Since Easter, something’s been percolating in the back of my brain: why was Peter so quick to say he would die with Jesus (“If I must die with you, I will not deny you!”), and then so quick to desert Jesus the next night (“I do not know this man of whom you speak”), when death started looking like a real possibility?
Wouldn’t his big, bold statement still be fresh in his mind, just 24 hours later? Wouldn’t he be going out of his way to prove he really was as fearless and brave as he claimed?
Actually, Peter did stand firm for Jesus. For a moment. Back in the garden of Gethsemane, when he had a sword in his hand.
He was ready to take down the entire company of soldiers and chief priests and Pharisees who came to arrest Jesus, or die trying. And I think this is the kind of episode he was imagining when he made his kamikaze pledge. He probably fantasized something like a scene out of 300, with swords flying and blood spurting in slow motion. A band of brothers going out in a blaze of glory.
What he didn’t imagine was the confused and chaotic scattering of the disciples in the darkness of the night. The way he would be left without any friends and without any weapons, watching events unfold from the periphery.
What he didn’t expect was that the only thing he would have left was his faith in God’s sovereign plan. You can tell how strong that faith was by Peter’s response to a little girl who asked him if he was a disciple of Jesus. “No, I’m not!”
Aren’t we the same way? We’re ready to march in pro-life rallies and gay-marriage protests, when we’ll have armies of loudly vocal Christians around us. But what happens in the confusion and chaos of everyday life, when a boss asks us to sign off on a document that’s deliberately false, or an inspector points out something that’s clearly illegal but offers to overlook it? Then how willing are we to stand firm for righteousness, and boldly declare the source of our righteousness: our identity as disciples of Jesus Christ?
In his excellent book When People Are Big and God is Small, Edward Welch says this:
We would prefer to die for Jesus than to live for him. If someone had the power to kill us for our profession of faith, I imagine that most Christians would say, “Yes, I am a believer in Jesus Christ,” even if it meant death. The threat of torture might make people think twice, but I think most Christians would acknowledge Christ. However, if making a decision for Jesus means that we might spend years being unpopular, ignored, poor, or criticized, then there are masses of Christians who temporarily put their faith on the shelf.
It’s time to start living for Jesus, no matter the consequences.