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Joel Snider's Sermons from FBC RomeSeptember 30, 2007 The Smell of ForgivenessJohn 21:1-14As Miss Prissy alluded in the Children’s Sermon, I know few experiences that are more memory laden than a good smell. There are certain smells that remind us of people, places, events, and circumstances in our lives. We find ourselves months, or even years and decades, past the person or the place, and we get a whiff of something and it just brings it back like it was now, just like it was now. Perhaps maybe your grandmother made a particular meatloaf recipe. While there might be thousands of other meatloaf recipes and even other family members who have tried to duplicate the meatloaf from the same recipe, none of them smelled quite like it did at her house when you walked in the door. You walked in the door and smelled that meatloaf which was one of her signature dishes, and it smelled like family. It just smelled like family. I saw a movie a couple of years ago where there was a woman recently widowed. She was going through the closet, and she pulled out one of her deceased husband’s sweaters. She put it on, sat in a chair, and pulled the material up to her face so that she could smell her husband. She told somebody she felt close to him because she could smell him on the sweater. Next week, I go to West Virginia to help perform a wedding for a cousin. The family farm has now come to her although she doesn’t live on it. The wedding will be 90 miles away from the farm, but I will find a time to drive down to that little valley because there is a grass that grows there, that at that altitude no place else really smells like that. I will go for the sole purpose, not to see the farmhouse or the barn or the rolling of the land, but to smell that valley because that smell smells like home to me. There are so many different smells. They stand for events, places, and people. There is a particular perfume when I smell it, I think of an English teacher in high school. But if I smell Chanel No. 5, I think of my mother. Fall smells like burning leaves. Summer smells like honeysuckle in bloom. Regular Bermuda grass when cut and damp with dew at night smells like high school football. But tiff Bermuda cut in the morning smells like golf, and to Simon Peter, charcoal smelled like forgiveness. There are only two places in the New Testament where we have anything about a charcoal fire, and both of them involve Jesus and Peter. John calls it the Sea of Tiberias. It is the same thing as the Sea of Galilee. It is a big lake. Tiberias, then and now, is the largest city around that lake and thus gave it its name to the Romans. The disciples have gone back to fishing. It’s after the resurrection; they have seen Jesus; they have heard Jesus; but for some reason, it hasn’t really sunk in yet. So Peter leads a group of them and they go back to fish. They have fished all night, and as dawn breaks, a voice calls from the shore. “Children,” it says friends in the NIV, more like children, youngsters, “have you caught any fish?” “Well, cast down your net on the right side. I see ripples over there. Cast down your net.” They do, and, of course, they come up with this enormous catch of fish and now they get it. John says to Peter, “It’s the Lord.” They have been working with not much clothing on because they don’t want to be tangled in the nets at night. Peter puts his clothes on to be respectable, dives into the water, leaves the rest of them to bring the fish, goes to shore, and when he comes out of the water, there it is. Maybe he even smells it first. Charcoal fire. The coals are burning. The last time he smelled that, maybe just days, maybe a couple of weeks before, the last time he had smelled that, he was in the courtyard of the Sanhedrin and he was fulfilling the prophecy that Jesus told them when he said, “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” Peter gets out of the water, and he smells the smell of the charcoal, and he sees Jesus and surely it must smell like failure to him. You know how smoke gets in your hair and clothing? I wonder how many days Peter smelled that smell after Jesus had been crucified, and every time he could smell it on his clothing, I am sure it smelled like failure. But he comes out, and Jesus has set a table before them. As the other disciples get there, he feeds them. That is where we quit reading for today. It is a long story, but if we were to keep reading, after this—most of us, I think, would be familiar with this story—he begins to ask Peter three sets of questions. It is a set in that he asks, Peter responds, and Jesus says something else. Essentially, it is: “Peter, do you love me?” “Yes, Lord, I love you.” “You feed my sheep.” The language varies in the three questions. “Peter, do you really love me? “Then, tend my lambs.” “Peter, do you love me?” And this troubles him. The third time. “Yes, Lord. You know all things. You know I love you.” He says, “Well, then, feed my sheep.” Did Jesus really need to ask the question because he didn’t know whether or not Peter loved him or did he ask it because Peter needed to hear himself say it? Which one was it? One time for every denial, one statement of “You know I love you,” one time of hearing, “Well, then, I’ve got something for you to do.” One time for every denial, canceling our denial as they go. There are a couple of different ways that Jesus teaches in the New Testament. Sometimes he teaches by just saying it. “You have heard it said . . .but I say to you . . .” We talked about that last Sunday. He just says it. There are other times when people will present a situation and he says, “Let me tell you a story.” The lawyer says, “Who is my neighbor?” and Jesus says, “Well, there was a man going from Jerusalem down to Jericho. . . .” But a third way is what Jesus does. Surely, the things that Jesus does teach us something about what he wants us to know. This is one of those cases. He could have said to Peter, “Now, Peter, let me just tell you, you are forgiven.” But like most of us, we find it very difficult sometimes to believe that we are forgiven. He feels like he has to do something else to get the message across. He doesn’t say, “Let me tell you a story,” but he feeds him and then he asks him these questions so that Peter can say himself out loud, “You know I love you,” and Jesus can say, “I’ve got work for you to do. It’s time for you now to leave all this fishing. It’s time for you to leave this and go and help take care of the people who believe. Do you love me? Well then, come on. I’ve forgiven you. You’re useful to me. I need you.” Something that no one ever told me before is that where this takes place is about 500 yards from where they believe Jesus multiplied the fish and the loaves. You could stand in this place and you could go over just a little bit further off the coast, and you can see the place where Jesus fed the multitude, taking the boy’s fish and the boy’s loaves. What is he feeding the disciples there on the shoreline? Surely, as they come and Peter puts together the smell of the charcoal fire, and they taste the fish and the bread and look over across the way. Surely, they are thinking, “And this is what Jesus has done for us.” It’s Jesus’ way of saying, “Look, I’ve got work for you to do. Come on. I love you, too. You are forgiven. I am going to feed you this, and just as I fed you on that day when I multiplied the fish and the loaves, I am going to feed your spirit. I am going to nourish your soul. I give you everything you need.” When we planned this service, we talked about a number of different ways that we might get the smell of burning charcoal in here. I was afraid that either somebody would think we were on fire, that it would set off the smoke alarm, or that the smell would get in the carpet and we would never get it out. I wish that I could take a smell that all of us could hold in common. I wish I could put it in an air freshener, an aerosol can, or something that, in those moments, when any of us feel as if somehow we have failed God and feel, in some way, we are no longer useful to him that we could take it out, wave it, spray it or something and it would say, “Wait a minute. Smell this? This is that forgiveness smell.” What once smelled like failure to Peter is now being associated to Jesus forgiving him. I don’t have a smell that all of us would hold it common and I can’t find a way to give it to everybody when they need it the most. But I do have food. I have food at this table. It’s not fish and bread, but it’s bread and cup. The bread tastes like mercy and the cup tastes like grace, and I would say to you, “Do you love Jesus? Then, he has work for you to do.” After the choir sings, come to the table. Come and taste and see that the Lord is good. Copyright 2007. P. Joel Snider. All rights reserved.
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