ATTENTION Part 4: The Invitation
PART 4: THE INVITATION
Put the parts of this thread together and a fuller picture is revealed. Attention costs us something to give, and whatever we give it to will, eventually, have us. That is either great news or a timely warning, depending on where we’ve focussed our gaze. The invitation Jesus gave his first disciples: walk with me, fall in step with me, watch, learn, absorb the rhythms of my life, is an invitation to attention. The kind of attention that is practised, sustained, humble, and willing to be changed by what it beholds. And that is the invitation we’re still being offered today. In a world that seems to scatter our gaze in a hundred directions at once, choosing where to fix it, and turning back when it drifts, is possibly the most significant, life shaping, and possibly even revolutionary decision a person can make.
One morning on a beach, Jesus turned up and called to his disciples, drawing their attention from their task of fishing, just off shore. These same men had recently watched Jesus tortured and killed, they had mourned him bitterly, and buried him along with their hopes and dreams. And Peter, one of these fishermen and one of Jesus closest friends, had folded under pressure in the lead up to Jesus death and denied being his friend.
But here was Jesus again, inviting their attention, calling them close, preparing breakfast for them. There’s something so normal and familiar about what Jesus was doing, barbequing fresh fish over a fire on the beach, for his friends. Except for the fact that here he was, not dead but alive, but somehow changed, in his resurrected body. There is so much gold in this encounter, but one thing I want to focus on, the question that Jesus asked Peter, repeatedly: “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” And the twice more, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Each time Peter replied that he did love Jesus, and by the third time he was hurt to be asked yet again, replying: “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”
Each time after Peter replied, Jesus was giving him another chance to turn around, pat attention, and finally, to re-engage with a fresh calling. Jesus spoke prophetically about the cost that Peter would have to pay if he did attend to his calling. Three times Peter affirmed his love and devotion for Jesus and in doing so Jesus led him in repentance, a kind of undoing of the three times he denied Jesus.
During this encounter, Jesus didn’t only ask for Peter’s response, he offered him something as well, maybe the thing we all need most. Jesus held up a mirror, in fact he became a mirror, reflecting back to Peter his true identity and calling. All to say, that this is also the invitation and the gift that Jesus offers us today, and every day. And it seems that it’s simply through what we pay attention to, that we get to make our response, and in our turning towards and focussing on Jesus, we become who we’re made to be: “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
Pause and ponder:
What if Jesus is still on the beach, still asking the same question in different clothes: not “do you understand’ or "will you perform,” but “do you love me?”
So today, how will you respond? What is one thing you'll turn toward, and one thing you'll turn away from, so that what you behold might finally become what you are?