Doing and Tarrying

John xxi. 22

Jesus said unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou Me. — John xxi. 22.

TN the preceding sermon we have seen that, in the -*- first part of this mysterious interview by the tire of coals on the shore of the lake, Peter’s threefold confession obliterated his threefold denial, and won his threefold commission and public restoration to his apostolic office. But that was not all that Jesus had to say that morning to him and to the others. I turn therefore to the second yart of this mysterious interview, and note that it groups itself round three sayings of our Lord’s, of which I have taken the last as my text, not that I intend to speak of it only, but because it is the summing-up of the whole. These three sayings are a prediction, a command, and a rebuke. The prediction is interpreted by the writer as a forecast of Peter’s martyrdom. “When thou wast young thou girdest thyself, but when thou shalt be old, another shall gird thee, and lead thee whither thou wouldest not.” That

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prediction is attached immediately to the commission, “Feed My sheep,” as indicating that the discharge of the function would inevitably lead to the death. Then there follows the command, “Follow thon Me,” which looks back to both the commission and the prediction, and sets forth Christ, the chief Shepherd, as the great Example to be followed in life by all the nnder-shepherds, and changes the whole aspect of martyrdom and death by making it a following of Him. Last comes the rebuke, occasioned by a flash of Peter’s old self, possibly dne partly to affection, bat a great deal more to impulsive curiosity: “Lord, and what shall this man do?” said he, as he saw John following himself and the Lord, and that brought the answer which I have read as my text. I wish to draw out the lessons of these three’ sayings of our Lord.

L A PriEDICTION.

The form which it takes is picturesque and striking. An hour before, Peter, as we read in this very chapter, “girt himself” with his fisher’s coat, and floundered through the shoal water to get to Christ’s feet. It was a characteristic action, in which the man’s masterful, impulsive nature, energetic, and craving for activity as a safety-valve to his feelings, showed itself. Our Lord takes it as a specimen of the whole characteristic nature of the man, as it had been developed in the buoyant season of his youth and

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early manhood. It is a picture of the energetic fisherman, impatient of passivity, strongly self-reliant, scornful of help, and inclined to yield to the impulse of a masterful will. “When thou wast young thou girdest thyself, and wentest whither thon wouldest, but when thou shalt be old,” and the natural force is abated, and the attrition of life has worn the energy thin, ‘’thou shalt stretch forth thy hand,” that did not use to ask for help, “and another shall gird thee “; and then in the last clause comes out more plainly the purport of the whole: “shalt carry thee whither thon wouldest not.” So the early, buoyant energy is enfeebled and passes into passivity and dependence. The service of life, in feeding the lambs and the sheep, is perfected by the service of suffering and the death that he should die.

Kow, notice in a word the contrast that is here suggested — which is not to be passed by, though it is not the principal thing — between the strength of youth and the passiveness of old age. “Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fail.” Nature is sapped and weakened, and as a necessary result of having been young, and vigorous, and strong we become old, and flaccid, and feeble. But, brethren, there is a secret of perpetual youth, and it is possible to resist and set at defiance, in the true depths of our being, the law which weakens energy and dims eyesight, if only we will wait upon the Lord, from whom comes the life that has no tendency to death; from whom comes the strength that is not exhausted by being put forth, and that has no proclivity to weakness nor needs to fear exhaustion. The supernatural that may pass into the life of every one of us will conquer the natural, and the winter of the year may never need to come. “Even the youths shall faint and be weary,” yes; but “they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength “; and according to the deep saying of the Swedish seer, “The oldest angels in heaven are the youngest.”

But turning from that, which is only incidental to the main drift of the words before us, note how in this prediction Jesus Christ, with the utmost calmness, with the most perfect matter-of-factness, as if the propriety of it was obvious, and also with the most perfect tenderness, sets a man to a task which He knows beforehand is a sentence of death. “Feed My sheep “: if you do, “Another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.” Jesus calls for no recruits under false pretences; does not coax men into His service by feigned tales of advantages and outward benefits; does not hide the possible, and in some cases the certain, issues, but says to us, ^’ If you do as I bid you, you will have to suffer a great deal, and you may have to lay down your lives. Do it! “What warrant has He to lay a masterful hand upon me, and to tell me that, if I have to die for Him, I am yet in the right in following Him? What warrant has He? Ah! He has this right: He died for you and me first, before He asked us to be ready to die for Him; and if we drink in the meaning and the measure of His great love for us, we shall be able to turn to Him and say: “Thou gavest Thy life for me, here I give my life to Thee.” Brethren, it is only the risen Lord that has the right to bid us die for Him. But He has the right, and to own the right is to have death abolished and life made ours for ever.

