Lent
4
March
22, 2020
William G. Carter
Then Jesus
said to them, “You will all become deserters because of me this night; for it
is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be
scattered.’ But after I am raised up, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.” Peter said to him, “Though all become deserters because of
you, I will never desert you.” Jesus said to him, “Truly I tell you, this very night, before
the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” Peter said to him,
“Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you.” And so said all the
disciples.
... Those who
had arrested Jesus took him to Caiaphas the high priest, in whose house the
scribes and the elders had gathered. But Peter was following him at a distance, as far as the
courtyard of the high priest; and going inside, he sat with the guards in order
to see how this would end.
Now Peter
was sitting outside in the courtyard. A servant-girl came to him and said, “You
also were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before all of them, saying, “I do not know
what you are talking about.” When he went out to the porch, another servant-girl saw him,
and she said to the bystanders, “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.” Again he denied it with
an oath, “I do not know the man.” After a little while the bystanders came up and said to
Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them, for your accent betrays you.” Then he began to curse,
and he swore an oath, “I do not know the man!” At that moment the cock
crowed. Then Peter
remembered what Jesus had said: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three
times.” And he went out and wept bitterly.
One of the hardest moments for our children is
when they discover how quickly a friend can let you down. Oh, the assurances were there. I will be
your friend always. I will defend you when others accuse you. I will stick with
you through thick and thin. And then the crisis comes and the friend is not
there.
· The third-grade birthday party: I invited
her, but when it was her turn, she didn’t invite me.
· The playground game: I picked him for my team,
but he didn’t choose me.
· The dating game: I asked her out on a date. She
said she was busy… and I found it she was out on a date with the guy I thought was
my best friend.
These things can happen when we are young. They
prepare us for later disappointments, for the bigger games when there is more
at stake.
Two good friends said, “Let’s go into business
together.” They shared common values. They had complimentary skills. They
trusted one another. It worked for a while. It worked well. Then one discovered
what the other was doing with the money. That when the differences emerged.
They talked, they tried to hold it together, but the whole thing came
unraveled. Now they don’t even speak to one another.
Friends can let you down. Surely Jesus knew
this. He was raised on the psalms. He knew the 55th Psalm. The poet
of the psalms laments a world coming apart.
“It is not
enemies who taunt me,” says the Poet, “I could bear that;
it is not
adversaries who deal insolently with me - I could hide from them.
But it is
you, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend, with whom I kept pleasant
company…”
We used to get along, he says. We walked together
into the temple of God and sing the hymns. Once we ate together at the same
table and enjoyed sweet conversation. But now there has been a breach, and the
tragedy is that it comes from the one that I thought I could trust. The
betrayal comes
“… with speech smoother than butter, but with a heart set on
war;
with words that were softer than oil, but in fact were drawn
swords.”
We know the story, so our thoughts run to Judas
Iscariot. He knew the place, he led the mob, he came with a kiss of peace…smoother
than butter. Certainly Judas had his issues, whatever they were.
But what of Simon Peter, who stood closest to
Jesus, his Lord? Jesus said, “All of you will run away because of me,’ and
Peter said, “No, not me, I will never desert you, Lord.”
And Jesus said, “Really, Peter? Are you sure
about that?” Peter replied, “I’m sure. I will never run away from you.”
“But Peter,” said Jesus, “I know you are going
to deny me three times before the rooster crows tomorrow morning.” Peter replied,
“No, Lord, I would give my life for you. I would give my life with you. I will never
deny you. Never!” And you and I know how that turned out. We know the story.
The scene is often staged dramatically. In any
of those Jesus movies from Hollywood, Peter is played by some barrel-chested
fisherman full of bluster and bravado. He opens his mouth before he engages his
brain. He’s always the first one to speak and he’s always saying the wrong
thing. “No, Lord, no cross for you! No, Lord, I will never run away from you.
No, Lord, I will never deny you.”
Immediately that’s what he does. Just then, off
in the distance, you hear “cockle-doodle-do,” as the dawn breaks on Peter and
he descends into tears of regret and remorse. If the scene is staged that way,
it looks like a dramatic moment, a colossal failure of nerve. He doesn’t speak
up when he should. He doesn’t tell the truth. He denies the very relationship
that gave him life. Peter comes across as a bumbling incompetent.
But what could he do? What would you have done?
Matthew says he was outside in the courtyard of the high priest, sitting among
the guards, wondering how it will all unfold. He ran away like the others, yes,
but then he turned around and followed his Lord.
And then what could he have done? Raise his
voice and say, “Hey, let that man go. He’s innocent.” Well, they all knew he was
innocent. Everybody knew Jesus was innocent.
Innocence was not the issue.
Could he have leaned closer to one of the
guards, stolen the soldier’s sword, start hollering and swinging, and staging a
distraction - if not an insurrection? Well, that already happened, in
Gethsemane, when one of the disciples did just that. Matthew is too polite to
tell us which one, although the Gospel of John says it was indeed Simon Peter
(John 18). Yet the words of Jesus still burned in his heart, “Put that weapon
away. Those who live by weapons will die by weapons.” So Peter sits and he waits.
One of the servants asks, “Weren’t you with
him?” All the heads turn, and Peter says, “No, not me.” Their eyes follow as he
got up and moved to the porch.
Another servant spots him and points, “This man
was with Jesus.” More heads turn toward him. Peter says, “No, I don’t know the
man.” He’s getting in deeper and he knows it.
