Third Sunday in Lent, March 8, 2015 | 8:00 a.m.

Upon This Rock

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 19
Matthew 16:13–18, 21–23
Mark 14:26–31, 53–54, 66–72

Forgiveness is the final form of love.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Simon son of Jonah. Simon Peter. You gotta love him. Of all Jesus’ disciples, Simon Peter is the one about whom we hear the most. He was the first of the twelve disciples to be called. When in the midst of a storm Jesus invited the disciples to walk on the water with him, Peter was the only one who dared to try it. And then there was the significant moment when Jesus called Peter blessed. It happened at a turning point in Jesus’ ministry when he and his disciples were about to leave Galilee and head toward Jerusalem. Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” And Simon Peter gets it right. He replies, “You are the Messiah of God, the Christ.” Jesus says such belief could only come as a revelation from God. He gives Simon his new name of Peter, which means “rock,” and declares that Peter is the rock upon whom the church will be built. He will give Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

But just one paragraph later in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus calls Peter another name: Satan. “Get behind me, Satan!” Jesus says to Peter. Pretty harsh for poor Peter. What prompted that was Jesus saying, “I must go to Jerusalem to suffer, to die, and on the third day be raised again.” But Peter couldn’t hear about Jesus’ suffering and death. He takes Jesus aside and protests, “This must never happen to you!” I’m sure I would do the same. None of us wants to accept that someone we love may suffer. We want to protect them, change the situation so our loved ones are safe and secure. We want to hope for the best, to be upbeat, positive. “Don’t talk about crosses,” he says to Jesus. “You don’t have to suffer; you’re the Messiah.” But Jesus rebuked him, because he knew the road ahead wasn’t going to be easy. Peter recognized Christ as the Messiah but didn’t accept that the Messiah would suffer. Peter was called both Rock and Satan.

Later on, Peter had a similar contrast of understanding. Only this time it was about himself, not Jesus. Jesus again described that rough times were ahead and declared that all the disciples would desert him. Peter said to him, “Even though all will become deserters, I will not.” Jesus responded, “Truly I tell you, this day, this very night, before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.” Peter refused to believe it. He said vehemently, “Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you.” He said it with so much conviction and passion it was contagious; all the other disciples said the same thing.

I don’t think Peter was lying. I think he truly meant it and believed it when he declared he would stand by Jesus even when Peter faced personal threat, even if it cost him everything. He saw himself as a devoted, faithful disciple. And, in fact, he later did face persecution courageously and did sacrifice his life because of his faith. But in this moment, at the time of Jesus’ arrest and trial, Peter three times denied knowing Jesus.

Perhaps Peter may not have recognized what he was doing at the time. Or he may have rationalized his behavior away.

Imagine this monologue Peter says to himself:

(cock crows)

What did I say? I didn’t mean anything.
I mean, it wasn’t that kind of conversation.

I don’t mind discussing my faith with people who know about faith . . .
priests . . . ministers . . . you know the sort of people.

But I mean to say, when you’re just warming your hands at a fire and some trumped-up chambermaid starts coming on all holy . . .

I mean, you don’t know who you’re talking to.
I didn’t want to encourage her. I had other things on my mind.

I just said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” . . . and I’d say it again if . . .
I’ll not say it again. The next time I won’t say anything at all.
The next time, I’ll avoid any kind of confrontation, any kind of conversation.
The next time, I won’t even shrug my shoulders or shake my head.
If I do nothing and say nothing . . .
surely that way I’ll neither affirm nor deny him . . .

(cock crows)

(John L. Bell and Graham Maule, Jesus and Peter : Off-the-Record Conversations, pp. 116–117)

With the crowing of the rooster Peter realizes he blew it. He in fact did deny Jesus three times. He intentionally and repeatedly sought to completely disassociate himself from Jesus Christ. After the rooster crowed a second time, a memory pierced him. He remembered Jesus telling him he would deny him. When he recognized what he had done, he was more shocked than anyone. The truth broke through, and he wept bitterly.

Sometimes it takes a wake-up call for us to realize where we have denied or betrayed what God wants of us. The rooster was the means for Peter to wake up. The crow of the rooster jolted him into awareness. How pertinent, for it is the rooster whose crowing marks the dawn of a new day, the beginning of a fresh morning. Any fresh start for us begins with awareness. If we don’t see how we have fallen short, we cannot amend our ways. To repent and turn around, we need first to wake up. We must become aware in order to recognize ourselves as God sees us, which includes our limited, weak, cowardly selves.

We might ask ourselves why was it Peter whose cowardice is there for all to see, whose fault includes denying Christ? Peter was the first among equals. Peter, the first to be called, the first to name Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God. Peter, the only one to step out of the boat at Jesus’ command.

