"Wait! What?" ~ John 21:20-25

²⁰ Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) ²¹ When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?”²² Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” ²³ Because of this, the rumor spread among the believers that this disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say that he would not die; he only said, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?”²⁴ This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.²⁵ Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written. ~ John 21:20-25

In a memorable graduation speech, the scholar James Ryan articulated five basic questions that he believed helped to foster a fulfilling life. The first of these questions, he said, was the one most prominent among teenagers: “Wait? What?” He admitted that his kids typically posed this question when he was asking them to do a chore. They hear “blah blah blah . . . clean your room” and then quickly respond, “Wait! What?” But “Wait! What?,” he said, is not a bad a question. It’s an important way of asking for clarification and a question that one should ask before drawing conclusions or making a decision. It’s the question that my wife offered when I told her the passage I was going to preach on today. And it’s the question that Peter should have asked. It’s the question that John assumed. And the question that the church should demand. 

1.    The ill-fated question – “Lord, what about him?”

Peter had just received some bad news. At the end of Jesus’ restoration speech which allowed Peter to profess his love for Jesus after having betrayed him, Jesus told him how his life would end.
¹⁸ Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” ¹⁹ Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!” ~ John 21:18-19

Maybe you haven’t heard Jesus talk to you in this way. But you have heard others. It’s the voice that says, “The tests have come back. You have cancer.” “We’re downsizing and going to have to let you go?” “We’ve done everything we know how to do. We can’t revive him.” “It’s too late. I just don’t love you anymore.” Anyone who has lived long enough to hear any of these words – understands the death that one feels at the mere mention of death. And in the midst of that pain, Jesus continues to command, “Follow me.” And Peter’s response is understandable – He doesn’t ask for clarity, “Wait! What?,” but, vs. 20 tells us, he “turned” away from Jesus – the very Jesus who died and rose again and just said follow me” and looks at someone else, another believer, another lover of Jesus, and asks, “what about him?”  
 

QUICK POINT about Discipleship Physics – You can’t follow what you don’t look at OR (more positively) You always follow what you look at. The swift rebuke of Jesus clues us into the fact that this was more than simply a clarification on Peter’s part, an ask for more information, or a desire to determine John’s well-being, and more akin to “Why me? Why do I have to do this? Why can’t he bear this burden? Why should I be subjected to this?” And Jesus responds, “What is that to you? That’s my business. You don’t get to outsource your own following. You don’t get to know everything about anyone. Follow me.”
Jesus wants discipleship and I turn and want comparisons. 
 Jesus wants followers and I turn and want contestants – a sort of – “In the arena of spiritual life, biblically, I think I could take him.” 
Jesus says “sin” and I turn, point and say, “What about her?” 
Jesus says “love” and I turn, and say, “Surely not him.” 
Jesus, Peter learned, doesn’t promise that the good don’t suffer but that a follower of the good always will – that lovers always do. 
 Toward the end of his life, Peter will write, “For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.” ~ 1 Peter 2:19-21. “Wait! What?”

2.    Wait! What? How do we get Jesus right.

But our passages does more than introduce us to the dilemma of suffering and discipleship. It also introduces us to the problem of hearing Jesus correctly, in the first place. 

John goes on to tell us in vss. 23-24 that a “rumor” spread among believers that Jesus said that John would not die. The point here is that this is more than some juicy piece of gossip but a misunderstanding of Jesus’ own words, which John wishes to correct. This is about truth and the church getting its teaching right. And this problem will be the church’s problem until Jesus comes again. So the church must continually be a community that hearkens back to the Gospels and asks, “Wait! What?” “Wait! What did Jesus say?” “Wait! What should we do?” “Wait! Where is it written?” And this question is not some solo quest of independent Christians but always a collective question. What’s fascinating, in other words, is that John does not rely upon his relationship to Jesus alone, even as an eye-witness, to assert his own authority and interpretation but in vs. 24 acknowledges that “we know” this is true. “We know,” becomes part of truth-recognition because the community knows John and has thought critically with him about Jesus. 



The Gospel of John, along with Matthew, Mark and Luke, were the church’s effort to corporately get Jesus right. There are many Gospels that didn’t make it – around 45 or so other than the standard 4 of our Bibles. They were the work of authors who sought to provide a compelling vision for who Jesus was but they were quite different and some contained vastly different images of Jesus that couldn’t be reconciled, couldn’t all be true. Nevertheless, all of these gospels were judged by  churches who sifted through them to discover which Gospels presented the most coherent and authentic understanding of the Jesus story – that eye-witnesses has told. The process, in other words, was public not private and also contentious. The point is that the truths we know about Jesus – the coherent biographical sketch that our Gospels provide didn’t happen over night and wasn’t simply the product of the “winners” but subjected to rigorous public discussion within the community from eye-witnesses and other faithful followers. So we can trust our Gospels because our forebearers asked “Wait! What?” in their own churches.

But we also need to keep asking “Wait! What?” in order to be sure that we in the modern church have heard Jesus correctly. And here is where the “Wait!” becomes important. “Wait” offers us the reminder of our potential, even with a trustworthy Bible, to misread Jesus – to get Jesus wrong. The “wait” reminds us that the answers that we come up with can’t be determined by our emotional intensity, the number of our degrees, the title we assume like the “beloved disciple” or the anger that we might appropriately feel at another’s interpretation. To be a community of truth means that we must take the time to practice patience and ask good questions of the text even when we believe that we are already right. 

The best example of the need for the “wait” happened in my first job as a youth pastor back in 1990 at First Baptist Church, Humble, TX. One week the senior pastor received a scathing letter from a listener to the previous sermon which had been broadcasted on the radio. The person admitted that he had been a faithful listener for years but would not be listening anymore because of what had been said in Sunday’s sermon. The previous Sunday the pastor had apologized for suffering from laryngitis and told the congregation that he “would have to leave the sound of his voice to the Man Upstairs.” The writer went on to say that such a flippant way of speaking about God was embarrassing and only showed that the pastor was not a good Christian because he spoke about God with such irreverence. Well, the pastor was heart-broken by the insinuation but particularly because the critic had failed to comprehend one very important point. The “Man Upstairs” was the guy running the sound system for the church and not an address to God at all. 

What would have happened if the writer had asked a question rather than offered a criticism? What might have occurred if he had simply asked, “Wait? What?” So the “Wait!” is a gentle reminder that maybe we might be wrong, might have missed something, might have misread or misheard. And so I invite you to wait and hear again.