound familiar?), and he begins to interrogate Peter.

He asks Peter questions three times (once for every time Peter denied him). "Simon...do you love (agape) me more than these?" Jesus asks and Peter says, "You know I love (phileo) you." Jesus says, "Then feed my lambs.


A second time..."Simon, son of John (which interestingly surprises me since Simon had been son of Jonah in other translations before this), do you love me?"

Peter answers, "Yes, Lord. You know I love you." Jesus instructs, "Then take care of my sheep."

A third time ..."Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter answers, "Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you." Jesus instructs, "Then feed my sheep."

Now, I've always loved this story on its surface. Jesus is in the act of forgiving Peter, who is in the act of forgiving himself.

But there's more here than just that.

The Greek language, which was the spoken language of the disciples and Jesus, is a much more exact language than our own. In the Greek, for example, there are three words for our word love. There's Eros, which is a physical love, and that's where we get our English word erotic from. The second kind is Phileo, which means brotherly love. The name of the city Philadelphia comes from that word, the city of brotherly love. We could compare it, in fact, to the word "like." The final kind of love is known as agape love, and this is the unconditional, self-sacrificing love. It means the complete devotion to someone.

Here in the text, then, Jesus asks Peter the first time, "Do you Agape me?" Peter responds that he Phileos him. Just being honest here, Peter says he likes him.

Jesus asks him if he 100 percent loves him, is devoted to him, adores him. Peter says he 100 percent likes him, wants to be able to be devoted to him, wants to adore him as mentor and rabbi and friend. Get the picture? Love versus like? Devotion versus Sunday come to meeting twice a month kinda like? Doesn't it seem that we must somehow move beyond phileo love to agape love or all is lost? Doesn't it?

We have spent the past week going out to eat with friends who have come to us by the grace of God in the past year at the New Church on South Carrollton. We've checked all the appropriate boxes on the bucket list of food (charbroiled oysters, check; steak, check; roast beef po-boys; shrimp remoulade/fried green tomato po-boys, check; catfish and gumbo, check. And on and on. 

The food has been wonderful, part of the food legacy of the greatest food town in America. But it was the friendships that has been the roux that put it all together. Thinking of the friends we have left at every church we've been at reminds us that you can't say goodbye, only, "Till we see you again." That's just the way agape love is. Doesn't matter that you don't physically see those friends; it matters that friendships -- relationships -- are made, deepened, developed.

It's not the town. It's not the history. It's not even the family in and of itself. It's about relationships that we've been allowed to participate in. That's sitting out on a beach somewhere, smoke unfurling from a charcoal fire underneath a catch of fish or a slab of beef or a bit of pork. Sharing a meal with a friend, new or old, and forging some new memories as if they were a concoction dressed up with a rare recipe.

As I write this, Peter, Paul and Mary's version of the song 500 miles is playing. It is, by coincidence, the first song I learned to play on a guitar. At one point my bud Kenny Suire and I were going to start a band. I was going to play and sing on this song. We never started the band, never sang together, never played music together, and we drifted apart like people do. Truth is, we haven't seen each other in 50 years -- FIFTY YEARS. But he will forever be my friend, for the season we spent together. He and his family lived in a trailer on our property right outside our house one fall as they built a house elsewhere, and that closeness never will be forgotten.

As we head into our next adventure, my wife Mary and I -- moving to Coushatta, La., in a week -- I know this much -- I already phileo the people of that town though I know them not. But as time passes, and it will, it really, really will, we will agape them, and they will be added to the great line of witnesses, of friends, of loved ones who have proceeded them. Yesterday a wonderful couple we've come to know and agape in the past year gave us a plaque that is an outline of the state of Louisiana with a big star covering New Orleans. The word HOME is written on the plaque.

That's the way this goes. When you agape Jesus, lambs are fed. When you agape the Lord, sheep are nourished. When you agape the Son of God and the Son of Man, even old goats are given a morsel of food, a handful of bread, a plateful of smoked fish, perhaps.

When it is all done, you go home, if you can figure out where home is.

This I know with all my heart ... wherever Mary is, is home, for Jesus has already gone ahead of us and prepared a place.

Thus, love is scattered as seed in a gentle wind.

If we agape Him. If we agape. If we. If...........