Erik Kolbell wrote,

It had to be Peter. He is the most likely culprit because he is the least likely. . . . It has to have been Peter, because if the one of great faith is capable of great treachery, then anyone of lesser faith is as well. If Peter is to be the rock, the precursor, the cornerstone, and the embodiment of the Christian church that was yet to come, then he had to be—as he had been in that boat upon the stormy sea—one for whom courage tugs at one end of his heart and fear tugs at the other. . . . To say that Peter could deny Jesus is to say that any one of us . . . is capable of doing the same. Peter is all of us, each of us, any of us. The rock is also the reminder that as the fellowship of believers we are an imperfect lot. (Erik Kolbell, Were You There: Finding Ourselves at the Foot of the Cross, p. 42)

William Willimon wrote that this depicts the human condition: “If in Jesus we see how God always is, in Peter we see how we always are. . . . We do not follow Jesus, despite our high intentions and loud protestations, but, like Peter, we in fact deny him. The good news is that our salvation depends not on our petty performance, but on the faithfulness of God.” God redeems even those who deny him. From the most unlikely material, God builds the church, whose power is made perfect in weakness.

Are you relating to this? I think we all have an image of ourselves as committed, or strong, or truthful, or loving, and genuinely feel that’s who we are to the core of our being. But then we end up betraying our best self. We do something or say something we previously couldn’t have imagined ourselves doing or saying. We find ourselves in a risky situation so we don’t stand up for our convictions. We become uncomfortable so we withdraw our engagement. We become threatened so we lash out at others. We feel diminished so we trump up false accomplishments. We are hurt so we cut off relationship. We change our tune when the previous story makes us look bad. Or we may say or do something with completely good intentions but with a harmful result. Yet the act is done. There—we did it. Maybe not what we intended, hurting someone we didn’t mean to, but it’s done. And we can’t take it back.

This happened recently with me. I like to think of myself as a loving, sensitive, dedicated wife who stays connected emotionally to my husband, Kent, in all situations. But I recently brought some things up in conversation that dragged him down. Unbeknownst to me, we were not on the same page, and he didn’t hear what I was saying the way I intended, and I didn’t sense how what I was saying felt diminishing and discouraging to him. I sent him to a grim, lonely place. I felt terrible. When I realized what harm I had done I, too, wept.

This happened while I was preparing for this sermon. Later I even told my husband I felt like Peter: I had done what I couldn’t imagine myself doing, but there it was. I did it, I felt bad about it, and I couldn’t take it back. And then Kent said the most wonderful thing to me: “But you can take it back. I have moved on. We can move on from here together. Let it go.”

Words of forgiveness. An offer of acceptance, love, marking a fresh start. He was like the rooster’s crow. He let me know how my words made him feel, which woke me up to my mistake. And, like the rooster’s crow, he also announced the beginning of a new day, a fresh start.

How is it that Peter went on to become a faithful disciple after denying Jesus three times? Where did his conviction and courage come from after he so utterly failed in a time when Jesus needed him most?

Believe Peter was transformed by forgiveness. Jesus forgave Peter, unconditionally and infinitely. Forgiveness made him a new person. It is the forgiveness that Reinhold Niebuhr called “the final form of love” (Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History, p. 242).

In addition to Jesus saying to Peter that he would deny Christ three times, Jesus could also have said to Peter,

and let me tell you what else you will do. There will be days when you’ll wish I had never chosen you to lead the church in my absence, and days when you’ll wish you had never even met me. Responsibilities will be shirked. You will lose your temper over trivial matters and ignore momentous ones. You’ll have cruel thoughts about people you love, crave power that is not yours to have, and envy the languorous lives of the idle rich. And I will forgive you all this. But you will also do other things. . . . You will also give what little money you have to a destitute family, even if you have no idea where your next meal is coming from. You will open your doors to the fatherless, the friendless, even the faithless. You will listen with patience to sad stories and will do whatever is in your power to soothe the pain of the storytellers. You will sit up long nights by the side of the ill and the dying and never breathe a word about your own weariness, and when death does come, you will weep with the widow and open your home to her as if it is her own. (Kolbell, Were You There, p. 48)

As we will, we the church, built upon the rock of Peter. Like Peter, we will have moments when we embrace the awesome presence of God, and moments we will deny it. On more occasions than we like to admit, we suffer times when our anger gets the better of patience, doubt the better of hope, and indifference the better of compassion. But we also have times we hear God’s clear call to a higher good, and we respond with our whole hearts. The rock upon whom the church is built is not just Peter. It is the rock of God’s forgiveness and transformation.