I THINK ST. PETER HAS GOTTEN A “BUM RAP.” As a result of our Scripture lesson of the morning, St. Peter is often pictured as being a coward, cringing in the courtyard before the onslaught of a serving maid’s questions. Sometimes it seems as though Jesus called Peter “the Rock” not because of his standing qualities, but because of his sinking qualities. Actually, it took a great deal of courage for him to be there at all. None of the rest of the twelve were there. Gone were the crowds who, on Palm Sunday, shouted glad Hosannas!” Gone were the other two of Jesus’ closest friends: James and John. Jesus was alone during his ordeal in the house of the high priest. Except for Peter. Peter was there, in the courtyard. He didn’t acquit himself very well, but at least he was there. “And as Peter was below in the house, one of the maids of the high priest came, and seeing Peter warming himself, she looked at him, and said, ‘You also were with the Nazarene, Jesus.’ But he denied it, saying, ‘I neither know nor understand what you mean.’” Mark 14:66)
I. I WOULD SUGGEST THAT THIS IS NOT A STORY OF PETER’S COWARDICE, BUT OF HIS BRAVERY. “And Peter followed him at a distance.” (v. 54) How many sermons have been preached about following Jesus at a distance. “We’re behind you, Lord...” Yes, ‘way behind. But this is a bit unfair, for Peter had at least the courage to try. He was somewhere within shouting distance, while everybody else had high-tailed it to the safety of their homes, where they bolted the doors shut and quaked with fear that what had happened to their Leader might also happen to them. “You also were with the Nazarene, Jesus,” the maid said. And at least Peter was there to answer. Where were the others? Mark says: “They all forsook Him and fled.” (14:50) All? Not quite, but almost. At least one remained close by. Peter hung in there longer than anyone else. Let’s give him credit for that. Yes, Peter failed the final test. But Peter fell to a temptation which could only come to a man of fantastic courage. Up to this point in Peter’s career he had been a man of almost reckless courage. Trying to walk on water just because Jesus’ told him to! Drawing his sword in the garden and cutting off the ear of the high priest’s servant, going against everything Jesus had taught. The last place we should have thought he would show his face would be in the courtyard of the high priest’s house. But Peter followed Jesus this far-which was further than any of the rest. Somebody asked me a few weeks ago, in jest, if we Methodists had any “backsliders.” I replied, half in jest that most Methodists I know haven’t slid forward enough to backslide! Peter, at least, was there. Most of us reflect the words of that great hymn, “O Young and Fearless Prophet:” “We marvel at the purpose that held thee to thy course/While ever on the hilltop before thee loomed the cross;/Thy steadfast face set forward, where love and duty shone/While we betray so quickly and leave thee there alone.” We dare not point the finger at Peter, for when we do, we find three fingers pointed back at us. We warm ourselves at the fires of Jesus’ enemies. (How much does our high standard of living derive from the arms race? I shudder to think. ) We promise great things, (“Take my silver and my gold, Not a mite would I withhold!”)... but we do not deliver on our promises. We follow from afar, and are afraid to come closer, lest people might think we are some kind of religious fanatics. We talk piously in church, but curse and swear with the best of them outside in the courtyard. By our words and actions people haven’t a clue that we have been with Jesus of Nazareth.
