Today’s Gospel reading is a reminder for me that my life is not my own. I have always found this to be a very profound passage. When Jesus tells Peter that he will be carried away in old age, to death, it always makes me stop. This is really big. Jesus asked Peter three times to say that he loved him, and then, he tells him this. Peter must be wondering exactly what that means.

To me, this is very impressive. Peter now knows that if he sticks with Jesus, his life will not end well. And yet, Peter does preach the message of salvation through Jesus even though he knows the cost with absolute certainty. This passage reminds me to be listening for what God wants from me in my life, because my life ultimately is not mine, but his. I must learn to love him so deeply that even death cannot scare me away from sharing what I know with the world. Peter, because he had this kind of love for Jesus, did feed the lambs, tend the sheep, and feed the sheep, because Jesus asked him to. It was as simple as that.

Now, we all know that Peter wasn’t perfect—he denied Jesus three times before his death, and after the resurrection he bickered with Paul about how to preach the good news, but that isn’t what is important here. What is important in this passage is that he followed the Great Commission to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19)