Our class’s text for the week is John 21:15-19, a text we also studied a few years ago. Notes from last time are here.
I don’t have a lot to add, except for being very curious about v18. And its relationship to v19 – that is, to Jesus’ instruction “Follow me.”
The verb that’s translated “fasten a belt around you” seems like it is a little more general than that; it could mean “gird” or “wrap up in preparation for work” … evidently. It also seems to be related to – it has the same root as – the verb in John 13 where Jesus “wraps a towel around himself” in preparation for washing the disciples’ feet, and then earlier in John 21 where Peter “puts on” his clothes in preparation for swimming to shore (which honestly never seems reasonable to me, the experienced swim mom). So … what is it about clothes? And dressing? It seems to have something to do with work, and what work someone is prepared to do.
And that has something to do with following Jesus.
Image: “Feuchtwangen_Pfarrkirche_-_Vorhalle_Fresko_Evangelist_Johannes” (cropped), Wolfgang Sauber, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Matters of Interpretation 