When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus “Lord, what about him?”

It has been a while since I heard anyone say “I need to go and find myself!”

It used to be common, it used to be that everyone was running around finding themselves and it led to all sorts of strange and often self-destructive behavior and eventually it became an excuse for almost everything from poor grades in school, to serial marriages and divorces, to some of the unfortunate hair styles and clothing that we wore in 70’s and 80’s.

It was the ultimate get out of jail free card, “oh, she’s just trying to find herself” was the all-purpose excuse for every personal failure and moral short-coming.

And so it faded from our vocabulary.

And yet, if every heresy is – as I was taught – the revenge of a forgotten truth, I think we could use a little “finding ourselves” these days. In fact I think that we are seeing the dangerous results of not teaching or learning how to find yourself in life, not teaching or learning how to discover just who you are, who you are not, and where you fit in, what your role is in God’s plan.

Which is where Peter comes in.

People wonder why I love Peter so much.

Well the reason is that Peter is so much like us and he shows us our strengths and our weaknesses.

And today he shows us how not to find ourselves.

The gospel lesson puts us in this remarkably glorious scene, weeks after the resurrection, Christ has appeared to the disciples on the beach after a long and unsuccessful night of fishing. He has instructed them to drop their nets one more time and they come up with an overwhelming amount of fish. Then they get to shore and Jesus has a fire going and he cooks them breakfast.

Can you imagine what must be going through their hearts and heads?

You would think they were overwhelmed by the miracles around them, not the least of which is: Jesus, who was dead on the cross, is there with them.

But no, not our Peter, he is trying to find himself and he gets it all wrong.

He has just been singled out by Jesus to be the one who will show his love by caring for the flock of Christ and all he can worry about is what all this is going to mean to him, in comparison to John. So he points to John and says: “Lord, what about him?” Here is sibling rivalry within the family of God. You can hear the echo of the older brother in the parable of the prodigal, the inability or unwillingness to see the big picture, to embrace the joy that is shared.

“Lord, what about him?”

To which Jesus answered, “what about him, mind your own business”.

Hold that thought for a moment and let’s go to the strange story, at least from our perspective, in the book of Acts.

There is a young woman, a slave, who we are told has a spirit of divination, fortune-telling. Her owners made a lot of money on her, so when Paul orders the spirit to leave her, and it does, it causes her owners a significant financial hardship.

Now, I cannot tell you what this spirit of divination is all about, I have never seen or experienced anything like that.

But what I have seen and have experienced is the ways in which the work of God can cause financial harm to people.

It happens all of the time in scripture. Remember Pharaoh coming to his senses after he had allowed Moses to leave with all of the free labor? Remember that other odd story of Jesus casting unclean spirits into a herd of pigs, who then jumped off of a cliff, drowning in the river, angering the herdsmen? And remember that uncomfortable story of improper fundraising, when Jesus turned over the tables in the temple, again disrupting those who were just making a living?

However, that’s really not what the story is about. Luke gives us the whole fortune telling, exorcism thing in a matter-of-fact way because he wants to tell us about the experience they had in jail and about their release.

Because that’s what the Bible is always concerned with.

Not tricks and miracles, but liberation, freedom.

And liberation and freedom come when the gospel is proclaimed, Paul and Silas might be physically imprisoned, but they are free in all the things that matter and so they sing and pray and tell people in jail about Christ and they are physically set free as well. But while they were in jail they knew the same thing that Martin Luther King knew when he was imprisoned here in our nation, they knew the same thing that Nelson Mandela knew when he was imprisoned in South Africa, they knew the same thing that Dietrich Bonhoffer knew when he was imprisoned in Nazi Germany, they knew – in their Roman jail – that they were freer than those who imprisoned them.

And so are you.

And so am I.

And so are we.

We are freer than all of those who measure life by what they can earn and what they deserve, we are freer than all of the fears and failures that haunt our culture.

We don’t live by what we have earned or deserved, we live by grace, that which has been freely given to us. We don’t measure life by the fears and failures, we measure it by the love and forgiveness we have given and received.

We are free.

Which gets us back to Peter that day.

When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus “Lord, what about him?”

What was it that Peter needed to be freed from?

It was, I think, the very same thing that our nation suffers from, our Church suffers from and most – if not all of us – suffer from: a sinful, crippling self-absorption and self-centeredness.

Peter needed to shake the notion that he was the center of the universe, and that’s harder to do in our world than it was in his. All of the trends in our culture point us in the opposite direction:

An essay in Time magazine a couple of weeks ago framed the Virginia Tech massacre in terms of the narcissism of the killer, encouraged by a society addicted to being a celebrity.

Being a Christian is a rejection of narcissism, it means being concerned first about others, it means entering into and continuing in relationship with a desire to please the other.

Being a Christian means subjecting yourself to Christ’s lordship, that means being directed by God’s law, being willing to listen to the wisdom of others and being willing to share your own perspective without insisting that everything goes your way.

The foundational issues of Christianity are all issues of service to others: we pray for others, we give to others, we care for others, we cry for others, we laugh with others, we love others and if we don’t, all of the rest of what we do won’t mean a thing.

What Peter didn’t realize that day and what most of us don’t realize most days, is that the only way to find oneself is to find the other and to become the we, the plural, the people rather than the person, the community rather than the individual.

“Lord, what about him?”

I worry about the children, coming of age in this culture. I worry what we are teaching them, with the best of intentions, and what we are not allowing them to learn.

I’m going to sound like a crotchety old dinosaur, but let me give you just one example of how “best intentions” can have unexpected and unseen results: cell phones. Cell phones are great inventions, right out of Star Trek and “Scotty, beam me up”, I love mine, it even plays Jimmy Buffet music when it rings, but when did we surrender to the notion that when they ring we have to answer them? We have taught the world, and worse yet, we have taught our children, that we will always be accessible to them but we have deprived them of countless opportunities to face life and solve problems on their own.

It is one thing to be available in an emergency, but it is quite another – and not a healthy thing – to be available for every triviality, to solve the problems that they can and should be solving with out you.

It is one thing for you to assure your child or grandchild that he or she is a supremely important person in your life, it is quite another when your child or grandchild believes they deserve to be the most important person in everyone’s life.

Who is teaching the lessons of humility and service?

Who is teaching lessons of accountability and responsibility?

Who is teaching them to be person that God created them to be by becoming a part of a community, a part of something bigger than themselves?

Christ will, if we let him.

And he will do it through you and through us, if we let him.

I know that it isn’t easy to raise children in this culture, it never has been, there have always been choices over which battles to fight and which to ignore as you attempt to give, to God and the world, a functioning, responsible adult, rather than a self-centered, weak permanent child who is incapable of dealing with life.

That’s why I have always believed that it is so important for children to play team sports, somewhere along the way in life. John Wooden, the great college basketball coach, said “sports do not develop character as much as they reveal it.” As you watch your children play organized sports you can begin to see the areas that you need to work on with them, as their character is revealed. And it has nothing to do with scores and batting averages, it has everything to do with dealing with success and failure, it has everything to do with persevering in the face of adversity.

And I realize that the same may be true of scouts or being in an orchestra or anything that requires them to sacrifice their individuality for the sake of the greater group.

You can see, and help them see, their character as it is and as it can become.

That’s how they will find themselves, that’s how you will find yourself, your changing role in their lives.

Christianity is the ultimate team sport. The difference is that, in the short run, none of us can win until all of us win.

We are all connected, all joined at the soul and in helping each other, we help ourselves and this is a connectedness that will never come undone, on earth or in heaven.

None of us can win until we all win.

I can’t find myself until I find you, until we find us.

When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus “Lord, what about him?”