To Be
Lost, To Be Found, To Know the Difference
Fourth in a Lenten series from Luke
March 10, 2013
© 2013 Robert J. Elder, Pastor
Luke 22:31-34, 54-62
Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has
demanded to sift all of you like wheat,
but I have prayed for you that your own
faith may not fail;
and you,
when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.
Just
when Peter thought he was most in touch, most in sync, most able to stand next
to Jesus, to defend him to the death, just then, at his point of greatest
self-assumed strength, just at that very moment he was lost. This man, who was the first to raise his hand during the pop
quiz when Jesus asked who they would say he was, who was first out of the gate
with, “You are the Messiah!” This is the one who three times said he did not
even know Jesus. There’s a lesson in there for us in there somewhere if we will
attend to it. He was lost.
On the other hand, just when Peter went to weep in
bitterness, just when he could see that his strength had not saved his master,
had not even made a dent, just when he saw he was helpless to do anything of
significance, even unable to speak up for his own acquaintance with Jesus, just
then he was found. “I don’t even know
the man,” Peter declared, voice shaking with the lie. This coming from the man
Jesus once called, “The Rock.” Some rock...!
Yet Jesus had prayed for him, interceded for him. And we all know Peter went on
to become one of the bravest proclaimers of the faith. He was found again.
To be lost,
to be found, to know the difference.
Sometimes we are lost and don’t even know it. Just
when we think we are strongest, most capable, most in touch with the will of
God, just then we may find reminders of our weakness, of our incapacity to
stand by Jesus on the pedestals of our own strength and merit.
In a backward way, we love Peter for his failure,
don’t we? More often than we’d like to admit, our own overconfident
declarations of faith are also overstated. “I believe...” we say, unreservedly,
in church, along with everyone else, as the Apostles’ Creed is recited. Easy
enough to say in here, isn’t it, even though most of us really just more or
less mutter it? But back at work, back in the neighborhood, back amid the
hustle and bustle and jockeying for position, the elbowing for recognition,
when there’s a price to pay, we turn into Peter: “No, I’ve heard of Jesus, of
course, but can’t say that I really know
him.”
Before we are too hard on Peter, we might recall that
for all the tragedy and pain of his denial of Jesus, it is only Peter who made
it to the courtyard. He followed Jesus at least that far, which is more than
the others could say, apparently. He may be like us in this way too, when we
feel, perhaps, that even if we are not perfect, at least we are ahead of
others. Still, even that action turned into defeat. Faith, it turns out, is not
a contest to see who gets there first or farthest. The culpability for the
betrayal and denial of Jesus is cumulative, each little misstep, each failure
to understand, each refusal to follow, all add weight to the outcome, until
finally we are left with Paul saying, “All have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God.”[1] All. No wiggle room there.
I think one of the amazing features of the Bible that
we share is that it consistently looks at our heroes with unblinking
truthfulness. In Peter’s own time, the literature of the Roman world was filled
with stories of gods and heroes, while ordinary people were all but invisible,
mere background figures or canon fodder for the stories of the great and glorious.
Not so in the Bible, especially here in the New Testament. Here, Simon Peter,
unarguably one of the heroes of the faith, is clearly nothing more than a lowly
fisherman from Galilee, whose language or dress or body odor gave his humble
origins away amid the Jerusalem folks sitting around the fire in the high
priest’s courtyard that night. An ordinary man. In terms of the literature of
his own day, his story would never have even been written down. If we had been
writing one of the gospels, we would likely have been tempted to try to clean
up the story of Peter, the faith ancestor of all of us here. But no, the Bible
is honest. It tells the whole story of who we are. Yet it is the very
ordinariness, the very thought that Peter was as we are, an ordinary person who
found himself in an extraordinary circumstance, this is what makes the story so
convicting.
Just like Peter, sometimes, for all our good
intentions and resolutions, we fall away, we fall short, we deny and betray,
and we are lost. “Alcoholics Anonymous teaches its members to introduce
themselves, “I’m Jane,” or “I’m John, and I’m an alcoholic, but by the help of
a higher power, a recovering one.” We love Peter for embodying [what we know we
are]. For most of us are quite ordinary in our sin. “No redemption would do
people like us any good that required us to be heroic. We need a higher power.”[2]
Sometimes we are lost.
