There is almost no group in history for whom I have more
sympathy than I have for the eleven remaining Apostles
immediately following the death of the
Savior of the world.
I think we sometimes forget just how inexperienced they
still were and how totally dependent upon Jesus they had
of necessity been.
Of them He said, "Have I been so long time with you, and yet
hast thou not known me ...?"
But, of course, to them He hadn't been with them nearly
long enough.
Three years isn't long to call an entire Quorum of Twelve
Apostles from a handful of new converts, purge from them the
error of old ways, teach them the wonders of the gospel of
Jesus Christ, and then leave them to carry on the work
until they too were killed.
Quite a staggering prospect for a group of
newly ordained elders.
Especially the part about being left alone.
Repeatedly Jesus had tried to tell them He was not going to
remain physically present with them, but they either could
not or would not comprehend such a wrenching thought.
Mark writes: "He taught his disciples, and said unto them,
The Son of Man is delivered into the hands of men, and
they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall
rise the third day.
But they understood not [the]
saying, and were afraid to ask him."
Then, after such a short time to learn and even less time to
prepare, the unthinkable happened, the
unbelievable was true.
Their Lord and Master, their Counselor
and King, was crucified.
His mortal ministry was over,
and the struggling little Church He had established
seemed doomed to scorn and destined for extinction.
His Apostles did witness Him in His resurrected state, but
that only added to their bewilderment.
As they surely must have wondered, "What do we do now?"
they turned for an answer to Peter, the senior Apostle.
Here I ask your indulgence as I take some nonscriptural
liberty in my portrayal of this exchange.
In effect, Peter said to his associates: "Brethren, it's
been a glorious three years.
None of us could have imagined such a few short months ago
the miracles we've seen and the divinity we have enjoyed.
We've talked with, we've prayed with, we've labored
with the very Son of God Himself.
We have walked with Him and wept with Him, and on that
night of the horrible ending, no one wept more bitterly than
I. But that's over.
He's finished His work, and He's risen from the tomb.
He's worked out His salvation and ours.
So you ask, 'What do we do now?' I don't know more to
tell you than to return to your former life, rejoicing.
I intend to 'go a fishing.'" And at least six of the ten
other remaining Apostles said in agreement, "We also go with
thee." John, who was one of them, writes, "They went
forth, and entered into a ship immediately."
But, alas, the fishing wasn't very good.
Their first night back on the lake, they caught nothing--not
a single fish.
With the first rays of dawn, they disappointedly turned
toward the shore and saw in the distance a figure who
called out to them,
"Children, have you caught anything?" Glumly these
Apostles-turned-again-fishermen gave the answer no fisherman
wants to give.
"We have caught nothing," they muttered, and to add insult to
injury, they were being called "children." "Cast the net on
the right side of the ship, and [you]
shall find," the stranger calls out--and with those
simple words, recognition begins to flood over them.
Just three years earlier these very men had been fishing on
this very sea.
On that occasion too they had "toiled all the night, and
[had]
taken nothing," the scripture says.
But a fellow Galilean on the shore that day had called out
to them to let down their nets, and they drew "a great
multitude of fishes," enough that their nets broke, the
catch filling two boats so heavily they
had begun to sink.
Now it was happening again.
These "children," as they were rightly called, eagerly
lowered their net, "and they were not able to draw it for
the multitude of fishes." John said the obvious: "It is the
Lord."
And over the edge of the boat, the
irrepressible Peter leaped.
After a joyful reunion with the resurrected Jesus, Peter
had an exchange with the Savior that I consider the
crucial turning point of the apostolic ministry generally
and certainly for Peter personally, moving this great
rock of a man to a majestic life of devoted service and
leadership.
Looking at their battered little boats, their frayed
nets, and a stunning pile of 153 fish (they counted them),
Jesus said to His senior Apostle, "Peter, do you love
me more than you love all this?"
Peter said, "Yea, Lord: thou knowest that I love thee." The
Savior responds to that reply but continues to look into the
eyes of His disciple and says again, "Peter, do you love
me?" Undoubtedly confused a bit by the repetition of the
question, the great fisherman answers a second time, "Yea,
Lord; thou knowest that I love thee."
The Savior again gives a brief response, but with relentless
scrutiny He asks for the third time, "Peter, do you love me?"
And by now Peter surely must be feeling uncomfortable.