A few minutes later, somebody else says, “You
have a north country, Galilean Yankee accent. It betrays you. Certainly you
were one of them.” With this, Peter curses like a fisherman and says, “I don’t
know the man.”
430 years later, the Christians built a church
on that very spot. It’s been torn down, rebuilt, and rebuilt again. They call
it the “Church of St. Peter of the Cock-Crow.” There is a rooster on the top of
the spire. When I was in Jerusalem years ago, somebody said, “We have some free
time. Want to visit that place?” No, no, why would we ever want to go there? Why
would we ever need a perpetual reminder of someone’s cowardice, someone’s
weakness, someone’s lies in order to save their own skin?”
Today, I think the answer is simply this: because
we need the reminder. The reminder is a healthy dose of the truth about all of
us. Our concern is not merely with how other people have let us down, done us
dirt, or put us out to dry. It’s also important that we acknowledge and confess
when we have “done unto others” as we might accuse them for doing unto us.
The Bible gives us two descriptions of what it
means to be human. Together they form an honest paradox. The first is a
theology of friendship. All of us have the capacity for building relationships.
It is possible to live with one another. We can overcome differences. We can
find common ground.
The Bible tells of David and Jonathan, so
deeply bound that their hearts were as one. We hear of Ruth and Naomi, each
relying on the other, neither willing to be left behind. This is the promise of
what the Greeks called “Philadelphia,” literally brotherly and sisterly love.
We can protect one another, feed one another, look out for one another.
Recall a few of the proverbs we have heard
today:
- A friend loves at all
times, and kinsfolk are born to share adversity.
- A true friend sticks closer than one’s nearest kin.
- Better is a neighbor
who is nearby than kindred who are far away.
This is the promise of human community. We are
created to share our lives. We were given this life to be there for one
another.
And yet, the paradox is created by the second
description of what it means to be human, and what we hear in today’s text. One
Bible scholar calls it “the doctrine of human undependability.” We are created
good, with the capacity for deep relationships, yet “all we have gone astray”
(Isaiah 53:6).
The evidence is around us every day. The
husband stops off to buy lottery tickets which he keeps hidden, and his wife
says, “Why didn’t you bring home the milk?” The daughter promises to visit Mom in
the nursing facility and never shows up. The boss says to the employees, “You
always have a home with our company,” then lays them off and gives himself a
bonus. The political candidate says, “I will take care of you,” but primarily
wants to get re-elected.
And Simon Peter, the closest friend that Jesus ever
had – and it really was a tremendous friendship – he says, “I will never
abandon you. I will stand by your side. I will never lie about how much you
mean to me.” In memory of him, the church built a sanctuary and called it “The
Church of the Cock-Crow.” Let us tell the truth about human unreliability.
Dale Bruner, the Bible scholar, says this is
one of the great lessons of the Passion story of Jesus. Here in the Gospel of
Matthew, chapters 26 and 27, we have one long tale about how the possibility of
human love goes awry. Bruner notes,
High and low, big and little – everybody fails except one.
There are two of each of the three types (of people) who conspicuously fail:
big and little disciples (Peter and Judas); big and little Israel (Sanhedrin
and the crowd); and big and little Rome (Pilate and soldiers). Then in the crucifixion
scene, almost everyone passes by the hanging Jesus in a review of massive
failure. Against this backdrop of human infidelity, Jesus’ faithfulness looms
high and lonely, and that is the point: amidst all human failure, there is one
who is totally dependable…(The Christbook, p. 993-4)
… and it is Jesus Christ, our Lord. That’s why
the honesty of the Bible should never depress us, but point us to the complete
faithfulness of God, our savior.
It’s there in our scripture story today, a persistent
reminder of what Christ offers over against the empty promises of Simon Peter.
Remember how Jesus said, “All of you will run away,” and Peter responds, “Not
me, Lord; I will never run away”? In the middle of that interchange, Jesus says
something that is easy to skip over.
He says, “But after I am raised up, I will go
ahead of you to Galilee” (26:32). It’s a powerful thing for him to say. To
paraphrase his words, “after you run away from me, you are going to run into me
again.” After you watch the whole world reject me and push me away, you will
see me come to you, returning from the dead. After you forsake me, you will
discover that’s not so easy, for, lo, “I am with you always, even to the close
of the age.”
There is forgiveness here. Can you hear it? Peter can say, “I don’t know Jesus,” but Jesus
knows him.
The one essential ingredient of human relationships
is not perfection, but mercy. We know the people around us are not perfect, yet
the illusion persists that they ought to be. No friendship, marriage, or
relationship can bear the freight of impossible expectations. Even if we love
somebody, especially if we love them, we should never be surprised if they are imperfect
and unreliable, just as we are. Our Christian response is to be merciful and
forgiving, going the second mile by always giving the second chance.
Here is how Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it to the
church:
Christians must bear the burden of brothers and sisters . . .
God verily bore the burden of all people in the body of Jesus Christ. But God
bore them as a mother carries her child, as a shepherd enfolds the lost lamb
that has been found. God took all people upon God’s self. They weighted Him to
the ground, but God remained with them and they with God. In bearing with the
human family God maintained fellowship with them. It was the law of Christ that
was fulfilled in the Cross. And Christians must share in this law.[1]
Jesus says to Peter and the others who will run away, “But I will go before you and see you in Galilee.” To translate, “I am not finished with you.” He isn’t finished with any of us. Not yet.
And if it is divinely possible, maybe we shouldn’t
be in a hurry to be finished with anybody else.
(c) William G. Carter All rights reserved.
[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life
Together (HarperSanFrancisco, 1972) p. 77
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