A LOOK – AND A MEMORYReading: Luke 22: 54-65
Some moments of recognition can be incredibly painful. The terrible night of Jesus’ arrest is no exception. Let’s move, then, to the courtyard of the high priest’s residence where, when challenged that he is a companion of Jesus, Peter denies that he even knows him. Down through the ages his denial has been interpreted as that of a man terrified. And that could be true, but recently I came across another interpretation that for me made an awful lot of sense. Peter didn’t lack courage. He was not easily frightened. Many recorded events bear witness to that fact. He was the first to make the declaration about who Jesus really was. He was the one who had the courage and the faith to step out of the boat in a raging storm and begin to move over the water towards Jesus. He attacked with a sword the guards who came to arrest Jesus in the garden. When Jesus was taken, he followed him, right into the courtyard. These are not the actions of a coward. But Jesus’ arrest and being taken for trial is where, perhaps, he became bewildered. Surely he was in the middle of a nightmare? Surely Jesus would declare himself and be released? Any moment now Jesus would say and do what Peter was willing him to say and do and the tables would be turned. But Jesus doesn’t say a word. He remains silent. And Peter can’t understand. He is confused. He had lived intimately with this man, had grown to love him, had witnessed his miracles, had listened to and been inspired by his teaching, had thought he knew him, and now realizes that he really doesn’t know him at all. So when the question is thrown at him three times, he bursts out, “I don’t even know the man! I tell you, I don’t know him.”
It’s significant, I think, that at that last meal together Jesus calls Peter by his old name, he who had been given the new name of Peter, the rock. Simon is his name before he enters into friendship with Jesus and becomes his follower, his disciple. Thereafter he is often referred to as Simon Peter. For me that encapsulates who Peter is and who he is becoming. He is surely and unmistakeably Simon son of John in all his broken humanity and his earthy human nature, but he is also Peter who is in the long process of becoming the rock foundation that Jesus can use, along with others, to build his church. But there is a sense in which he had to know himself as Simon before he could fully pick up the mantle of Peter. Peter is ‘born’ and grows out of the stumbling and testing and getting up again of Simon son of John. It’s a journey that’s going to last all his life even to the point where he is an old man who will stretch out his hands and others will direct him and take him where he doesn’t want to go. He never fully ‘knows.’ There’s always more.
Maybe having walked so far and for such a long time with Jesus, we, too, think we know him. At this stage of our journey we can declare in a deeper way, born out of brokenness and new insight, who Jesus is and can do so with an authenticity and an integrity that has at times been hard in the earning. But then something happens that we could never have planned for or imagined. It could be a crisis of faith. It could be the nightmare of false accusation and betrayal. It could be recognition of our own stumbling and the resulting remorse and searing regret. It could be the pain of letting go of something or someone we have held very dear. Or it could be that he is asking us to walk a particular road with and for him that is definitely not on our agenda, and we don’t feel equipped nor do we even want to hear such a challenge. When everything else has been stripped away and I feel naked, betrayed, achingly lonely, misunderstood, when all I have hoped for seems to be reduced to rubble, what is the one freedom left to me? It is the freedom to choose how I react to such a situation. Is it with bitterness, unforgiveness or despair as I let the tidal wave of defeat or remorse sweep over me? Or do I choose to turn and see the look of love from the God who knows and loves still, so that even now I can choose to trust that all things work together for the good of those who love God. That’s very hard when you’re bleeding inside. It seems to be almost impossible when we’re in what appears to us to be such uncharted territory, in a dark place with no light shining.
We have no problem in dealing with the Jesus we know, but how do we cope with the Jesus we don’t know? How do we cope with the silence of Jesus? What do we do with the diversity of Jesus? How can we truly live the upside down nature of his Kingdom where a lot of what we hold dear is turned on its head? What do we do with this Jesus who keeps beckoning us on and inviting us to go out farther where it is deeper? Overcome by the pressures, the ordinariness, the busyness, and the disillusionment that many feel, we, too, could cry out, “I don’t know him. I thought I did, but I’m not so sure any more.” What do we do with the Jesus we don’t know?
At that moment the rooster crowed. Jesus turned and looked at Peter, and Peter remembered. The rock is shattered. “Some foundation you are, Peter! To choose you is like choosing to build my church on sand. At the first storm it fell and what a great fall it was!” Do you think the look that Jesus gave Peter said that? I don’t. I know in my spiritual ‘bones’ that that look was a look of love, a look that said, “I understand.” It was that look that caused Peter to go out and weep. Here was brokenness on a scale never before experienced by him. But it was also another vital moment of recognition for Peter. At the same moment as he thought he had irrevocably botched it all up, he also knew that, although he didn’t know much about anything any more, especially about Jesus, his life would be forever inextricably bound up with his.
It’s perhaps a paradoxical thing to say, but, in retrospect, we can be overwhelmingly grateful for whatever is our equivalent of the rooster crowing. It causes us to remember, to put flesh again (which is the literal meaning of remembering) on to the past, that part of our past that we need to address in order that we may move forward to a new day. It may cause us to weep – much, but if the damn of repressed tears is broken by the look of love from Jesus, then somehow we know that, although we don’t know much about anything any more, especially about Jesus, our lives will be forever inextricably bound up with his.