'Do you love me?'
Inside all of us – I guess and hope, because I'm surely not the only one – is a red-faced, awkward, sweating, small, unlovely person. It's when that person and Christ talk together the real work is done.
Peter and Jesus had that conversation. Ignore their history, their beards, the sound of lapping waves and crunching footsteps, the barbecued fish in their teeth. Ignore their age and size, big blokes, rugby team blokes. Ignore Peter's secret tears, recriminations, justifications, sleepless nights, self-doubt, arguments with himself and despair. It all comes down to the simplest conversation:
'Do you love me?'
'Lord – you know.'
'Tend my lambs.'
