On the counter above our kitchen sink, my wife keeps a little flip calendar.  It’s called, “If You Want Breakfast in Bed, Sleep in the Kitchen,” and each day it offers a bit of pithy wisdom.  Things like—“We all get heavier as we get older because there’s more information in our head,” or “Confidence is the feeling you have before you really understand the situation.”

One saying this week seemed appropriate for our current series on the Faces of Failure.  “It may be your purpose in life,” it read, “to simply serve as a warning to others.” 

One could certainly apply that to those we have been considering.  Nicodemus warns us about the failure of imagination.  The disciples illustrate what happens when we fail to trust Jesus.  Our Lord’s mother, brothers, and sisters reveal what willful blindness to Jesus and his work looks like.  Then, last Sunday, we saw the failure of lost hope overwhelm Judas Iscariot.  Each of these biblical characters could serve as a warning to us and, save maybe for Judas, as a reminder of God’s grace.

That is certainly true of our focus for today, Simon Peter.

On the night Jesus was arrested, he had celebrated a final meal with his disciples.  Following the meal they sang one of the Hallel Psalms and went to the Mount of Olives, where many of those in Jerusalem for Passover were encamped.  There Jesus tells his disciples that they will soon be scandalized by him and “fall away.”  Soon, he says, they will abandon him. 

I am not sure why that news startles the disciples.  Jesus has already told them he will be arrested, tried, and executed.  At the meal only hours before he said one of them would betray him, and each wondered if he would be the one.  What did they think they would do when Jesus is arrested?  Stand stoically while men with clubs haul Jesus away?  Be arrested with him?  Fight for him?  Apparently they hadn’t even thought about it until Jesus says they will, as Zechariah has foretold, scatter like sheep whose shepherd has been struck down.

As is usually the case, Simon Peter is the first to respond to Jesus.  And he makes a bold promise.  “Though they all fall away because of you,” he says, “I will never fall away.”  You have to wonder how the other disciples feel about it.  After all, he disses them.  He says that James, John, Andrew and all the rest will abandon Jesus, but that he, Simon Peter, the big fisherman, won’t.  And it’s not just that he won’t fall away from Jesus that night.  No, he says he will “never fall away.”  He even says he won’t deny Jesus even if it means dying with him.

That’s an incredible promise, and Jesus warns him not to make it.  He even tells him that before the night is through he will break his promise three times.  But this is Peter, and Peter doesn’t lack self-confidence.  He is, after all, first among Jesus’s disciples as well as the group’s spokesman.  He’s the one who hops out of the boat to walk on water, at least for a moment, and he is the first to confess Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God.  He’s also the one who rebukes Jesus for saying he would die in Jerusalem and vows not to let it happen.

Peter’s promise to never fall away is another example of his devotion to Jesus.  He believes in him.  He loves him.  He wants to be faithful, and he promises to do so.

And isn’t that what all followers of Jesus do?

In our tradition we practice “believer’s baptism.”  That means we baptize those who are old enough to freely choose to confess Jesus as Lord.  Baptism is primarily the way we visibly express how, by God’s grace, we die to sin and are raised to new life.  But implicit in it is our promise to be faithful.  It is our way of saying, “In gratitude for your love and grace, I will never fall away.”  Every Christian makes that promise, a promise every bit as bold as Peter’s.

Yet making such a promise is easier than keeping it.

A short while after Peter makes his promise, the mob sent to seize Jesus arrives.  When it does, the prophecy of which Jesus spoke is fulfilled:  “All the disciples left him and fled.”

Peter flees as well, but he doesn’t go far.  He stays close enough to follow the crowd to the home of Caiaphas, the high priest, where the religious leaders are conducting something of a preliminary hearing about Jesus.  There Peter finds a safe spot in the courtyard close enough to see what’s happening but not close enough to catch anyone’s eye.  At least he thinks so.  But in the courtyard a servant girl recognizes him.  One might expect a scribe or Pharisee to recognize Peter.  They had watched Jesus and his disciples carefully over the years.  Nor would it be hard to imagine a guard sent to arrest Jesus spying Peter and saying, “Hey, weren’t you with Jesus?”  But instead the person who confronts him is a servant girl.  She is a nobody even among nobodies.  “You were with Jesus the Galilean,” she says. 

If those words had come from someone in authority, one could understand why Peter might be frightened.  But they came from a servant girl, someone with absolutely no power.  And yet Peter’s heart must have started racing and his thoughts must have started spinning.  And the only thing he can think to do is play dumb.  “I don’t know what you mean,” he says, before moving to a place nearer the entrance.

Unfortunately, Peter finds no relief there.  Another servant girl—another nobody—recognizes him and says to those standing nearby:  “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.”  Although she doesn’t address Peter, he knows he has to respond.  And even he does so with an oath.  In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus had told his disciples they were never to do that, but Peter does it anyway.  He swears on a stack of Bibles, so to speak, that he doesn’t know Jesus.  Actually, he doesn’t even use Jesus’s name.  He just calls him “the man,” as if Jesus were a stranger to him.

