We have entered the holiest week of the Christian year. It began with our Palm Sunday celebration of Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, praised by the crowds who spread their cloaks before him as he approached the city. In just a few days, though, he will be arrested, tried, tortured, and hung on a cross to die a terrible death, only to rise again in three days to triumph over the greatest of all of our enemies: sin and death.
That is the big picture, the important outlines of the sorrow and the joy that this holiest time of the year represents for our Christian faith. But we must never overlook the small details that are part of it as well. One of those small details struck me like a hammer blow while reading and contemplating the Passion narrative in the 22nd chapter of Luke’s Gospel. During the Last Supper account, the apostles get caught up in a debate over which should be regarded as the greatest. Jesus challenges them, telling them that they must think of themselves differently, that their leadership, like his, must be recognized in their service to one another, rather than in ‘lording it over’ others like the Gentiles.
After this exchange, he looks directly at Peter and says to him: “Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed that your own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers” (vs. 31-32). It is a strange remark. Peter does not fully understand what happened to him until only a few hours later. Peter, of course, being Peter, responds with a bold statement: Lord, I am prepared to go to prison and to die with you” (v. 33)! Then Jesus responds to Peter saying: “I tell you Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you have denied me three times” (v. 34).
Immediately after, Jesus is arrested and taken to the house of the high priest. Peter follows from a distance, then sits down next to those who were sitting by a fire in the courtyard. He is recognized by a maid as one of Jesus’ followers; Peter denies it. He denies it again when someone else recognizes him, but he denies knowing Jesus again, and he denies him a third time when he is identified as a Galilean by another person. At that moment the cock crows. At that same moment, Jesus ‘turns and looks’ directly at Peter and Peter remembers what Jesus had said to him in the upper room only hours earlier: “Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times.’ Peter, struck with the full force of his guilt and shame, “went out and began to weep” (v. 62).
Those words, “Jesus turned and looked at Peter,” struck me like a hammer blow, too. That is what Jesus does EVERY time that we deny him. He turns and looks at us. Yes, we deny him every time we sin; no matter how small or how great our sins, each one is a betrayal of his and the Father’s love for us. And it is in the moment of our realization of our guilt, when he ‘looks at us’ that we are struck to the depths of our hearts and minds with the recognition of our shame. It is then that we find ourselves standing on the brink of destruction, or salvation. Judas felt that his sin was too great to be forgiven. He despaired of God’s love. Peter denied Jesus, too, but in the depths of his guilt and profound sorrow, and though he would suffer greatly for it, he trusted in God’s love. His faith did not fail in the end, and when he “turned back,” he would, indeed, “strengthen his brothers” and all of us.
Let us pray. Lord, in those times when we fall into the depths of the world’s sin and weariness, its faithlessness and its passing fancies and illusions, ‘turn and look at us’ as you did Peter when he denied you three times. Never let us forget that Your mercy, Your love, and Your grace are greater than all of our sins. Lord, we believe, help our unbelief. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
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