Sermons
1st April 2007 - Palm Sunday
The Passion story is one of great drama, and we read it dramatically on Palm Sunday and Good Friday to help us imagine what it might have felt like to be partakers in these scenes of high tension and pathos. Watching Jesus instructing his disciples at the table of the Passover, watching him in the garden in agony while the feckless disciples go to sleep, the noise and bustle of the arrest and trial. Pilate getting frustrated with the wretched Jews again with their incredible religious laws and disputes, and the baying mob, utterly unable to realise what they are about, and Jesus finally surveying from the cross the world that has lifted him up.
And running through the story the character of St Peter, at once hapless and heroic, favoured follower and weak-kneed denier of his Lord. I would like this morning to offer a few thoughts about the character of St Peter in the Passion story, but I need to tell another story first.
When I was at university in Edinburgh, every Easter there was a very popular performance of one Bach’s great passions at St Giles’ Church. For many years the tenor singing the evangelist’s part was Peter Pears, but sometimes there was also another tenor - a very fine one indeed called Wilfred Brown, he made very famous recordings of Finzi and other composers and was known for his beautifully bright and lyrical tone and the ease with which he ascended to the top end of his register. The evangelist’s part in the passions of course is very demanding and quite high and dramatic, in the St Matthew Passion there is one particular passage which Bach sets very beautifully for the evangelist, the moment that Peter goes out to weep bitterly over his betrayal of Jesus. On the words for Peter going out, und ging heraus, the evangelist has to climb up to a high b, the highest note he has to sing in the whole piece, and then he sings a long sliding line ranging up and down for Peter’s weeping; it is tremendously difficult and tremendously effective when achieved. Musicians in Edinburgh tell the story of the night that Wilfred Brown didn’t quite make it; at the moment of highest drama and difficulty his voice let him down, he cracked on the top note and only just managed to recover himself for the long melisma on the weeping words und weinet bitterlich. The rest of his performance was superb as always. Now, after each performance a party was held but that night Wilfred Brown could not be found, and no-one would have known where he had gone that night if he hadn’t been seen long after the party had finished, sitting on the top of the circular route bus going round and round the centre of Edinburgh, weeping over his failure.
The emotion he felt was surely not just that of the disappointed performer, he was surely moved that on the very words which describe the great apostle Peter’s betrayal, his failing of his Lord for whom he had said he was ready to die, on those very words Wilfred Brown had been unfortunate enough to drop below his usually high standards.
Despite his failure Peter is actually a very attractive character in the passion; he is easy for us to associate with - his eagerness and then his falling away, he is sure he will not betray his master ‘Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!’ And then in the garden all he has to do is stay awake and watch with the sons of Zebedee, yet Jesus’ finds them slumbering. Could you not watch with me one hour?
And after Jesus is arrested it is such a haunting scene: Peter following at a distance, keeping out of sight, and Jerusalem can be cold at Passover time so we see Peter furtively joining a group warming themselves at the fire, until he is spotted as a follower of the Galilean. Spotted by a mere slip of a thing, a servant girl ‘This man was also with him’.
Peter’s denial is the ultimate assertion I the gospel that our weakness and sin do not prevent us from being called to follow Jesus. It is when Peter has acknowledged his utter emptiness, his complete denial of his Master that Jesus turns to him and invites him to turn. And despite Peter being so recognisably human, it is Peter upon whom Jesus founds the church against which the gates of hell will not prevail, it is Peter whom Jesus in John’s gospel instructs to tend his sheep, to feed his flock. It is this most human of disciples upon whom Jesus places such huge trust and to whom he gives such authority. This is not an invitation to us to follow Peter in his betrayal of Jesus, but it is a sure indication that the church which Jesus founds upon him is to be made up of sinful failing humans who through the mystery of God’s presence and direction enable the proclamation of the kingdom to be heard in the world. It is a sure sign that the church - though made up of those sinful failing humans - is also a divine body, one that is given authority as Peter is given authority. As members of that body we also are invested with authority and responsibility to tend the sheep and to feed the flock, like Peter there will be times in our own lives when we deny our Lord, times when we follow at a distance keeping out of sight in case we are identified as his followers, and times when - try as we might - we end up slumbering instead of watching. Peter’s role in the passion should give us encouragement in those times that though we are inconstant, Jesus is constant, though we turn aside, he does not, though we forsake him he will not forsake us. In times when like Wilfred Brown we feel we have performed so poorly that all we want to do is sit alone and weep, we should remember Jesus’ words to Peter in Luke’s gospel ‘Simon, Simon, behold Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that you faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren’.
Praise God for calling the all too human Peter to follow Jesus, may we learn from his example that Our Lord will never turn us away because of our failings.