You might think that, by this point, Peter would slip into the darkness and disappear.  But you have to give him credit for staying.  He has promised to be faithful, and although he has been less than forthright about his relationship with Jesus he still refuses to abandon him completely.  Instead, he hangs around the shadows as near to Jesus as he can get without being noticed.

But he doesn’t go unnoticed.  Some in the crowd come to him.  “You are one of them,” they say.  “Your accent betrays you.”  Once again, Peter is put on the spot, and once again Peter denies knowing Jesus.  But rather than just say that, Peter invokes a curse on himself.  We don’t know what he says, but it is the equivalent of, “If I’m lying, I’m dying” or “May God strike me dead if I’m being dishonest.”  But some scholars suggest his words may have been even worse.  They say the phrase, “a curse on himself” is “linguistically questionable.”[i]  They speculate that he actually cursed Jesus, but that Matthew couldn’t bring himself to say that when he wrote his Gospel. 

Whatever the case, Peter soon hears the cock crow and knows he has failed.  He has failed to keep his promise to never deny Jesus.  And so he goes out and weeps bitterly.

I’m sure fear plays a part in Peter’s failure.  Seeing Jesus arrested, he has reason to be anxious.  But fear is only part of the problem.  The real issue is Peter’s arrogance.  When Peter sits across from Jesus and promises to remain faithful, he assumes he has it within himself to do it.  He arrogantly assumes he can, on his own power, face down the powers and principalities that might come upon him.  But when the moment comes to stand for Jesus, he is too weak, cowardly, and fragile to do so.  He crumbles not under the stern gaze of great authority or under the lash of an inquisitor but before people who matter not a whit.

That, I suspect, comes close to our own experience.

In our baptism, we pledge to remain faithful to Jesus.  We promise to love God and neighbor; to live lives that reflect his love, peace, generosity, and compassion; to testify to what he has done so that others might know his grace.  We pledge to be “with Jesus,” a term Matthew uses to describe the intimate relationship between the disciples and their Lord.

But, like Peter, we find the promise hard to keep.  Oh, we self-confidently assume we can, by sheer will, remain faithful to Jesus.  But then a neighbor’s late-night party disrupts our sleep and loving him or her becomes near impossible.  A driver cuts us off on 281 and anger not peace seizes control of our thoughts.  A friend opens the door to a conversation about Christ, but we play dumb or we act as if we know nothing about him or the faith. 

It’s not that we fear persecution at the hands of the government or ridicule by folk in the public square.  Failure under such circumstances might even be understandable.  But we are simply too human.  We are too weak, cowardly, and fragile to keep the promise even before those who lack power or status, the servant girls of our day.  We simply don’t have it within us to stay with Jesus.

Fortunately, Peter’s story doesn’t end with him weeping in darkness.  After the resurrection Jesus appears to the disciples on multiple occasions.  The most important one for Peter takes place in Galilee, where he and some of the others have returned to fishing.  On the seashore one morning, Jesus says to Peter, “Do you love me more than these?”  Peter replies:  “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”  “Then feed my lambs,” Jesus says.   I would imagine it was a short time later when Jesus again asks, getting the same response:   

And then a third time:

“Do you love me?” 

“Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”

“Feed my sheep.”

Jesus goes on then to explain to Peter what is life is going to be like.  Where once he controlled his own destiny, now it is in the hands of others.  Where he once went where he wanted, now others will direct his path.  Where once his life was his own, now it will be determined, and ultimately taken, by others.

And then, after all that, Jesus repeats the very first words he ever spoke to Peter.  Two simple words:  “Follow me.” 

Those words, first spoken three year before, maybe not too far from where they were sitting on that post-Easter morning, now have a different ring for Peter.  Having had his humanity exposed, having been stripped of his self-confidence, have lost his bravado, he now knows what it means to follow Jesus.  It means trusting him for strength and courage and tenacity.  It means trusting him for the words to speak and the will to act.  It means trusting in Christ’s power rather than his own.  That’s why the same Peter who failed Jesus on the night of his arrest could, just a few short weeks later, stand before the crowd on Pentecost and, empowered by the Holy Spirit, proclaim the crucified Jesus as the Risen Lord.  Yes, he has been stripped of confidence in his own strength, but he now can place his confidence in Christ’s.

In your baptism and mine, we promised to remain faithful to our Lord.  I’m sure there have been occasions in which you have thought, “Yes, I did it.  I did what Jesus asked.”  But I know for sure there have been times in which you didn’t do what the Lord requires.  I’m sure there have been times in which your strength, your courage, your perseverance failed.  I’m sure there have been times in which you, like Peter, dreaded the thought of Christ’s eyes meeting your own.

And yet Peter is an example that our failures are not fatal.  They can instead be freeing.  They remind us that the Christ who gave grace to a broken Peter gives grace to us as well.  They remind us that the same Christ who spoke to the big fisherman, still says to us, “Follow me.”  But most of all, they remind us that the same Christ who empowered a humbled Peter empowers a humbled you and humbled me.  And it is in his power, courage, and tenacity that you and I can find the strength to keep our promise to never fall away.