What was Peter doing there in the courtyard, anyway? Leslie Weatherhead says that he was not denying his Lord, but instead was acting as a “spy.” He believed that Peter followed Jesus and His captors into the courtyard seeking information. And if you were to ask a spy, “Are you a spy?” it would have been simply dumb to say, “Oh, yes, of course. I am here under false pretenses.” So he lets Peter off the hook. Weatherhead wrote: “Either he had the intention of rescuing Jesus or else of hearing what was likely to become of him.” “Personalities of the Passion,” New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1963, p. 19) Weatherhead said that if Peter were really such a coward, why did he not stay back in the shadows, instead of coming right up to the fire to catch the gossip of the day? It is an intriguing thought. There’s not much evidence to back up his theory, but it is a thought. The Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu, (“St. Peter of the cock-crowing”), near Mt. Zion in Jerusalem, is the traditional site where the events of our Scripture took place. There is strong archaeological evidence for the place because a system of weights and measures, usually used by the high priest, has been found there, along with cisterns, and perhaps a prison where ancient tradition has Jesus imprisoned for one night before His trial. Jewish law forbade trying anyone on the day arrested. And there are first-century stone steps there which makes it one of the few places we can say with certainty that “Jesus would have walked here.” Some of us were there a few weeks ago...and a very strange thing happened. Just as we arrived at the church, we heard the sound of a cock crowing in the background! I must confess that, with my skeptical mind, I wondered at first whether the Assumptionist Fathers had rigged the whole thing with some sort of recording device. But no; this was the genuine sound of a cock crowing. The church is located in a place where all the sounds of the valley below come wafting up upon the ear. And we heard a cock crow. Some said they heard it three times! Now, that’s spooky! It really made the setting come alive for us as we gathered in the church, and then went down into the basement where (tradition says) we find the courtyard where Peter sat warming his hands by the fire, and where he heard the cock crow twice. On the other hand, during my research for this sermon I have discovered that it might not have been a literal rooster crowing that is meant here. The Roman night was divided into four watches from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. At the end of the third watch, at three o’clock in the morning, the guard was changed. Biblical commentator William Barclay writes: “When the guard was changed there as a bugle call which was called the gallicinium, which is the Latin for the cockcrow. Most likely what happened was that as Peter spoke his third denial, the clear note of the bugle call rang out throughout the silent city and smote on the ear of Peter, and Peter remembered and his heart broke.” (Barclay, William Barclay, Daily Study Bible, MARK; Phila: Westminster Press, 1956, p. 371) Barclay may be right. But after my experience last month, I still like to think of it as a real rooster crowing!
II. “CERTAINLY YOU ARE ONE OF THEM; FOR YOU ARE A GALILEAN.” (Mark 14:7) said the bystanders to Peter. How did they know? Matthew’s Gospel gives us a clue to the answer. It has the bystanders say, “Certainly you are also one of them, for your accent betrays you.” (Matthew 26:73) The Aramaic spoken in Jesus’ day had its regional accents. Galilee was up in the North. Judea was in the South. Evidently, even though Jesus’ land was very small, there were distinct regional accents, just as in England today, you can find many differences in accent between areas not far removed from one another in distance. By their accent you can tell a Yorkshireman from a Londoner or a Liverpudlian. What’s a “Liverpudlian” you ask? Why, someone from Liverpool. I kid you not-that’s what they’re called! And I have a problem with regional accents. If I spend much time among them I find myself picking them up. I am not consciously trying to mimic or make fun of them, but I find myself speaking the way people around me speak. After my pastoral exchange with Peter Bolt back in 1974, I returned to this pulpit and invited folks to stay after the service for a “spot of tea.” I got kidded about it, but I had unconsciously picked up the British way of saying it. Accents are easy to pick up. At least most of them are. The Galilean accent, however, may be the most difficult to imitate in all the world. Here is what I mean.
One of the most famous sermons of Christian History was written by the Scots preacher Arthur John Gossip titled, “The Galilean Accent.” He takes the words spoken to Peter by the bystanders as a distinct compliment. Since the coming of Jesus Christ into the world, a new element has come into the human story, a new “accent” if you will. The Galilean accent was heard for the first time almost two thousand years ago. When Jesus was born the world was in a pretty sad state. Human life was cheap, and slavery was rampant. Violence and greed were the order of the day. We might ask, “So what else is new?” We might think that not much has changed. But what changes for the good there have been have come about because twenty centuries ago into this maelstrom of malice a new accent was heard on a hillside in Galilee: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the peacemakers, etc.” (Matthew 5) It was heard in the pulpit at Nazareth when a young rabbi stood up and said: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed...”(Luke 4:18)
That’s the “Galilean accent.” The Galilean accent was infectious. It was heard and caught by the common people. The world tried to erase all trace of it by silencing the Voice behind it ...but the Voice could not be silenced. The Galilean accent continued in the voice of Peter-who not only cringed in the courtyard, but one day stood up in the town square and placed the blame for Jesus’ death squarely on the heads of the religious establishment. “...this Jesus...you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. But God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it!” (Acts 2:23-24) The Galilean accent was heard again in the early Christian community when they became a community of lovers, who dared to out-think, out-live, out-die, and out-love the pagan world around them, so that people exclaimed in amazement: “Behold, how these Christians love one another.” The Galilean accent. For awhile it seemed as though that accent had become stilled when the Dark Ages settled upon the Church, and the Church silently acquiesced in all kinds of evil.
