What About Him?
What About Him? by Rev. L. John Gable
May 22, 2022
Have you ever had the occasion of spending an evening with family or friends during which you sat around the table talking and telling stories, some new, others well-known and well-worn, only to find yourself then lingering at the door at the end of the evening telling one last story, or maybe two, before you go? Something along that line is happening as we come to the conclusion of John’s Gospel.
At the end of chapter 20 he writes, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in His name.” That sounds like the close of the book, right, the last story of the evening; but then we discover there are still other stories which need to be told, two to be exact, hence we get a second ending, chapter 21, the so-called epilogue.
I hope you were with us last week to hear Terri’s message about Peter’s encounter with the resurrected Lord, the first and primary story in chapter 21. If you missed it, I will encourage you to watch it on our YouTube channel. In that conversation on the beach, over a breakfast which Jesus Himself had prepared for them (the resurrected Jesus was no ghost), Peter is restored in to a right relationship with the Lord through their three-fold question and response, “Peter, do you love Me?”, “Yes, Lord, I love You.” That conversation concludes with Jesus telling Peter that the cost of his discipleship would end in martyrdom, (interestingly enough the Greek word for witness and martyr is the same. To witness is to be martyred, to be martyred is to witness). He then instructs and encourages Peter to hold fast in his faith by simply saying “Follow Me.”
What a powerful scene that is, but then, without hardly even giving us a moment to catch our breath, we pick up our lesson for this morning, as “Peter turns and sees the disciple whom Jesus loved following them.” And who might that be? None other than John, the disciple who had leaned in closest to Jesus during the Last Supper, the one who said ‘Lord, who is it that is going to betray You?’, the one who ran fastest to the tomb on the Easter morning, the one who was first to see and believe. It was John, the beloved. John, the disciple “par excellence”. It was John, Peter’s nemesis. What was he doing there, following so close, within earshot of their conversation? Was he being curious? Supportive? Envious? Intrusive?
We get a hint that it was something of the latter when Peter asked, “Lord, what about him?” This is one of those statements I would love to have heard how it was said. The more gracious among us might hear him saying, “Oh, Lord, here is my dear brother John. If I am going to be martyred, what about him?” But most hear a different tone in his voice, “Wait a minute, Lord, if I am going to have to pay the full cost of discipleship, what about him?” A question borne more of envy or jealousy than charitable concern. You see, the rumor was already starting to go around in the early church that John was not going to die before Jesus returned, which then begs the question, “Which of the disciples really was the greater? Peter, the presumed first among equals, the one on whom Jesus said His Church would be built, or John, the one who describes himself throughout His own Gospel as the one whom Jesus loved?” Peter has just been told that he is going to be martyred for his faith, so “What about him?”
What an interesting story to put right at the end of the Gospel, but it must have been deemed necessary, then and now, because competition, even in the spiritual life, is a very real thing, and can cause great damage to our relationship with the Lord, with one another and to our very souls. One of the most crippling and joy-sucking temptations in the Christian life is to compare ourselves with another. Oh, if only I could pray like she prays, serve like he serves, sing like they sing, encourage others like they encourage others, have a marriage or a family or a house or a… and the list goes on. This is the issue Paul was addressing in his first letter to the Corinthians where he reminds them/us that the Lord gives different gifts, but all are to be used for the common good because we are all members of the same body of Christ. Not better or worse, not lesser or greater, just different.
There is a very fine line between admiration of another’s gifts and envy or jealousy of them. It was Mark Twain who rightly said, “Comparison is the denial of joy” and another who said, “Envy shoots at others and wounds itself.” Perhaps there is a someone in your life against whom you always compare yourself, which either makes you puff up with pride or leaves you feeling as though you can never measure up. Someone about whom you find yourself asking, “Lord, what about him/her?” That is a heavy burden to bear, so we would well to listen to and take to heart Jesus’ response to Peter, “If it is My will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow Me!” which is shorthand for: mind your own business. You don’t need to worry or mind yourself with what the Lord is doing with someone else, you need only concern yourself with what the Lord is asking of you. And most assuredly you don’t know what burdens that other one is having to carry. Admittedly, competitive comparisons can serve to encourage and inspire us, but they can also disrupt, deceive and destroy us. So, when it comes to comparing ourselves with others: mind your own business! Concentrate on your own calling! Put to good use the gifts that God has given to you.
