Love and Fish

      I have always loved Valentines Day.  The candy hearts, the roses, and the homemade sugar cookies…but more than that, the idea of having a day to focus on love.  In a world that is so full of turmoil and misfortune, it is nice to remember love. 

While Valentines Day has become a commercialized product of flower companies and Hallmark, a day focused on love is a good reminder of the central importance of love in Christian discipleship. 

      The Great Commandment.  In fact, the Savior declared “love” as the greatest commandment.  First, “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and will all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” (Matt 22:37).  Then, the Savior clarified that the second great commandment is like unto the first, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” (Matt: 22:39).  Not only are these commandments primary, Christ clarified they are central: “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  (Matt 22:40).

      True love is a great motivator: “Love is what inspired our Heavenly Father to create our spirits; it is what led our Savior to the Garden of Gethsemane to make Himself a ransom for our sins.” (Pres. Dieter F. Uchdorf).

      What Is Love?  Love is an action verb, not an adjective.  “True love requires action. We can speak of love all day long—we can write notes or poems that proclaim it, sing songs that praise it, and preach sermons that encourage it—but until we manifest that love in action, our words are nothing.” (Uchdorf).  The Savior reinforced this message when He taught His disciples the manner in which to demonstrate their love, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”  (John 14:15).

      Christ’s Rebuke to Peter.  Perhaps the most powerful scriptural account of how Jesus Christ expects us to show our love for Him is illustrated in the Resurrected Savior’s first encounter with Peter and the other apostles.  After the Savior’s death and resurrection, Peter and the other apostles left their ministry and returned to being fisherman. The below narrative of this account is from the most recent LDS General Conference.  I copy it here because it is so powerful. 

      “Their first night back on the lake, they caught nothing—not a single fish. With the first rays of dawn, they disappointedly turned toward the shore, where they saw in the distance a figure who called out to them, “Children, have you caught anything?” Glumly these Apostles-turned-again-fishermen gave the answer no fisherman wants to give. “We have caught nothing,” they muttered, and to add insult to injury, they were being called “children.”

       “Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find,” the stranger calls out—and with those simple words, recognition begins to flood over them. Just three years earlier these very men had been fishing on this very sea. On that occasion too they had “toiled all the night, and [had] taken nothing,”6 the scripture says. But a fellow Galilean on the shore had called out to them to let down their nets, and they drew “a great multitude of fishes,” enough that their nets broke, the catch filling two boats so heavily they had begun to sink.

      Now it was happening again. These “children,” as they were rightly called, eagerly lowered their net, and “they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes.” John said the obvious: “It is the Lord.” And over the edge of the boat, the irrepressible Peter leaped.

      After a joyful reunion with the resurrected Jesus, Peter had an exchange with the Savior that I consider the crucial turning point of the apostolic ministry generally and certainly for Peter personally, moving this great rock of a man to a majestic life of devoted service and leadership. Looking at their battered little boats, their frayed nets, and a stunning pile of 153 fish, Jesus said to His senior Apostle, “Peter, do you love me more than you love all this?” Peter said, “Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee.”

      The Savior responds to that reply but continues to look into the eyes of His disciple and says again, “Peter, do you love me?” Undoubtedly confused a bit by the repetition of the question, the great fisherman answers a second time, “Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee.”

      The Savior again gives a brief response, but with relentless scrutiny He asks for the third time, “Peter, do you love me?” By now surely Peter is feeling truly uncomfortable. Perhaps there is in his heart the memory of only a few days earlier when he had been asked another question three times and he had answered equally emphatically—but in the negative. Or perhaps he began to wonder if he misunderstood the Master Teacher’s question. Or perhaps he was searching his heart, seeking honest confirmation of the answer he had given so readily, almost automatically. Whatever his feelings, Peter said for the third time, “Lord, … thou knowest that I love thee.”

      To which Jesus responded (and here again I acknowledge my nonscriptural elaboration), perhaps saying something like: “Then Peter, why are you here? Why are we back on this same shore, by these same nets, having this same conversation? Wasn’t it obvious then and isn’t it obvious now that if I want fish, I can get fish? What I need, Peter, are disciples—and I need them forever. I need someone to feed my sheep and save my lambs. I need someone to preach my gospel and defend my faith. I need someone who loves me, truly, truly loves me, and loves what our Father in Heaven has commissioned me to do. Ours is not a feeble message. It is not a fleeting task. It is not hapless; it is not hopeless; it is not to be consigned to the ash heap of history. It is the work of Almighty God, and it is to change the world. So, Peter, for the second and presumably the last time, I am asking you to leave all this and to go teach and testify, labor and serve loyally until the day in which they will do to you exactly what they did to me.”

      Then, turning to all the Apostles, He might well have said something like: “Were you as foolhardy as the scribes and Pharisees? As Herod and Pilate? Did you, like they, think that this work could be killed simply by killing me? Did you, like they, think the cross and the nails and the tomb were the end of it all and each could blissfully go back to being whatever you were before? Children, did not my life and my love touch your hearts more deeply than this?”

      My beloved brothers and sisters, I am not certain just what our experience will be on Judgment Day, but I will be very surprised if at some point in that conversation, God does not ask us exactly what Christ asked Peter: “Did you love me?” I think He will want to know if in our very mortal, very inadequate, and sometimes childish grasp of things, did we at least understand one commandment, the first and greatest commandment of them all—“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind.”13 And if at such a moment we can stammer out, “Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee,” then He may remind us that the crowning characteristic of love is always loyalty.  (Elder Jeffrey Holland).  (Full text available at http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/10/the-first-great-commandment?lang=eng).  (Video portion available at http://www.lds.org/prophets-and-apostles/unto-all-the-world/the-first-great-commandment?lang=eng&query="great+commandment")

      Through following the commandment to love, we ourselves change: “As we extend our hands and hearts toward others in Christlike love, something wonderful happens to us. Our own spirits become healed, more refined, and stronger. We become happier, more peaceful, and more receptive to the whisperings of the Holy Spirit.” (Uchdoft)