Matthew 26:69-75
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.
The irony, of course, is that even as Jesus’ opponents are taunting him by demanding he prophesy who struck him, his prediction of Peter’s denial is coming true.
I’m sure each of us has wondered, at times, how Peter could deny his Lord. He has been with him, after all, for some time. He has been drawn into Jesus’ inner circle, included in the significant and intimate elements of his life and ministry. Not only that, he professed Jesus as God’s messiah and just hours earlier swore that he would follow his Lord to his death, even if all others deserted him.
And all that has become undone in the moment of trial. Why?
I think that the answer, when you reflect on it for a bit, becomes clear: fear. Fear narrows our vision until we can see only what is threatening. For this reason, fear reduces, if not eliminates, possibility. All we can imagine is what frightens us. There is no past; there is no future; there is only the terrifying present.
And so Peter, afraid, denies. More than denies, protests. More even than protests, he swears an oath that he does not know this man Jesus. And then, when the cock crows, he remembers his Lord’s words, sees what fear has reduced him to, and learns something terrible and difficult about himself and, indeed, the whole human race.
We are so very susceptible to fear. As Martin Luther once wrote, commenting on the fear that drives Adam and Eve first to eat the forbidden fruit and then to fear the presence of God, when we hear a creak in our home we fear the whole house will come down, or when we hear an unknown noise we assume it is something dangerous and forbidding. Fear colors our vision, corrodes our life, and dramatically restricts our ability to keep faith and enjoy abundant life.
There is no cure for fear, no way to banish it forever from our lives. Yet we do not need to allow fear to dominate us, to succumb to it’s paralyzing power. The response to fear is courage. Courage, contrary to popular belief, is not the absence of fear, but rather the ability to keep faith, to do what we need to do, in spite of fear. And courage – which is something we often forget – itself is born of faith. Faith that we are not alone, that there is Someone greater than us on our side, that all will come, in time, to a good end.
Dear God: Grant us the courage to face our fears, to reach out to those around us, and to walk together into an unknown future, trusting that you are always with us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Post image: “The Denial of St. Peter,” by Caravaggio (1610)
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