But there are also many other things . . . (John 21:20:25)
But there are also many other thinks . . .
June 28, 2026
John 21:20-25
By Pastor Mike Conner
‘Men work together,’ I told him from the heart,
‘Whether they work together or apart.’
The poet Robert Frost places these words on the lips of farmer who discovers the mystery of communion with another as he goes about his solitary work of turning cut grass to dry, and the spirit of these words pervades the final verses of John’s gospel. After living the days of Easter together—running to the tomb on Easter morning, going fishing, and encountering the risen Christ on the shore of the sea—Peter and the beloved disciple have come to a parting of the ways. Their future discipleship is destined to take on greater maturity, but for that to happen, they will have to work together in a different way, a way that requires them to be apart.
Peter struggles with this fork in the road. Yes, he has just been restored as a disciple (‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’), and yes, he has just been given a new vocation as a shepherd of God’s flock (‘Feed me sheep.’), but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to also know the shape of his friend’s future. He turns from the one who has said, Follow me, turns to face the beloved disciple in the morning light shining on the Sea of Tiberias, turns one more time to ask, Lord, what about him? (John 21:21).
Where some readers of scripture sense an underlying tension or competition between Peter and the beloved disciple, I feel that there is a great bond of affection. As the beloved disciple follows along behind Peter and Jesus for a moment, and as Peter turns to regard him, I feel that they are trying to glimpse how a partnership like theirs might outlast the initial pang of loneliness that accompanies separation. I’m trying to glimpse that too, as I turn to face you one last time and ask the one who has called me to follow him, Lord, what about them?
Christians worship one God in three persons, an perfectly united fellowship of love that we call Trinity; we profess that salvation has come to this earth through a Messiah in whose one being the two natures of humanity and divinity are united “without confusion, without change, without division, [and] without separation.” Scripture says that we are all branches connected to the same vine, which is Christ; that we are all different parts of one body, which is Christ; that there is a great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us always, the saints and ancestors of the past accompanying us on our journeys. The wisdom that reminds of our mystical union runs through our scriptural and theological traditions.
And yet, Peter—and your pastor—is being tempted by the fiction of separation. Peter—and your pastor—isn’t quite ready to release the beloved into the mystery of a unique future and destiny. To do that means losing the beloved, doesn’t it? Peter—and your pastor—wants to hang on, wants to know. What about them?
Jesus’ response, while gentle and kind, is also firm and direct: If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me! (John 21:22).
Peter’s task, in that moment, was to follow Jesus into next chapter, which was a life of active ministry and spiritual authority that carried him from Jerusalem to Rome and eventually to his martyrdom. The beloved disciple’s task, in that moment, was to remain. This word doesn’t just mean ‘stay put.’ It comes from the Greek word meno: to stay, remain, abide—as in John chapter 15, where Jesus says to the disciples, “Abide in my love” (v. 9).
These are two of the most important words concerning discipleship in all of the New Testament: follow me, abide in me. We follow when we let Jesus guide us out of what’s familiar into the new, when we are led by him into new ways of understanding ourselves and the world, new relationships, new commitments. We abide or remain in Jesus when we rest in him through prayer and silence and faithful service, when we quiet our soul and sink down into his love right where we already are. Both are necessary in each of our spiritual journeys, yet there’s something special about having both words here in a single verse, distinguishing two unique callings, one for Peter and one for the beloved disciple.
In light of this, I want to do three things in this moment. I want to ask for your prayers as I live my call and follow Jesus to a new community and congregation. Then I want to encourage you in your own call to remain in Jesus’ love here in Pocatello. And finally, I want to share with you what the good news of it all is.
As I follow him, please pray for me:
Pray that I will follow Jesus without fear. Pray that I will proclaim Christ’s forgiveness of sin and shame and that I will nurture community in the Holy Spirit through my words and my actions. I don’t want to be afraid of stepping into the fullness of my gifts and of taking on this next chapter with all its unknown challenges. And when the time comes to get myself into some good trouble, advocating for the oppressed or challenging the assumptions at the heart of the congregation or society, may I do that work knowing that Christ has already overcome the world.
Pray, too, that I will serve with a pure heart, that will I offer myself where I’m needed and where I’m led. Pray that the contemplative vision of love will be renewed in me through grace, that I might withhold judgment, honor pain, elevate others, and spend time in secret with those on the margins of the community.
