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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
The first track on rock-artist Joan Jett’s 1983 album called “Album” was a song she co‑wrote with producer Kenny Laguna titled “Fake Friends” (Wikipedia Artist, Album). As the song title suggests, the song was about people who appear to be your friends but really are not your friends. When the song came out, it resonated with me, in the midst of high school, and it still resonates with me today. I imagine that the song also might resonate with some of you, as it might also resonate with our Lord. As we heard in tonight’s reading of the third section of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ as Drawn from the Four Gospel Accounts, Peter, in some sense, is certainly an example of a friend who in the song’s words, was not “there” when Jesus was “down”, and, we know from elsewhere in Holy Scripture, how Peter came “around” when Jesus got “back up” (Lyrics). Tonight as we reflect on the scene of our Lord’s Passion at the Palace of the High Priest we do so under the theme “Peter’s Denial”.
You may recall, as we heard last week, that Jesus had previously prophesied both of the disciples’ taking offense and being scattered generally and of Peter’s denial particularly, which the others and Peter vehemently insisted would not happen (Matthew 26:31-35; Mark 14:27-31; Luke 22:31-34; John 13:36-38). But by the time that “scene” of our Lord’s Passion in Gethsemane was over, all the disciples had forsaken Him and fled. It was only a matter of time before, as we heard tonight, Jesus’s prophecy came true about Peter’s denying Him.
Whoever compiled the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ as drawn from the Four Gospel Accounts that we heard had to make decisions about including or omitting the different details that each individual Gospel account by Divine inspiration reports. Differences and seeming contradictions among the details—about such things as the number of times the rooster would crow and whose individual challenges to Peter prompted the three denials—those seeming contradictions are just that: only seeming contradictions. The differences can be reasonably harmonized, such as by admitting that Jesus could have made the prophecy more than once and in different forms or that the different evangelists may have recorded the prophecy with different levels of detail (see Arndt, edited by Hoerber and Roehrs, 181-183). Regardless of those details, we get the general idea of Peter’s moving further away from the High Priest’s palace, being challenged even by simple servant girls, and three times denying, with subsequent oaths and even curses.
As we Sunday received the Landry family by transfer, they and all of us who were here were reminded that whoever confesses Jesus before men will be confessed by Jesus before His Father in heaven but whoever denies Jesus before men will be denied by Jesus before His Father in heaven (Matthew 10:32-33; Luke 12:8-9). Those are the two possibilities: our confession or denial (confer John 1:20), with the resulting confession or denial, respectively, by Jesus. We heard Peter deny Jesus before people three times; Peter himself would later refer to the Jews’ denying Jesus before Pilate (Acts 3:13); and we should also think of our own denying Jesus. Like Peter at least, we who have had a previous relationship of faith in Jesus at times deny Him Who is true God in human flesh, either by failing to confess our discipleship, failing to serve our neighbor, or failing to teach truly about Jesus; ultimately we fail completely in respect to the total truth before God (Schlier, TDNT 1:469‑471). As our Office Hymn put it, like our parents’ flesh and blood, we by nature were turned inward from the highest good and constantly denied Him (Lutheran Service Book 596:2).
We heard that after his denials, Peter remembered Jesus’s prophecy and went out, broke down, and wept bitterly. Peter was sorry for his sin, and we know from elsewhere in Holy Scripture that, unlike Judas who was sorry for betraying Jesus but despaired of God’s mercy, Peter combined his sorrow with faith that God would forgive his sin. God truly calls and offers the ability to all people to so combine sorrow over sin with faith that God forgives sin for Jesus’s sake. And, when we so repent, then God truly forgives our sin—our sin of denying Jesus or whatever our particular sin might be. God truly forgives all our sin, for the sake of His Son Jesus.
While Peter was in the outer courtyards denying Jesus, Jesus was inside the Palace of the High Priest confessing the truth about Himself, as the great “I AM” and as the Son of Man Who eventually would be seated at the right hand of God’s power and come with the clouds of heaven. The Jewish leaders wrongly judged Jesus guilty and sentenced Him to death, but Jesus suffered that death on the cross for the sins of the world—all of us who rightly would have been judged guilty and sentenced to death here in time and to torment in hell for eternity, if not for God’s love, mercy and grace for the sake of His Son Jesus’s death on the cross for us. So, we cry out to the Lord, as we did in tonight’s Psalm (38), “Rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in Your wrath” but “Make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation.” And, the Lord answers our cry, giving us the forgiveness of sins through His Word and Sacraments.
Tonight’s Opening Hymn (LSB 914) and Office Hymn mention God’s restoring in us His image that was lost in Adam’s fall and by our own sin. Especially the Office Hymn rightly points to Holy Baptism’s washing away our denial and other sins, and the Office Hymn also calls us to hold onto our Baptisms and to use them as we live as faithful Christians and do good works according to our various callings in life. Included in those good works are our not denying but confessing Jesus as we privately confess to our pastor the sins that trouble us most for the sake of individual Holy Absolution and as we seek His forgiveness also with His Body and Blood in the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar.
My mother was with me the last two nights, as she made her way to Austin for more than one week, and she and I sang through all of Lutheran Service Book’s Lenten hymns that we knew. One of the things that struck me then, which is true of our Closing Hymn tonight (LSB 421), is how the hymn authors often describe our using Christ’s Passion in order to help us resist temptation from the world—and no doubt also from the devil and our own sinful nature. Yet, even so using our meditation on Christ’s Passion in order to try to resist temptation—whether to directly or indirectly deny Jesus—we no doubt still fail, and that is when Christ’s Passion serves its primary purpose of comforting us with the forgiveness of sins that Jesus earned for us on the cross and gives to us through His Word and Sacraments.
There is simply no denying it: as we tonight have reflected on “Peter’s Denial”, we have realized that we also are Jesus’s “fake friends” of a sort, that we also deny Jesus in various ways and, apart from faith in Him, deserve for Jesus to deny us before His Father in heaven. But, God calls and enables us to combine sorrow over such denials and all our sin with faith that God forgives our sin for Jesus’s sake. When we do so combine sorrow and faith, then God forgives our denials and all our other sin. We can endure our own “fake friends” knowing that God is our truest friend, Who cannot deny Himself (2 Timothy 2:11-13).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +