We Cannot Save Ourselves: On the Shore with Jesus

Third Sunday of Easter – John 21:1–19

Opening Reflection

There’s a moment in this Sunday’s Gospel that stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t the miraculous catch of fish, though that’s wondrous. It wasn’t even the tenderness of Jesus inviting His tired friends to breakfast. It was that quiet, deliberate exchange with Peter—the threefold question: “Do you love me?”

I never made the connection before. Three questions. Three denials. Not a coincidence. Not punishment. But something deeper. A kind of holy mirroring. A gentle but unwavering look into the truth. And it undid me.

Reflection on Peter’s Denial and Jesus’ Invitation

Peter couldn’t undo what he’d done. He couldn’t rewind the rooster’s crow or unsay the words that fell from his lips in fear and self-preservation. And yet, Jesus didn’t demand an apology. He didn’t lecture Peter or test him. He simply invited him to love again.

That’s the part that humbles me. We can’t rescue ourselves from our own weakness. We can’t save ourselves from shame or regret. But Jesus doesn’t ask us to. He meets us where we are—on the shore, in our hunger, in our emptiness—and prepares a meal. He says, “Come and eat.” And after we are fed, after we are known, then He gives us something to do—not to earn His love, but because of it.

“Feed my sheep.” Not prove yourself. Not make it up to me. Just love Me. And let that love guide you.

The Movement of Grace

We don’t know the exact number of days between the night Peter denied Jesus and the morning he found himself sitting by another fire with Him. But we do know this: the denial happened on Maundy Thursday, the night Jesus was arrested (John 18:15–18, 25–27). And this quiet morning by the sea, where Jesus cooks breakfast and asks Peter, “Do you love me?”—it likely came at least ten days or more later.

That means Peter carried the weight of those three denials for days. Through the darkness of Good Friday. Through the stillness of Holy Saturday. Through the astonishment of Easter Sunday and beyond.

He had time to relive it. To rehash every word. To ask himself what he could have said instead. To sit in the ache of what couldn’t be undone.

And honestly, who among us hasn’t done the same? We all know what it’s like to replay our failures. To long for a different ending to a hard conversation. To wonder if we’ve disqualified ourselves from love, from purpose, from being welcomed back.

And that’s what makes this moment by the fire so powerful. Peter denied Jesus beside a charcoal fire. Now Jesus meets him by another fire—offering food, warmth, and restoration. There’s no grand speech. No shaming. Just three quiet invitations to love again. And then a calling: feed my sheep.

This is the heart of the Gospel: the movement from helplessness to belovedness, and from belovedness to faithful response.

It’s not about earning forgiveness or fixing the past. It’s about being known, being loved, and being sent—just as we are.

Encouragement for the Reader

If you’re feeling the weight of all you haven’t done, or all you cannot fix—this Gospel is for you. It doesn’t promise that we’ll be made perfect, but it does promise that we are still wanted. That Jesus shows up, calls us by name, and invites us to live in love. We don’t need to save ourselves. That work has already been done.

And from that place of being loved, we’re called to go out—not to prove we’re worthy, but to love others as we have been loved.

Closing Prayer

O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

(Collect for the Third Sunday of Easter, BCP p. 224)