But then in the 16th century there was a Reformation, in the 18th century there came the Great Awakening, in the 19th century Christians tackled the evil scourge of slavery, and in the 20th century the accent is heard again as Christians dare to tackle thorny issues such as war and peace, racism and social justice. David H. C. Read in a sermon on “The Galilean Accent” says: “In spite of all the sarcasm that is hurled at the phrase ‘Christian love,’ I know that life would be intolerable without the kindness, the unselfishness, the generosity, the forgiveness, the patience that it inspires in men and women who have caught the infection of Jesus.... The Galilean accent sounds in the one who seeks reconciliation rather than bitterness and estrangement, in one who gives without asking ‘what’s in it for me,’ in one who risks unpopularity by taking the side of the despised and betrayed.” And he ends his sermon with a little prayer he heard sung when he was a boy. “Oh that it might be said of me/Surely thy speech betrayeth thee, Thou wast with Jesus of Galilee.” (National Radio Pulpit, Dec. T77-Jan. T78) To which I can only say, “Amen!” Our accents do betray us; and the Galilean accent is a rare thing to hear, indeed.
After the first World War, while high level talks were being carried on about how to deal with Germany, the despised and defeated enemy, the then American President Woodrow Wilson argued for leniency and compassion. It is reported that French premier Clemenceau said, in disgust, “He makes me sick. He talks just like Jesus Christ.” Looking back from the hindsight of history one wonders what might have happened if he had - and if he had gotten people to listen. Perhaps we might have been spared a second World War, who knows? At any rate, our world needs a few more people who “talk just like Jesus Christ.” I have no doubt that such people would get themselves in trouble, as Peter did...but that’s the risk of speaking in “The Galilean accent.” The strongest Galilean accent in our day was that of Martin Luther King, Jr. and look what it got him! But that’s the way the world is. It tries to silence the Galilean accent. But it has not succeeded. And never will.
III. THERE ARE ONLY TWO PLACES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT WHERE A CHARCOAL FIRE IS MENTIONED. One of them is here, in the courtyard of the high priest, where Peter was warming himself the night that Jesus went on trial, and a servant girl spotted him. The other place is in the 21st chapter of John. After Good Friday, Peter announced to the other disciples, “I am going fishing.” That didn’t mean he was taking a vacation-merely that he was going back to his previous occupation - a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee, which was what he did before he went off on the wild-goose chase to follow the itinerant rabbi from Nazareth. But then there came a brilliant Easter morning, and an angel standing by an empty tomb, telling the disciples that “He is not dead, but lives! Go and tell the disciples AND PETER that He goes before you into Galilee.. There you will see Him.” (Mark 16:7) And it was so. The disciples had been fishing all night and had caught nothing. Suddenly, a faintly familiar figure calls to them across the sea. “Cast your net on the other side!” And they had a miraculous catch of fish! Peter shouts, “It is the Lord!” and jumps into the water to swim to the shore. There Jesus prepares for them a breakfast over a charcoal fire. And there Jesus asks Peter three times “Do you love me?” And three times Peter is forced to confess his love-to make up for the three times He denied it.
IV. WHERE DID THIS STORY OF PETER’S DENIALS IN THE COURTYARD COME FROM?
There is only one source from which the story could have come – and that source is Peter himself. Remember that St. Mark was the “secretary” to St. Peter, and his gospel is made up primarily of Peter’s own reminiscences. In other words Peter is the one who passed this story down to us. He is the one who passed on the story of his own denial. In doing so, he is saying to us: “if you think that you have betrayed Jesus, fallen short, committed some horrible sin, just look at what I did! I swaggered up and said that ‘Even if everyone else fails, I will not.’ Yet I slipped and fell.
And the amazing thing is that Jesus never stopped loving me! Nor will he ever stop loving you! All you have to do is open your hearts to receive that love!” One of the world’s favorite hymns was written by a man named John Newton. Let me tell you about John Newton. He was born in 1725, the son of a Mediterranean sea captain. His mother died when he was seven. He quit school at age 10 and went to sea with his father at age 11. At 18 he was “impressed,” compelled by force to enlist on a British man-of-war. He was en route to becoming an officer when he deserted, was caught, was whipped publicly, and put in irons. Before long, he found himself on a slave ship, almost a slave himself. Eventually he became captain of a slave ship. But then he came under the influence of English evangelist George Whitefield, and finally became a clergyman in the Church of England. He wrote his own epitaph, and to this day his tombstone reads: “John Newton, Clerk, once an infidel and libertine, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour, JESUS CHRIST, preserved, restored, pardoned and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy...”
And what his hymn? “Amazing grace! how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see!”