Do you love me?

There is a scene early in Les Misérables that shapes everything that follows. Jean Valjean, released from nineteen years of slavery but still not free, is taken in by a priest who feeds him and gives him a bed. In the night, Valjean repays that kindness by stealing the priest's silver and fleeing. He is caught and dragged back, certain he is finished — back to the galleys for good. And then the priest does the unthinkable. "There has been a mistake," he says. "I gave him the silver." And he hands Valjean the heavy silver candlesticks too: "You forgot these." He heaps grace on the man who robbed him, then commissions him: I have bought your soul for God; go and become an honest man. A man who should have been beyond redemption is restored, returned to his humanity, and given a noble task. Most of us have never fallen as far as Valjean. But almost everyone knows a version of that moment — when we deserved rejection and were handed restoration instead, when consequences were due and grace came instead. We also know the other side: the times we have turned our backs on God, the shame we carry, the seasons we have felt beyond forgiveness. The final chapter of John's Gospel speaks directly into that. It shows a restoration given to someone who should have been beyond reach, and in doing so it tells us that the same grace is available to us.

A breakfast on the beach

The disciples are shellshocked. Everything they thought they understood has been upended, so Peter does what people do when they are off balance — he goes back to something familiar. "I'm going fishing," he says, and the others go with him. This is not a relaxing morning with a thermos of tea; it is a man returning to his old job, his old life. And they catch nothing all night. Then, as dawn breaks, a figure on the shore calls out: any luck? Nothing. Try the other side of the boat. They do, and the net fills until they cannot haul it in. One of them recognises it immediately: "It is the Lord!" Peter doesn't wait. He throws on his cloak, jumps into the water, and swims for shore, leaving the others to drag the catch the hundred yards behind him. When they arrive, there is a charcoal fire, with bread and fish already cooking. The scene is layered with echoes — the miraculous catch that first called these men to follow, the bread and fish that fed five thousand, Peter once again leaping from a boat to get to Jesus. But one echo cuts deeper than the rest. The last time John mentions a charcoal fire is the night Peter stood beside one in the high priest's courtyard and denied three times that he even knew Jesus. Now here is Peter, beside another charcoal fire, face to face with the friend he abandoned. How is this going to go?

The question asked three times

After they have eaten, Jesus turns to Peter. "Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?" "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." "Feed my lambs." Again: "Do you love me?" "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." "Take care of my sheep." A third time: "Do you love me?" And Peter is hurt that Jesus asks again. But the repetition is the point. Three denials beside one fire; three questions beside another. Sometimes restoration hurts — yet it is still restoration. Jesus is not rubbing Peter's nose in his failure; he is undoing it, deliberately, one question for each denial. Notice what Jesus does not ask. He does not ask whether Peter is sorry. He does not demand an apology or extract a promise of better behaviour. He asks one thing: do you love me? Above everything else, it is the relationship that matters. And the love Jesus asks for is not meant to sit still. Each time Peter answers, Jesus gives him a job: feed my lambs, care for my sheep. If you love me, care for the people I love. He is calling Peter to be a shepherd — to do for others what Jesus the good shepherd has done for them. And we know how far that shepherding goes, because Jesus has just said it himself: the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He has done exactly that on the cross, and he tells Peter plainly that this same path will one day be his.

Follow me

"Very truly I tell you," Jesus says, "when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will lead you where you do not want to go." John tells us this pointed to the death by which Peter would glorify God. And then, simply: "Follow me." It is the same call Peter first heard by these waters years before — follow me, and I will make you a fisher of men. The story has come full circle. But the cross has changed what the circle means. Jesus' death is not the end of the road; it is the gateway into a new beginning. Where once Jesus said "where I am going, you cannot come," now the word is different: you can come where I go. I have prepared a place for you. You will walk through death, but like me, you will walk into life. This is why the whole Gospel has been issuing the same invitation: come and see. John is explicit about why he wrote any of it down — "that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." He does not claim to have recorded everything; there are not enough books in the world for that. He simply offers his testimony of what he saw, and leaves us to respond.

What about him?

There is one more moment worth noting. Having been restored and recommissioned, Peter turns, sees John, and asks, "Lord, what about him?" It is such a human reflex — to measure our path against someone else's, to wonder why theirs looks easier, more gifted, less burdened. Jesus' answer is gentle but firm: don't worry about him. You follow me. Your response is not about anyone else's. We are not meant to look around and compare, to size ourselves up against others or hold their failures against them. The question is not what God is doing with them. The question Jesus puts to Peter — and to every reader of this Gospel — is personal: do you love me? Will you follow me? Will you love the ones I love? That is the question the whole book has been driving towards. Christianity at its core is not a philosophy, a moral code, or a mindset. It is a response to a person. Jesus looks Peter in the eye on the beach, and through these pages he looks at us, and asks the same thing. You have come. You have seen. What will you make of what you have seen? If your honest answer is "yes, I love you — but I've failed you, I've walked away," then remember exactly who Jesus is talking to on that beach. He is talking to the man who deserted him. If Peter can be restored, so can you.

A question for reflection

We are the sheep Jesus loves, knows, and calls by name — offered restoration, grafted into the vine, given life and hope and purpose. And we are given his Spirit to walk with us every step. The invitation has not changed: come and see. We have come. We have seen. The only thing left is to follow — and to follow together. So here is the question to carry into this week, the same one asked beside the fire: when Jesus looks at you and asks "do you love me?", what do you honestly say?

This post is adapted from a sermon preached by Murray Colville at St Hilda's Anglican Church Katoomba on John 21, as part of our Come and See series through John's Gospel. Visit us at www.katoomba.church.