It is so interesting to me that this story is placed right after Peter has just been reconciled and restored back in to a right relationship with Jesus after his denial. We would think that that conversation would have settled and satisfied him, but the very next thing he does is look over his shoulder and sees John following after them, to which Jesus says, “Peter, don’t look at him, look at Me!” This life of discipleship is not a competition! “Look here! Keep your eyes on Me!” These are the very last words we hear Jesus say to Peter, “Don’t worry about him, or him, or her, just follow Me!” A word perhaps intended for our hearing as well today.
And then, there is yet another aspect to this story which we also need to pay attention to. As I mentioned before, there was a rumor going around in the early church that Jesus would return before the last of the disciples died, that rumor taken from this shoreline conversation when Jesus said, speaking of John, “If it is My will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?” Apparently at the time of the writing of this epilogue, this second ending of the Gospel, John has died and believers are asking, “What’s going on? Where is Jesus? Why hasn’t He come like He said He would?” The editors of John’s Gospel insert this story as a corrective in an attempt to dispel the rumor, “No Jesus didn’t really say that or at least didn’t mean what you think He meant when He said it”, but it raises another issue which faced the church, then and now, not envy and competition as much as speculation and rumors and gossip. Speculation as to when Jesus would return, which He repeatedly said is a fool’s errand. No one knows when the Lord will return, not even Jesus Himself, but only the Father; which should save us from fruitless calculations and focus us on our intended purpose of witness. As well as safeguard us from mindless gossip, which biases toward belittling others and putting them down, and rumors which often does the opposite of lifting them up, making of them something more than they are, making of them something we could never attain for ourselves. We know the damage of gossip, but the other end of the spectrum, rumors, can be equally damaging. Many speak of the “Facebook effect”, of which I am not a big user, but people tend to post a false image of themselves on line, always having fun, eating in fancy restaurants, traveling to exotic places, leaving the rest of us looking at our “boring routines” and belittling ourselves, thinking “I can never be like them”.
This is kind of what was happening with John, and in a sense it can happen as we look at any of the disciples or any of the great heroes of our faith. We can too easily put them up on a pedestal, saying to ourselves, “I could never live up to their standards.” That is one of the reasons I love and appreciate the honesty of Scripture. Every one of our so called “heroes and heroines” are as broken and flawed as we are. There is only One perfect Hero in Scripture and it is Him and Him alone we are called to follow.
So, rumor had it that John was not going to die until Jesus returned making him something more than a “mere mortal”, a first century spiritual rock star of sorts, which is something more than envy or competition, but idolatry. And what is the antidote to idolatry? The same instruction was being given to the early church regarding John as was given to Peter, “Don’t you bother about him. Keep your eyes on Me. John did His part, His words are faithful and true, but now He has died, as have all of the others you hold in such high esteem, so remember them, give thanks for them, but follow Me.”
So John’s Gospel ends, twice, on this note of caution and encouragement. Those who closed his book the second time write, “But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written”, which sounds very much like the way chapter 20 concludes, “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing may have life in His name.” Which also sounds very much like the way this Gospel opens, all the way back in chapter 1, where we read, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen His glory, the glory as of a Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth. From His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made Him known.”
Jesus came so that we might know God in a new and almost inconceivable way, in a way that we can see and know and touch and understand. The Word, the life giving, life redeeming power of God, became flesh and lived among us. And then through the pen of John and others, and the on-going witness of the Holy Spirit, the Word became words, words that we can read and touch, reflect on and pray over, all to the end that we might believe that “Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing we may have life in His name.”
It is not coincidental that Jesus’ first words to His disciples then are His final words to His disciples, then and now, to you and me still today, “Don’t you worry about him or her or them, or that, or how, or what if, or when, or anything else that might distract or dissuade you; all you need do is follow Me.”
Rev. L. John Gable
Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
Indianapolis, IN