Perhaps there is in his heart the memory of only a few days
earlier when he had been asked another question three times
and he had answered equally
emphatically--but in the negative.
Or perhaps he began to wonder if he misunderstood the Master
Teacher's question.
Or perhaps he was searching his heart, seeking honest
confirmation of the answer he had given so readily, almost
automatically.
Whatever his feelings, Peter said for the third
time, "Lord, ...
thou knowest that I love thee." To which Jesus
responded (and here again I acknowledge my non-scriptural
elaboration), Jesus responded, perhaps saying something like:
"Then Peter, why are you here?
Why are we back on this same shore, by these same nets,
having this same conversation?
Wasn't it obvious then and isn't it obvious now that if I
want fish, I can get fish?
What I need, Peter, are
disciples--and I need them forever.
I need someone to feed my sheep and save my lambs.
I need someone to preach my gospel and defend my faith.
I need someone who loves me, truly, truly loves me, and
loves what our Father in Heaven has
commissioned me to do.
Ours is not a feeble message.
It is not a fleeting task.
It is not hapless; it is not hopeless; it is not to be
consigned to the ash heap of history.
It is the work of Almighty God, and it is
to change the world.
So, Peter, for the second and presumably the last time, I am
asking you to leave all this and to go
and teach and testify.
You labor and serve loyally until the day in which they
will do to you exactly what they did to me."
And then, turning to all the Apostles, He might well have
said something like: "Were you as foolhardy as the scribes
and the Pharisees, as Herod and Pilate were?
Did you, like they, think that this work could be killed
simply by killing me?
Did you, like they, think the cross and the nails and the
tomb were the end of it all and each could blissfully go
back to being whatever you were before?
Children, did not my life and my love touch your hearts more
deeply than this?"
My beloved brothers and sisters, I'm not certain just
what our experience will be on Judgment Day, but I will be
very surprised if at some point in that conversation,
God does not ask us exactly what Christ asked Peter: "Did
you love me?"
I think He will want to know if in our very mortal, very
inadequate, and sometimes childish grasp of things, did
we at least understand one commandment, the first and
greatest commandment of them all--"Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy strength, and with all thy mind." And if at
such a moment we can stammer out, "Yea, Lord, thou knowest
that I love thee," then He may remind us that the crowning
characteristic of love is always loyalty.
"If [you]
love me, keep my commandments," Jesus said.
So we have neighbors to bless, children to protect, the poor
to lift up, and the truth to defend.
We have wrongs to make right, truths to
share, and good to do.
In short, we have a life of devoted discipleship to give
in demonstrating our love of the Lord.
We can't quit and we can't go back.
After an encounter with the living Son of the living God,
nothing is ever again to be as it was before.
The Crucifixion, Atonement, and Resurrection of Jesus
Christ mark the beginning of a Christian life,
not the end of it.
It was this truth, this reality, that allowed a
handful of Galilean fishermen-turned-again-Apostles
who, without "a single synagogue or sword," went on
to shape the history of the world in which we now live.
I testify from the bottom of my heart, with the intensity
of my soul, to all that can hear my voice that those
apostolic keys have been restored to the earth, and
they are found in The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints.
To those who have not yet joined in this great final
cause of Christ with us, we say, "Please come." To those
who were once with us but have retreated, preferring to pick
and choose a few cultural hors d'oeuvres from the smorgasbord
of the Restoration and leave the rest of the feast, I say
that I fear you face a lot of long nights and empty nets.
The call is to come, to stay true, to love
God, and lend a hand.
I include in that call to fixed faithfulness every
returned missionary who ever stood in a baptismal font and
with arm to the square said, "Having been commissioned of
Jesus Christ." That commission was to have changed your
convert forever, but it was surely supposed to have
changed you forever as well.
To the youth of the Church rising up to missions and
temples and marriage, we say: "Love God and remain clean
from the blood and sins of this generation.
You have a monumental work to do, underscored by that
marvelous announcement by President
Monson yesterday morning.
Your Father in Heaven expects your loyalty and your love at
every stage of your life."
To all within the sound of my voice in this conference
broadcast, the voice of Christ comes ringing down through the
halls of time, asking each one of us while there is time, "Do
you love me?" And for every one of us, I answer with my
honor and my soul, "Yea, Lord, we do love thee." And having
set our "hand to the plough," we will never look back until
this work is finished and love of God and
neighbor rules the world.
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.