There have been in all ages those who have had, like Peter, to complete the service of activity by the service of suffering. And, — thank God! — in all ages that spring of self-surrender which is opened and made to flow in the rockiest hearts by the recognition of Christ’s great and dying love for us — in all ages, and in this age, that spring has not failed. There comes into my mind, as I speak, a family, the members of which were known and dear to some of us, who last year, in a Chinese Yamen, were girded and bound, and carried whither they would not. The father of the family, in the journey from the place of capture to the place of death, a walk of some hundreds of miles, knowing that he was going to his grave, preached Christ at every halting-place, and he and his wife, and their little children stretched out their necks for the headsman’s sword, without reluctance and without a tremor. Thank God for the presentday martyrs of a martyred Christ!

Let us remember that, although the physical death is not demanded from us, the very same connection which is shadowed here as existing between a life of service and a death of suffering, in spirit and reality remains true for all Christian living. There may not be the literal death, but no man will live a noble Christian life unless it is a dying life, and although the natural self may not be weakened by age, the natural self must be weakened by suppression, if we are to live the life. When you and I stretch out our hands, and let Jesus Christ gird us, and carry us whither flesh and blood would not, then, and only then, can we keep His command, ‘’ Feed My lambs; Feed My sheep.” No noble life is possible unless it be a sacrificed life; and that freedom and self-reliance when we girded ourselves, and went whithersoever we would, is ignoble, and is slavery; whereas the surrendered life, when we stretch out our hands and let Him lead us, is freedom and blessedness. So much, then, for the first of the sayings here, the prediction.

II. Now let us turn to the second, the Command.

“And when He had spoken this, He saith unto him, Follow Me.” Note that the two sayings, that with which I have been dealing, and that with which we have now to deal, follow, tlic one immediately upon the oilier, and yet are parted off from each other. That suggests distinction and yet connection. “He said unto him, Follow Me.” From what succeeds in the narrative the command evidently was first meant to call Peter to come after Jesus in some change of place, leaving the little group with the apparent purpose of giving some further private communication. But whilst this is no doubt true, I think that we do not need to wonder whether that prisate communication was ever given, or what it was, because, as it seems to me, in accordance with the symbolical turn of all the narrative, we are to regard this commandment, though it had a literal fulfilment at the moment, as in the literal fulfilment being but a symbol of the whole Christian life. Jesus gathers up, if I may say so, in this one commandment what He had been saying before, both as to the commission to the life of service, and the prediction of the death of martyrdom. Both of these He, as it were, brings under the mncuhim of this commandment, and says: ‘’ As nnder-shepherd, follow Me in the feeding of the sheep; and as martyr, follow Me in the death that thou shalt die.” I have pointed out in the earlier portion of this incident the allusions to past events recorded in the gospels; and there is a distinct double allusion here to two such. It surely is not accidental that, whilst the first miraculons draught of fishes by the lake was followed by the command, ‘’Come ye after Me, and I will make you fishers of men”; the second is followed by the parallel command: “Follow thou Me.” That applies to the following in service. Then it surely is not accidental either, that whilst a few hours before Calvary, Peter asked: “Why cannot I follow Thee now? I will lay down my life for Thy sake,” Jesus Christ should here have said, ‘’ Follow thou Me.” The “afterwards,” when he should follow Him had begun. That applies to the following by laying down the life for His sake.

So we have here Jesus Christ, as always, calmly presenting Himself before us and the whole world as the realised ideal of humanity, in whom is all perfection; to be like whom is to be complete, and to imitate whom is to be tending towards perfect rio:hteousness. “Follow thou Me “is the one sweet word that gathers up into a blessed permission the else harsh, impossible, and despair-producing imperative of duty. All changes when, instead of saying to a man,” Do this,” we say to him, ‘’ Follow Jesus Christ.” It is one thing to obey, or to try to obey, an impersonal “ought “; it is altogether another thing to imitate a personal Christ. And power, and joy, and virtue, are redoubled, and more than that, decupled, when all duty is summed up in trying to be like Him. It is the very life-blood of love to be conformed to the beloved; and if we, instead of aiming at a cold, far off, abstract morality, seek to shape our lives after the pattern of a loving, near, personal Jesus, the aspect of duty changes, and life becomes a feast and not an effort.