And would you pray that I have lots of fun? That I make friends, that I receive each day with wonder, that I find the birds and the waterways and the music that will sustain me when the days are long and the work is hard! Pray that Sus, Loren, Adrienne, and I are protected and provided for, and that our sense of family would continue to expand to hold one another and to hold others.
Will you pray these things for me, that I will have freedom from fear, that I will have purity of heart, and that I will experience the joy of the Lord? Thank you.
And now, friends, some reflections on your calling to abide. You are God’s beloved: remain in what you know to be true, abide in what you most cherish from our five years of partnership, stick with the things that have moved your heart, captured your imagination, stirred your desire, and drawn you into participation. I want to hold up three moments from my preaching that reflect my sense of who you’ve become and what you’ve accomplished in the Spirit.
Beloved, remember Mary of Bethany, who anointed Jesus with a pound of costly perfume. Remember how the sweet fragrance of her extravagant gift filled the whole house. Remember that the whole atmosphere of the house, the church, of the world does in fact change when pure and costly gifts are given in freedom and in love. May you abide in God’s love by continuing to love God and one another extravagantly, even sometimes impracticably, here in Pocatello. Pour yourselves out for one another. Give your very best, and then watch what happens.
Remember also those Israelite scouts who went to spy out the promised land after their liberation from Egyptian slavery, and who returned to Moses and the people afraid because they had seen the many inhabitants of the land and had felt like grasshoppers standing before giants. Remember how God said, “I take no objection to your saying: we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves but I take offense when you say so we must have looked to them. How do you know how I made you look to them? Perhaps you appeared to them as angels.” Our smallness, our weakness, our vulnerability is never an obstacle to God. Remember how the fullness of God came and dwelt in the body and soul of Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified one, who redeemed the world on the cross, and whose very smallness became a channel for the cosmic purposes of God.
Church, over and over again you have punched above your weight. Over and over again you have defied the odds and remained vibrant and loving with a heart for justice. Never look down on yourselves because the budget is slim or because you’re in East Idaho rather than Portland or for any other reason. Abide in God’s love by continuing to use your weakness as an occasion for the boldest of prayers, the biggest of dreams, and the bravest of actions.
Finally, remember that you have been called to love your enemies. That’s hard work in today’s world, today’s America, today’s Idaho. But it’s work you have said Yes to: remain in the ministry of reconciliation. You are called to break the enemy-making cycle through the patience, humility, and gentleness that the Holy Spirit will give you when you ask for her help. Never forget that you already live in a redeemed cosmos, that heaven and earth have been reconciled to God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So pray like it, speak like it, live like it. Abide in his love!
I must follow. You must abide.
And, do you hear the good news in all of this?
God isn’t done with either of us!
Listen to the scripture: “But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (21:25).
But there are also many other things.
But there are also many other things!
Say that with me, friends: But there are also many other things!
From the perspective of John and Peter, you and I are some of those “many other things” all these centuries later. How about that. And from our perspective, from our own fork in the road, we can still say that there are many other things to come. We are united in a story that outpaces us, overflows us, outlasts us.
John’s Gospel couldn’t contain the fullness of Jesus’ work.
The Bible doesn’t contain the fullness of God’s work.
The past five years in this congregation can’t hold it all.
Idaho can’t hold it all. Washington can’t hold it all
John supposes that even a world full of books couldn’t contain the fullness of the story.
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the God who raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, and is the God who continues to move among us. So, I may be sad, but I’m not discouraged, because “there are also many other things.” I may need Jesus to turn me back around and say Follow me one more time, but I’ll let him do it because “there are also many other things.”
And in the goodness of God, you will have moments, perhaps many days from now, when you will find some flowers that I have left growing beside the brook for the sheer joy of it, and you’ll find some fruit growing on a vine from a seed that was planted in secret, which only the Father saw. And you’ll know that we continue to work together, you and I, whether we’re together or apart.
And I have no doubt that I will go on to rediscover again and again the many truths and kindnesses with which you’ve seeded my soul, and I will know that we continue to work together, whether we’re together or apart.
“There are also many other things,” and I’ve got follow God into them, and you’ve got to remain with the God who wants to give them to you here.
Could we with ink the ocean fill
and were the skies of parchment made,
were ev’ry stalk on earth a quill
and ev’ry [one] a scribe by trade,
to write the love of God above
would drain the ocean dry;
nor could the scroll contain the whole,
tho’ stretched from sky to sky.
Amen, my friends. Amen.