And sometimes we are found.
Sometimes we are found, though we have no sense
within us that we are worth finding. In times when we weep bitter tears of
resignation and failure, we wonder how we can go on, how we can face the world.
It is when this picture of Peter’s weeping misery is before me that I am so
captivated by Jesus’ prayer of intercession for him, even in anticipation of his
failing, even as Jesus knew Peter was bound to fail, even so, he prays for him,
intercedes for him.
Throughout the gospels, Peter fills the role of the
“Everyman” disciple. He says things, does things, asks things, makes mistakes
about things that represent the ways all disciples are in relationship with
Jesus: faltering, stumbling, sometimes falling. It is no different for any of
us than it is here in the gospel.
It is interesting that in the same breath, as Jesus
made a prayer for unfailing faith for Peter, in that breath he prayed also for
Peter’s return when he failed, and commissioned him with his prayer to
strengthen others who follow. While Peter was on the road to being lost, was
destined to deny his Lord that very night, even then Jesus was praying him back
into relationship, was finding him again.
Probably no hymn in the world is more well known than
“Amazing Grace.” Probably even those who claim to be totally unmusical, those
who may think they have never memorized a piece of music, would surprise
themselves when it comes to this song. See if you know it...
[Sing it
a capella....] Amazing grace, how sweet the sound...(now you...) I once was
lost, but now am found...(now you...). See? We just know this hymn, it is a sort of hymn Peter could have written. In
some ways, it is amazing that it is so well-loved, considering the confession
that is called for in the very first line from anyone singing it: “Amazing
grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch
like me...”
A wretch? Is that what I am? I remember back in the
1970s hearing this hymn sung with a less offensive word used there, something
like “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a soul like me.” Aw, isn’t
that sweet? Jesus saved my unwretched
little soul. We don’t live at a time when we go around calling people wretches,
much less ask them to think of themselves that way, it might do harm to their
self-esteem or something. No one likes to think of themselves in this way. I
remember singing this hymn across the chancel from my colleague in my church in
Texas, and mouthing “...that saved a wretch like you!” to him. He got tickled and started laughing so hard he
couldn’t sing for the rest of the hymn.
Do we have problems referring to ourselves with a
word like “wretch?” Of course we do, who wants to be a wretch?! It offends my
self-image! I’m a pretty good person, certainly not a wretch. Thinking this
way, we sound for all the world like Peter, puffing himself up to size in order
to tell Jesus he would defend him to the death. Yet just when we think we are
most found, least wretched, that is when we are lost. It is one of the
paradoxical truths of the gospel. The dictionary says a “wretch” is “a
miserable person, one who is profoundly unhappy or in great misfortune.” Just
as Peter declared his willingness “to go with [Jesus] to prison and to death,”
at that very moment when he thought he was the strongest, he was at that moment
on the cusp of being the most lost. He was wretched, even if he didn’t know it,
and we are no different.
Many of you probably know the story of “Amazing
Grace.” The author, John Newton, was a new believer around the year 1750, yet
after coming to faith he had continued to command an English slave ship.
Eventually he saw that any role in the slavery trade was antithetical to the
Christian faith, and he left the sea for good. He studied for the ministry, and
for the last 43 years of his life preached the gospel in Olney and London. At
82, Newton said, “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things, that I
am a great sinner (he was lost), and that Christ is a great Saviour (he was
found).”
I once was lost, but now am found. He knew the
difference after a lifetime lived between being lost and found. These are words
that could well have been written by Peter. Indeed, I suspect that, given the
right circumstances, they could be written by us all.
To be lost, to be found, to know the
difference. The difference is in the one who does the finding. There is nowhere
we can go that is beyond the finding power of Christ, who prays for us: “I have
prayed for you that your own faith may not fail...” Jesus prays for us. We were
lost, but we are found. Thanks be to God.
