April 12, 2015

For the Love of Peter

Passage: Mark 16:1-8

For the love of Peter – Mark 16:1-8

 

Perhaps it is hard to imagine life without Easter because the experience of Easter has been with us our whole life or – at the very least – as long as we have had faith in God.  But there was a time when Easter didn’t even exist.  True enough, there was no celebration called Easter before the events that we have remembered this past week but even in the days of the early church there was no set date for the celebration of Easter as the early church saw every Sunday as a continuation of Easter.  However, as time went by, the need to establish a fixed time to focus on the events of Easter grew and so the church universal decided on a celebration in the spring.  This was influenced by the proximity of the original event to the Jewish feast of Passover.  But in time there was a division within the church with the Eastern Church celebrating the event at the traditional time of Passover while the Western Church decided on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

 

And as with other major days in the Christian calendar, Easter as a fixed celebration did not take hold until the 4th century and even then it did not find its final place in the calendar until the 8th century.  And so the church found in the cultures that surrounded it a word that drew upon the tradition of celebrating the rebirth of life in the world with the coming of spring. Like the dawn of a new day and the awakening of the world from slumber, the name chosen would be Easter.

 

But let’s get back to that time before there even was an Easter.  Imagine if you will that Jesus died on the cross and there was no resurrection.  Certainly the teaching of Jesus would have had a profound impact on the faith community of the Jewish people and many of them may have continued to teach and preach His message. But there would have been a great hole in the hearts and lives of the people. They would have been left wondering about the miracles they had witnessed, the raising of Lazarus from the dead.  The disciples themselves would have been left with even more questions about that Passover meal at which Jesus washed their feet and spoke of the blood of the Passover becoming His blood.

 

For Peter, the absence of Easter would have left him with a sick feeling in his stomach and heart as he would be left with the image of His Lord and Master standing alone.  Peter, whose brave words turned to words of denial not once, not twice but three times just as Jesus had predicted.  Peter’s bravery in the garden turned to cowardice in the courtyard. Yet who could blame him?  He had followed this carpenter’s son from Nazareth through thick and thin but now he was faced with the might of Rome and the intense displeasure of the recognized leaders of the faith.  If only he could believe that the promise of Jesus would come true, he might have dared to stand with Him.

 

But Peter – like the rest – had come to believe that all the bravado from Jesus was just that.  He had come to believe that there would be no resurrection for he had heard from John and Mary that he had died. Joseph of Arimathea had taken the body from the cross and buried it in a tomb. A rock had covered the opening.  There was no tomorrow!

 

But when the women arrived at the tomb to anoint the body, they found that the tomb had been opened and that it was empty. A messenger from God gives them the news that Jesus is not dead but that He is alive.  The women are to go and tell the disciples and Peter to expect a visit from Jesus.  And so they go to tell them.

 

But why single out Peter?  There are perhaps many reasons for this.  Peter is the boldest of the disciples. He is one of – if not the most senior of the disciples.  He is the one who refused to be washed by Jesus then wanted the full deal.  He was the one who asked the most questions and yet who trusted Jesus the most. He was also the only one to dare to say that he would follow Jesus to the end and then denied even knowing Him.  More than even any of the others, Peter needed to hear the message that Jesus was alive.  More than even any of the others, Peter needed to be reassured that his trust in Jesus was not ill-founded.  More than any of the others, Peter needed to know that Jesus had forgiven him and that he had not lost the trust of His Lord and Master.

 

Without the resurrection, the crucifixion and the words of Jesus at that last Passover would have been hollow empty events devoid of any real purpose or meaning. But with the resurrection, those events made perfect sense.  Peter and the others could now begin to understand so much more of what Jesus had told them in parable and in action.  God had broken into the world in a way never before imagined. He had lived the life of His people and He had allowed Himself to suffer on their behalf.  Perhaps His death would only have been remembered by those who believed but His resurrection would remind believers and non-believers alike that this was no ordinary man.

 

In the resurrection God is telling all who would hear it that He desires nothing more than to open the door that stands between us and to invite us to come in and be at peace.   He did this not for His sake but for ours. He did it for the love of Peter and for the love of us!

AMEN.