We are flawed. So what? Jesus will use us anyway

Scripture: John 18:12-27

            There’s this great moment in today’s lesson where Jesus, in response to the high priest, says “I have spoken openly to the world [...] Why do you ask me? Ask those who heard what I said to them; they know what I said.” And the scene cuts to Simon Peter, warming himself by the fire, approached by a slave who asks about his relation to Jesus, and Peter, for the third time, denies it. Jesus tells the high priest to ask those who knew him, and at the very same moment Peter, the star pupil, is basked just that and he denies the whole thing.

            Nobody would have expected this from Peter. This is the guy who tried to emulate everything about Jesus—walking on water, washing his feet—and the very same guy who promised never to deny Jesus—even in the face of death. This is the man on whom Jesus has promised to build his church. It’s astonishing that St. Peter, the namesake of the basilica in Rome, backed down not to a high priest, or a temple leader, or a Roman authority, but to a common slave.

            The fact is that Peter was scared. It’s not an excuse; it just is. The disciples, for all their proximity to Jesus, never really grasped this idea that he was going toward his death. Ironically, this is precisely the reason Jesus needed to die. If Peter could have told the slave girl all he knew to be true; if Judas could have accepted Jesus’ strange use of the common purse; if the temple leaders could have seen Jesus as the Messiah; if you and I could just manage perfection, then the cross need not have happened. Of course, like your NCAA bracket, there are always could-a-should-a’s, but you can’t change the past. If you could, you’d all be billionaires.

            Peter was scared.

None of us know the future. It’s hard to trust completely in anything, and, in spite of our piety, Jesus is no exception to that rule. We don’t trust all the time. In fact, I doubt we ever trust completely. And yet, Jesus still calls on us to be his witnesses. I find Jesus’ petition to the high priest that he ask around to be a stunning confession for all of us to ponder. It’s almost as if Jesus knows that soon enough it will fall on evangelists and missionaries and Gospel writers to tell people about him. It will fall on teachers and preachers and parents. It’s almost as if Jesus knew that in spite of our fears and our imperfections we are able, and often willing, to share the good news of the empty tomb. It’s almost as if Jesus actually saw what was coming: two thousand years of debate about stupid things: the canon of scripture, whether or not to translate the Bible into the language the common people actually speak, historical criticism, all the half-baked ideas we hear on the news and read in scholarly books of who Jesus was and what he did, the Gnostic Gospels, the Big Bang, evolution, and creationism, and ten thousand other things that are tremendous distractions from who Jesus actually was. It’s almost as if Jesus saw through that muck, pointed to Peter, and said “On this rock I will build my church,” because this rock is flawed and utterly human but humans just happen to be the perfect disciples.

            It would sure be nice if Jesus just came out and told us, “Hey, don’t worry about physicalism and other attempts to explain creation without God, don’t worry about History channel programs or scribal additions to the Bible, don’t worry about biblical literalism or biblical cutting-and-pasting, don’t worry about what people say or trends within the church or the world.” It would have been nice if Jesus said all these things, but, if he did, there would be a different list of things for every generation in the last two thousand years, and a different list still for every generation in the next two thousand years to come. We already get upset about the stuff in the Bible that doesn’t apply to our lives. Do we really want more stuff that only applies to our very tiny amount of time on earth? For that matter, can you imagine what it would be like for somebody reading the Bible in the Middle Ages if Jesus went off on a segue about the internet?

            Jesus relies on us to interpret and pass down the Gospels, because, as messy as it is, human beings are also given the gift of speech, which is the ability to share an idea, and the Holy Spirit does things with words, as ineloquent as they may be. But this is also scary, because we don’t trust ourselves, and we certainly don’t trust other people—especially people who live different lives than us. We’re used to cultural norms that pit us against one another based on our sports teams, our political parties, our hometowns; even the places we shop and the brands we wear. In this world we decide that certain people speak the truth and certain people are liars, or, on the other hand, we might say “well, everyone’s entitled to an opinion” or “it depends on your point of view.” All of these are great excuses not to listen to one another and all of them keep us from hearing the word of God on the lips of somebody from whom we least expect it.

            Meanwhile, Jesus stands before the high priest and asks him to ask around, and, you know, maybe Jesus was on to something. Look at all the beautiful, poignant responses to Fred Phelps death. Here was a man who dedicated his life’s work in the Westboro Baptist Church to hate, and here was a man whose death turned the normal banality of the internet into a place of grace and beauty—from the young people at the funeral WBC was picketing two days ago holding a sign that said “Sorry for your loss,” to Fred’s son, Nate, saying “he mourns the man his father might have been,” human beings are capable of so much more. We are even capable of telling the world about Jesus—even, sometimes, when we don’t believe it. Nate Phelps is an atheist who just gave the world a beautiful confession of grace that was as Christian as anything Christians have said.

It’s astonishing to think that two thousand years of asking around has led Christianity to where it is today. Somehow, in spite of our inner Peter, people still keep believing in Jesus. Lots of them, in fact. Somewhere near a billion. Still, the mission field is always changing. There aren’t that many times in our lives when, like Peter, we are asked to share about Jesus, and we may never face a situation where affirming Jesus could actually lead to seriously negative repercussions. Today, witnessing has as much to do with the relative importance we give to the ten thousand things we have in our lives, and the moments where we have to admit which of them matter the most. Most people know about Jesus—maybe not enough, maybe not at the moment they need it—but what they don’t know is how to prioritize the things that matter from the things that don’t. It’s not like Christians have this all figured out, but what we do have is a Savior who teaches us to live in the light. That is the Gospel of John in a nutshell: live in the light, testify to what is true. And this will change priorities. It will, in fact, change the world one person at a time.

            But just as important as that is the knowledge that we will all sometimes be Peter, standing around the fire, denying we know anything about Jesus. It’s not that that’s OK; it’s more that Jesus knows us well enough to know that we are more than that. He knew Fred Phelps—the hateful, spiteful man that he was—but he also knew what could blossom from that hate. One of the most important confessions of the Christian life is simply that it’s not about any of us—it’s not about Peter, or Fred Phelps, or John, or you, or me. We live our lives in the first-person, looking through these eyes, feeling the pains of this body, but through Jesus we actually admit that that is not the most important thing. Our lives aren’t really that important. Our legacy isn’t really that important. The only thing that matters—the only thing that ever has—is Jesus. And we will tell the world about that; Jesus knew that we would. We’ll tell it in our words and our actions, our inactions, and even when the world sees how big of a failure we are. In my opinion, Fred Phelps did not live a very Christian life, but the response to his life has been some of the best testimony I’ve heard in a long time.

            I just think Jesus knew this about us. We will fall—one person at a time—into sin; into the quest for self-importance, or, in Peter’s case, self-preservation. But, when it comes down to it, Jesus will work through us all the same, whether we speak or stay silent, whether we live a life of hate or love: no matter the choices that we make. It’s not about us. It never has been. It never will be. All we can do is tell the world about Jesus. And the funny thing is: you’ll do it whether you want to or not.