From the Sunday Note, with additional thoughts:
Then Jesus said to them,
“This night all of you will have your faith in me shaken,
for it is written:
I will strike the shepherd,
and the sheep of the flock will be dispersed;
but after I have been raised up,
I shall go before you to Galilee.”
Peter said to him in reply,
“Though all may have their faith in you shaken,
mine will never be.”
Jesus said to him,
“Amen, I say to you,
this very night before the cock crows,
you will deny me three times.”
Peter said to him,
“Even though I should have to die with you,
I will not deny you.”
And all the disciples spoke likewise.
Matthew 26:31-35, excerpted from Sunday’s Gospel
Simon Peter, Simon “the Rock” is the Apostle Jesus will build his Church upon, the one who first proclaims the risen Christ to the Jews at Pentecost, the one guided by the Holy Spirit to the house of Cornelius where the first non-Jews are brought into Christ’s Church, etc. The Rock will follow his Lord and will eventually die for his Lord at the hand of the Romans. All that and more will verify the nickname “Rock” Jesus gave him.
As Jesus and his disciples advance toward Jerusalem, however, Peter’s “faith” is still tissue thin, all a matter of thoughts and emotions, not of his inmost being, his heart. The night is coming, Jesus tells them when “all of you will have your faith in me shaken.” Instead of carefully pondering to himself what Jesus might mean by such a statement, Peter speaks quickly, with loud words Jesus will immediately undercut. “Though all (of the rest of them) may have their faith in you shaken, mine will never be!”
Well! What to compare this to? Perhaps you remember a TV cartoon where a wily predator careens around a mountain corner in hot pursuit of his prey, only to discover the road has given way to a 2000-foot drop-off….
Peter’s strong declaration of faithfulness sets him up for a similar grand fall. Jesus responds immediately: You, Peter, will fail in faithfulness, not once, but three times this very night. (The wind begins whistling past the coyote’s ears….)
Peter stubbornly tries to maintain his stance in the face of that blistering statement. The rest of the disciples mumble their agreement with him. And, of course, we see what happens later that very night, just as Jesus said it would.
Did the Lord make a mistake when he chose Simon and named him “the Rock”? No—he knew Peter through and through, warts and all. He had foreseen how Peter would crumple and prove unfaithful when challenged by a serving girl. He could also see farther than that. He could see that, after the Resurrection, when he asked Peter if Peter loved him, that humbled Peter, cut to the heart, would answer him truthfully, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” (John 21:15-19) He could see the time when Peter would graduate from being a “follower” full of shallow bravado and half-grown understanding of Christ, into man who knew what it meant to say that he loved, not simply followed, but loved the Lord. A man who had really placed Christ in the center of his heart. A man who listened for Jesus and to Jesus day by day.
The bad news and the good news is that what is true of Peter is true of you and me. You and I will let our Lord down. He has already foreseen it and knows what it will cost us, what pain and suffering it will bring. But our unfaithfulness does not bring unfaithfulness on Christ’s part. It brings patience in calling us to repentance, a heart (his heart) open to receiving us back, and a love for us that is deep and abiding, with us through all kinds of painful healing.
Failing in faithfulness can help us learn what faith really is, what it really costs, and about the real peace that comes with it. God takes all of that into account to begin with.
For further reflection:
The “rock” Jesus is using metaphorically here for a nickname for Simon is, in the language of the day, a stone large enough to be used as the cornerstone of a house. In Matthew, it reminds us of Jesus’ conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount, where the house that survives is the one build on rock, not sand. There is also an echo (not an equivalence) of the use to “The Rock” in the Old Testament to refer to the Lord God, the Rock of the Israelites. Peter is not perfect (remember Paul has to rebuke him at one point for avoiding eating with Gentile converts). But what he teaches is rock solid.
(Note: The previous statement has nothing to do with what a leader in Peter’s line may say to a TV reporter off the cuff.)
Family visiting from overseas. No Sunday Note or posts on the blog until April 23-25.