1 John 18:15-27 "I said nothing in secret" Tim Anderson 18/3/18

Transcription

1 1 John 18:15-27 "I said nothing in secret" Tim Anderson 18/3/18 How do you like being reminded of your failures? Charles Colson was a senior advisor to President Nixon. He was called Nixon's dirty tricks man. Then he went to jail after the Watergate scandal. From then on every time a police car drove past, he would be reminded of his failure. Our passage today is the story that got Peter the tag as the world s most famous coward. Was there ever a morning when Peter woke up and wasn t reminded of his cowardice? Cockadoodledoo. This is the story that Peter remembered every time the cock crowed. It s a story of Peter and John. John doesn t actually tell us that he is there. The story begins, Simon Peter and another disciple were following Jesus. I wonder who the other disciple was? There are no prizes for guessing. It was standard practice in the ancient world to obscure yourself in a story. Modesty forbids blowing your own trumpet. So right through his gospel, John modestly hides his own part in proceedings with the cloak on anonymity. But John is there. He s at the last supper in chapter 13. Sitting next to Jesus. And Peter says to him, Ask Jesus who it is who will betray him. 1

2 2 When he s sitting next to Jesus like that, he calls himself, the disciple whom Jesus loved. He s also there standing at the foot of the cross. When Jesus says to Mary, Dear woman, here is your son. And to John, Here is your mother. The anonymous disciple. The one whom Jesus loved. And he s there right at the end of John s gospel. When Jesus says to Peter. Feed my sheep! It seems like John and Peter hung around together. Anyway, after Jesus told Peter to feed his sheep, he also told him about the death he would die. And Peter said to Jesus, What about him? And Jesus said, If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? In other words, Mind your own business, Peter. And as time went on in the early church, the rumour started to spread that John would not die until Jesus returned. Especially because John lived to such an old age. It was probably 90AD when he was writing the book of Revelation on Patmos. That would have put John in his late 70s. A good age in the first century. Anyway, the point is that John hides his presence in his gospel for modesty s sake. Mark does the same thing in his gospel. 2

3 3 Mark is the young man who gets his clothes torn off in the garden of Gethsemane. They re anonymous. But here John is with Peter, at Jesus first trial before Annas. And John has some contacts. He s allowed in. While Peter has to wait outside. The guards on the door wouldn t let him through. So John comes back and says, It s OK, let him in. He s with me. And the girl on the door said, You re not one of his disciples too are you? You can probably picture the roll of the eyes. And the implied question, How pathetic would you have to be, to follow around this homeless religious weido? And Peter replied, I am not. I can remember when all my friends were turning 21. You do the rounds of all the parties. Now I don t drink beer. It s not a religious conviction. The Bible never says don t drink alcohol. It only says don t get drunk. But I just don t like the taste of beer. I never have. Including when I was 21. I remember going to a friend from primary school, Hamish s 21 st. Everyone was having a beer. So I had a glass of beer too. 3

4 4 At least until I could find a table to put my glass down on when no one was looking. I just didn t want anyone to be asking the question, in their mind or out loud, You re not one of those religious killjoy types are you? We crave the approval of other people who we can see, much more than we crave the approval of the God we can t see. That s true isn t it? We crave the approval of other people we can see, much more than we crave the approval of the God we can t see. I hadn t seen much of Hamish between grade 4 and his 21 st birthday. I hardly knew anyone at the party. But I was still prepared to adjust my behaviour in a way I didn t like to fit in. Now there was nothing wrong with having the glass of beer. But there s a weakness in deciding to do it. The next time the issue might really have mattered. It s not much different with Peter. He d never met the woman on the door before. Otherwise he wouldn t have had to wait outside in the first place. But he was more worried about what she thought of him, than he was worried about being loyal to Jesus. Peter knew Jesus was the Christ. He had known Jesus love by living with him for three years. But at that moment, he was more worried about what a woman he d never met thought of him. Was Peter scared they might arrest him too? I don t think so. Otherwise he probably wouldn t have been in the courtyard in the first place. He wasn t scared. He was just weak. Too worried about what strangers thought of him to be true to his Lord. 4

5 5 If you look in the mirror, you will see Peter staring back at you. How do I know? He stares back at me. I m a minister, so people often feel like they have to justify their sinful disobedience to me. I don t bring the subject up, they do. It s not like I m challenging them or something. It happened to me after a funeral. A lady was chatting to me and she said, I don t go to church but I live a Christian life. She wanted me to tell her that her sinful disobedience is OK. Well I wasn t going to do that. But I didn t have the courage to do what I should have done. So I picked up some other thread of the conversation and kept going. I should have said to her, That s disobeying God. Did you realise that? But at that moment, I didn t want to face a bit of discomfort in a conversation. I loved my comfort more than I loved Jesus. I was more worried about what a woman I had never met thought of me, than my Lord who hung on a cross instead of me. It s in speaking that our courage most often fails us. Most of us can endure quite a bit of physical pain if we have to. If we have a splitting headache, we ll battle on through and get the job done. But when it comes to speaking with people, we can t face a tiny bit of discomfort. It was like that for Peter. 5

