Luke 15:1-10

Hebrews 13:1-6

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Psalm 85:1-2, 7-13

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Luke 10:25-37

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Galatians 5:1, 13-14, 19-23

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Deuteronomy 31:11-14

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Acts 2:1-21

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Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Mark 12; John 13 & 14

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Revelation 7:13-17; 21:1-4

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John 21:15-19

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What if you could write the script for the rest of your life? If you could choose what will happen from here on, what would it be? Long life, good health, productive work, happy retirement, loved ones around you? Where would you want to go? What would you want to achieve and enjoy? Imagine – writing the script for your future.

Too bad it doesn’t work that way. None of us gets to live our script. We can dream, make our choices, establish the patterns that can shape certain outcomes; but a great deal of it is not in our hands. We’re in the hands of other people and in the hands of events, accidents, unforeseen developments. Much will happen that we would never choose.

Suppose you made a list of what you fervently hope will never happen to you: particular deaths, family failure, frustrated work, certain forms of pain? What do you do with the knowledge that any of it could happen? Or with the knowledge that God, who causes none of these, may not prevent them, and may lead you in other ways to destinations that you wouldn’t choose?

Strangely enough, in John’s Gospel the last recorded words of the risen Christ have to do with unwanted future experience. The crucified man knew a great deal about how life may lead us where we don’t want to go, and on his last walk beside the lake with his old friend Peter, he spoke of undesired destinations.

Peter and his buddies had gone fishing. They’re where they want to be. And the risen Christ shows up there, in the form of a stranger on the shore calling out:

“How’s the fishing, boys?”

“Lousy all night!”

“So why don’t you try the other side of your boat!”

Well why not – and what do you know! Huge catch! Peter, recalling where this kind of extravagance comes from, dives in and swims hard for the shore and for Jesus – who is, of all thing, fixing breakfast. Christ the Cook, grilling bread and fish on a charcoal fire, looks up and says, “Bring some of yours too!” It is so typical of him, this great kindness of inviting everybody’s partnership.

Which is why after breakfast he takes Peter for a walk along the lake. Just the two of them now, and for Peters it’s not an easy walk. Jesus is asking a question that stings him.  “Do you love me?  Do you? Do you?” Three painful times he asks it because Peter had recently said three times, “I don’t, I don’t, I don’t!” Now the questions of Christ bear down to scrape and scour three stains away – to honor Peter with new chances to say simply and truthfully: I do love you. And each time he says it, Christ bends to salve the raw heart of his friend with a bright new purpose: “Then take care of my sheep.”

This is a story full of shifting perspectives, both for Peter and for us. First a shift from one side of your boat to the other, which brings a shift from empty to full; then Jesus asks questions that shift the subject from your failure to your love; then comes his calling, which shifts your gaze completely from yourself to a community and a world. Every shift he brings is a move toward greater freedom – freedom to get over yourself, and freedom to do a larger thing.

But now comes a word that doesn’t sound like freedom at all. As I imagine it, the two men up until now were walking side by side, carrying between them the great burden of love that bound them. But surely Jesus now stops and turns to look directly at Peter as he says to him: “Truly I tell you, when you were younger, you fastened your own belt and went wherever you wished. But when you grow old you will stretch out your hands, and another will fasten your belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” After this he said, “Follow me.”

We are told that Jesus was referring to Peter’s crucifixion, but there might be more to it than that.

In a way, it’s how life is for everyone who grows old.  When we are young and strong, we go where we will; then as we age, our capacities weaken, and others step in to lead us until death itself comes and carries us where we had thought not to go. But it’s not just the years; it’s the choices we make that narrow our freedom. Early, we assume we can be who we like, marry whom we like, do the work we like, fashion ourselves as we like. But every decision narrows our way. The impulses we follow with glorious freedom in time harden into habits and we’re not nearly so free. Patterns lock in and orbits are fixed. It’s as if we start out in a broad valley and the higher up we go through the years, the narrower the way, till all we have before us is a single path. In the end we are led.

But it’s even more than years and choices. No season of life is exempt from unwanted experience. Against our small freedom, viruses and cancer cells and strangers and loved ones and vast social systems have their stubborn freedoms too. How many unforeseen currents and winds, detours and obstacles – providence and dumb luck – will change our course for us?

We hate this. We chafe beneath constraints. But Jesus knows about constraints and bids us follow him here too. For there are two modes of following him, an active mode and a passive one, each requiring courage. We dislike the word passive. To us it means lifeless or lazy. But notice, the word passive is kin to the words passion and patience. There is a proper passiveness to be learned. It means the maturity to receive what comes. It’s how we respond to what life may do to us and to what God may ask of us.

We are called to the passive way of discipleship whenever something happens that takes us where we don’t want to go: when we are sick, when something or someone we love is taken from us, when we are misunderstood or hated, or when a task is set before us that we’d run from if we could but we can’t and still be faithful. This too is a freedom. We open our arms. We are led.

Both kinds of freedom are embodied in Jesus. He lived by stunning initiative in the active way. Traveling, teaching, touching, confronting, healing – he was the master of his own verbs. But then he entered the passive way of his passion. The verbs all go to others, while he receives, absorbs, accepts, bears what they lay on him and what God trusts him to carry.

Think of all the times Peter had to learn the passive way. One day he stood on a mountain with Jesus having beautiful visions of Moses and Elijah. “This is great!” he said; “Let’s put a steeple over it!” But there are suffering people below and work to be done. “Lord, I don’t want to go. Up here it’s happy and down there it’s Monday.” Jesus led him down to the work.

Another day, another mountain, Jesus said, “I must go to Jerusalem and die.” Peter said, “Lord, we are not going there!” Jesus said, “Behind me, Satan,” and led him down to Jerusalem.

And in a dark upper room Jesus told them they would all go down in failure. “Not me,” said Peter; “I won’t.” “You will,” said Jesus. And at midnight Peter was brought down to a failure he hadn’t wanted.

In the years that followed, the Spirit led him again and again to undesired destinations.

“Peter.” “What?” “Go to that Roman officer’s house and be his brother.” “Lord, I can’t, he’s one of Them!” But Peter the racist was led into new kinships.

“Peter.” “What?” “See your sisters and brothers eating food your Bible says not to eat?” “Lord, don’t tell me!” “That’s right, pull up a chair.” “But my friends won’t like it!” “Exactly.” And Peter the legalist is led to his freedom.

And in the end, as Jesus predicted, the executioner came and said, “Time to be crucified, old man.” Was he afraid? Who wouldn’t be? But he stretched out his hands again and was led to his pain and his glory.

What form will it take for you, this being led where you don’t want to go? Perhaps you already know in part. Maybe some undesired destination has already come calling for you. Sooner or later it will for us all. When it does, you can rage against it if you want to, pour out lament if you need to. But maybe you can also bear it with Christ, knowing that this too is faithfulness: accepting with courage what comes, stretching out hands in faith and in love.

I do know this: for Peter, the word about undesired destinations went hand in hand with the calling to go and make a difference. “Be led where you don’t want to go” is spoken in the same breath as “Feed my sheep.” I think it means: you will follow your calling best when you are managing least. We’ve got the greatest freedom to make a difference when we are least in charge.

Where are you going? Mostly where you want to, I hope. But  there is One who leads to other places too. Having been led himself into the hardest of places, Christ is the risen Promise that these places also lead Home. And his last word remains, “Follow me.”

Stretch out your hands.