Sunday Sermon

30^th August 2026

Why does love feel like such a risk?

Peter loves Jesus. He loves him so much. He has just confessed that he is the Messiah. It is a confession that his most basic needs for food, shelter, and love, are now inseparable from Jesus’ life. But Jesus has stopped him in his tracks. “I’m going to die”, he says, “and you’re going to have to watch me suffer.”

Peter places his tender hand on Jesus and takes him aside. It is a hidden moment between friends, the kind of intimacy that lovers share. St Aelred writes that a true friend protects “all the secrets of my spirit”. And Peter says, hoping to protect his friend, and all that he needs from him, “This must never happen to you. You cannot do this. I cannot watch you die. It would break me.”

Jesus’ response is often heard as a harsh rebuke. But I think we can hear something more disarmed. “Peter”, he says, “I love you. I cannot bear to let you watch me suffer. Please, don’t tempt me from what I must do, from the reality of my life, from the secrets of my spirit.”

And if Peter is anything like me, he will be thinking: but why must this be so?Peter is receiving back his freedom to love what is real. And this is tied up with his discovery of his deep self – of who he is, and who he could be, the secrets of his own spirit. But because he is frightened of losing his friend, around his heart are illusions of who he thinks he has to be to protect him, and secure what he most needs. “I need you in my life. My life depends on you being here with me. And I will do anything to make it so.” He has been sick with love, and his love has grown sick.

To receive this freedom to love Jesus as he is, and to learn to live from this deep self, Peter must lose his life. The life of the self that believes he has the power to master where his friendship with God will lead him. To quote Andre Louf, Peter is being invited to consent “to be only the work of the Lord, built with the debris of the masterpieces of [his] own dreams.” Not to be shaped by the fantasies of his anxious heart, but simply by what is. Only then could he have been free to watch God die with eyes full of mercy, and his love be healed.Peter could not bring himself to be there at his friend's side when he was dying. He was yet to learn to trust that in the midst of his compulsive, desperate, needy self that Jesus loved so dearly, he was being offered eternal life. To accept eternal life is to mourn and to rejoice. To mourn the outcome of our needs, and the harm we have caused in our search for a love that can secure them; and to rejoice in the forgiveness of our sins, and our renewed freedom to love what is real. When we place ourselves into the hands of another, we risk being wounded by love, and losing what we need. And that is scary, because it makes us vulnerable. Peter wanted to believe that it was possible to love Jesus without risk, and so he sought to control where his love would take him. He could not bear the secrets of his friend’s spirit, the reality of his life - the spirit that would give Jesus to the world, and that would be poured into Peter’s heart so that he might give himself away too. Two friends, being beckoned into greater friendship, a friendship and a spirit that might begin to heal a world so trapped by its own uneasy illusions. Illusions that injure us, and our friends, and that keep us from blessing our enemies just as they are. That is why, later in the Gospels, the resurrected Jesus encourages him with the question: do you love me, Peter? “Peter”, he is saying, “it’s okay to risk loving me. It’s okay to lose your life. I love you. You can let go.”And in the end, he did.