6 6 Look how brave he was in the garden of Gethsemane. A battalion of armed guards there, he drew his sword and cut of Malchus ear. Peter was ready to go down fighting a loyal defender of his Lord. But put him up against a servant girl in conversation, the challenge is too much for him. You probably won t get too many sneering questions asking whether you are a follower of Jesus in Australia today. You might, but it doesn t happen all that often. But you might get a question like this. You re not one of those born again Christians are you? Now you could be a coward like Peter and say, No, I m an Anglican actually. or you could be loyal to Jesus and say, Jesus actually said that anyone who follows him must be born again. And I follow him. So I ve been born again. Or you might hear a comment like this, My grandchildren were baptised at Holy Trinity and while they aren't going to church anywhere at the moment, they have good stable jobs and their relationships are working out. You could be a coward like Peter and say, That's good to hear your grand children's lives are going well. Or you could be loyal to Jesus and say, It's so sad that your grand children have got many things right and are missing out on the most important thing. I'm sure you are praying for their salvation. Would you like me to pray with you for them right now? It s easy to be a coward. But you ll regret it when you hear the cock crow. Peter denied Jesus three times in our reading. 6

7 7 But the story is broken up by the high priest s questioning of Jesus. Now if you are an alert reader, you will have noticed in verse 19 it says, The high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching. And in verse 24 it says, Then Annas sent him still bound to Caiaphas the high priest. You might be wondering, Who is the high priest? Is it Annas who was questioning him in this encounter? Or is it Caiaphas? The truth is that Annas was the one whom the Jews respected as high priest, and his son in law Caiaphas was the one whom the Romans had installed as high priest that year. And they rotated the office each year so that no one Jewish person got too powerful. But Annas was appointed as high priest for life in the Jewish religion. And the Jews considered him to still be high priest, even though as a conquered people, they had to behave as though Caiaphas was the high priest. So that explains that little difficulty. But the reason John has sandwiched this part of Jesus trial, right in the middle of Peter s denials, is because he wants us to contrast the courage of Jesus with the weakness of Peter. Annas questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching. But you won t find a word in Jesus answer that could implicate his disciples. Earlier in John s gospel, Jesus had prayed to his Father, I have not lost any of those you gave me. And still Jesus was concerned to protect them and keep them safe. And as far as Jesus teaching was concerned, 7

8 8 he didn t give Annas an outline of the Sermon on the Mount, no, he said, I ve done all my teaching in public, ask the people who heard me. Like he often did, Jesus answers the situation that is before him, rather than the direct question he was asked. Jesus was open and transparent in his teaching. He taught the crowds and anyone who wanted to come along could come. He didn t hatch any private plots behind closed doors. By being dragged before a hastily convened court in the middle of the night, you could be excused for thinking Jesus was some sort of a terrorist figure. But Jesus has merely been an itinerant preacher. Honest and straightforward about what he taught. Grilling him about his teaching is just a dishonest charade. It s trying to make out there was something sinister when there was nothing sinister. He didn t preach rebellion or civil disobedience. And so Jesus doesn t play along with their charade. So they slap him one across the face. But Jesus isn t cowed. He doesn t capitulate. in fact his response is to challenge them to come up with a real charge that would stand up in a real court. Jesus response makes them angry, because they don t like having pointed out just how corruptly they re behaving. Jesus behaviour is calculated to provoke them by confronting them with their sin. Jesus is a great contrast to Peter. Peter is like the lion from the Wizard of Oz. 8

9 9 Jumping at shadows. Jesus is calm and unflappable. Unwilling to give 1 cm to defuse the situation. Incapable of being bullied. Ready to do the job his Father had given him. What s the message in this for us? Be like Jesus not like Peter? It would be nice if we could. But the whole reason that Jesus went to the cross is that we couldn t do it for ourselves. He went there for us. It wasn t just he took the punishment for our sin on his shoulders because for us to take it would have hurt. He took the punishment for our sin on his shoulders, because only he would be raised up again. Only Jesus was a perfect sacrifice. Only he could bear the guilt of the world, and when he had finished have God the Father say, justice has been done, the penalty has been paid, and now my Son must be raised back to life. So we can try to be courageous like Jesus not a coward like Peter. And we live this side of Pentecost, so we have God s Spirit living inside of us. We should be able to stand firm and be true to our Lord better than Peter. But the truth is, we re more like Peter than Jesus. Even with the Holy Spirit living in me, I m still more like Peter than Jesus. That s no fault of the Holy Spirit. It s just me being a sinner. 9

10 10 But the great news for us in this story is this When did Jesus love Peter? He loved him before, during and after he denied him. Jesus didn t say, I was going to die on the cross for this bunch of losers, but this one says he doesn t know me. Well if he doesn t know me, I m going back to heaven. Blow this dying on the cross business. They fall asleep when I want them to pray for me. The run away when there s the first sign of trouble. And now they say they don t even know me. I ve had it. I m out of here. No. Jesus knew that Peter would deny him. He told Peter it would happen before hand. Luke tells us that Jesus looked at Peter when he denied him. He watched it happen. And he loved him the whole time. And he restored him to exercise an important ministry in his church later on. The good news in this story is this when we are weak and cowardly, redemption is possible. One of the Christian leaders God used the most to build his church in the 20 th C, was a guy named Charles Colson. He s an American so they called him Chuck. Charles Colson was imprisoned after the Watergate scandal that ended the presidency of Richard Nixon. He became a Christian in jail. And he served mightily in God s church. He began prison fellowship, 10

11 11 a ministry that has enabled thousands of other prisoners to come to faith. He broadcast a daily radio segment, which was played all over the world. He was a prolific author. Peter s story and Charles Colson s story are an encouragement for us. God never gives up on us. He is never further than a prayer away. 11