Written for Exodus 90 in 2023, as part of a series of ten reflections on the art of accompaniment.

As we reflected in the last article, our work of healing is to try to be vulnerable. When we try, we will inevitably fail. This failure may be our own fault or it may be the fault of others. In either case we will find ourselves wounded, hurting and face the choice of how to move forward. Our decision at this point is critical and it’s one of the hardest decisions we make in life. This is the decision Peter faced after failing miserably to be the rock Jesus had called him to be. We can imagine the shame Peter felt in his threefold denial. It was shame that made him want to hide himself—perhaps this is why Peter put on his clothes to cover his nakedness before jumping in the water to swim to Jesus (Jn 21:7). But Jesus wanted to meet Peter in his shame and teach him the most important lesson—when we try and fail then we just need to own it and surrender.

In our failures we are tempted to cover ourselves in excuses, in blame, in denial, in giving up or lowering our standards. We do not want anyone to see our failures. We do not want to be vulnerable and get hurt again. The only way to heal from the shame of our failures, however, is precisely to be vulnerable so that we can discover that we are still loved and that we still belong. As the sociologist Brene Brown described it: “If you put shame in a Petri dish it will grow exponentially from silence, secrecy and judgment. It will be eradicated if you douse it with empathy.”

Jesus gently exposed Peter’s shame. He brought it to the surface, loved Peter in his failure, and doused it with empathy. He did that by first drawing his attention to his denial with the charcoal fire—in Greek anthrakia. The only other place in the whole New Testament where there was an anthrakia was in the place where Peter denied Christ (cf. Jn 18:18). We often fall into patterns of sin that are triggered by particular features of our surroundings. Sometimes it is night time or the hotel room or the sports game or the technological device. As soon as we encounter it we are right back in the place of our failure and we face temptation. Jesus wanted to redeem the failure of Peter and so he met him at the charcoal fire.

But he also redeemed the charcoal fire. He cooks little fish—opsarion on it. The only other time that opsarion are mentioned in the New Testament was when Jesus multiplied bread and fish, a symbol for the Eucharist (cf. Jn 6:9). (Note: John’s account of the multiplication uniquely uses the word opsarion for those fish which is often not translated well into English but should be “little fish,” “sardines,” or something like that.) That means that amazingly, Jesus is associating the memory of Peter’s worst sin with the symbol of His own Body and Blood.

He doubles down on this gesture when He recalls Peter’s threefold denial by asking Peter three times, “Do you love me?” And then reaffirms Peter’s role as chief shepherd: “Tend my sheep.” He combats the isolation of shame with empathy and the reassertion of Peter’s belovedness and belonging.