“Follow thou Me.” You remember the old story of the Douglas that flung the king’s heart amongst the Moors with, “Go on, brave heart, I follow thee,” and recked not of swords or wounds. So may it be with us. I do not dwell on the way in which this imitation of Christ is to be the guiding star of all men who especially are called upon to feed the sheep and the lambs; but I wish you to remember that this exhortation, regarded as being the one all-comprehensive commandant for life, does not apply only to the service of those who are shepherds; for Peter himself, remembering this incident, as it seems to me, shared his privilege of following Jesus, which he had once grudged to his dearest friend and fellow-apostle John, amongst us all, when he wrote, “Leaving us an example that we” — all of us — “should follow His steps.” The world would be revolutionised if the Church followed Jesus. The world brings it as its gravest charge against us that we do not, and it has the right to do so, and it is a good thing for us professing Christians when we hear, from the lips of the enemies, as we may hear if we will listen, the repetition of the Master’s command. Go after your Lord, and you will feed His sheep, and you will touch the conscience of the world.

III. And now, lastly, we have here the
Rebuke.

As I have said, it is evident that the previous command was accompanied by some motion and change of place, because John followed the two. And it is very beautiful to notice how John does not apologise for, but vindicates as quite right, his apparent intrusiveness, when he describes the man that ventured to follow as being “the disciple as Jesus loved, who also leaned on His breast at supper, and said, Lord which is he that betrayeth Thee? “If these things were true of him, he had a right to believe that no confidence imparted to his special friend, Peter, could be withheld from him; and it was no intrusion, but the recognition of the bond that knit him to Christ and to Peter, that led him to link himself with the pair. And then there comes the flash of Peter’s old self, half curiosity, half affection, and the irrepressible desire to be setting everybody right:” Lord, what shall this man do? “That brings an answer, which is a rebuke, and also the reiteration of the commandment: ‘’ If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou Me.”

Now, I do not need to dwell and your time would not allow me to do so, upon the attitude wbicli our Lord here takes, in full conformity with the attitude which He took in the two preceding sayings, of asserting and exercising His absolute power over the life and death of a man. His *’ I will “kept John alive, right away down almost to the end of the century. And by the time this chapter was written, as is obvious from the words, “what death he should die,” Peter had long since gone, and John was left. Jesus Christ is the Lord of life and, “has the keys of death and the grave.”

But apart from that, let me just remind you, in a sentence, how we have here brought into close juxtaposition and narrow compass, the perpetually recurring double manifestation of the Christian life — the life of service and the life of tarrying. Peter’s only notion of service was, “Lord, what shall this man do?” But there is another kind of service: “If I will that he tarry.” Do? Nothing; tarry. Now, if you take the book of the Acts of the Apostles, you find John there side by side with Peter, a kind of silent shadow. He never opens his mouth. He is always at hand, ready to back up his energetic brother, but not a word drops from his lips during all the history in that book. He waits and waits; and the years pass on, and the silence bears fruit in the gospel without which we were poor indeed, though

l:48SrSB we had the three others, and Paul, Peter, and the rest — the gospel which, in its deep intuitions, its strong ethics, its spiritual energy, and its enthronement of love, is worthy to be, as it seems to me that it is tending to become, the last phase of the Christian creed. That is what we get from the tarrying apostle.

Mary and Martha are sisters; Rachel and Leah are both wives. The contemplative and the active life need each other, else the one will become indolent, subjective, diseased; and the other will become fussy and superficial, and will dry up’. It is one of the hardest things in the practical guidance of an individual life to know how much is due to the one ’ and to the other. Only let us remember that the two types are both legitimate types. It is not for me to say which is the higher. But it is for me to say that the active is always tempted to find fault with the contemplative, and to call it indolence. John will let Peter serve as much as he likes; Peter does not let John go apart and meditate. There have been ages in which the contemplative has crowded out the active, and a monastery in its corruptest state shows the outcome of that experiment. But this age, that is to say, you and I, is exposed to precisely the opposite danger, and I solemnly believe that one of the perils of the Church of to-day is the restless activity which has far more machinery than it has boiler-power for; far more work than it has retiring meditation, and which, therefore, with all its energy, is but superficial, and sows much and reaps little. I do not want fewer (Jhristian workers, but I do want more Christian meditation and pray-ers. I do not want less service, but the service would be better if there was more coming apart into a solitary place with Christ, and resting awhile.

All this incident has a distinct and direct application to ourselves. We hear Christ saying to us, “Lovest thou Me?” It is for us to answer, “Thou knowest that I Jove Thee.” Then we shall get the command, “Follow thou Me,” and we shall be able, in some measure, to serve Him with our activity, and to nestle near Him in our contemplations. And so we shall follow Him in life, and follow Him in death, and then pass into the state where “they follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth,” and where contemplation will not slacken diligence, nor labour disturb contemplation, for “His servants shall serve Him, and see His face,” “Lovest thou Me? Follow thou Me. Abide with Me” — these are the master-words for a noble life, a quiet death, a gloruios Eternity.