Denial
Mark 14:26-31, 66-72
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Jesus never denied it. Not when a man possessed by demons called out to him by name, “what do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” He didn’t deny it, but he did order the demon to be silent. Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, that’s what they’d do, shout at him “You are the Son of God!” And he never denied it, but he did order them sternly not to make him known. But it wasn’t just demons and unclean spirits. There was the time that they were all walking together on the way to another town, another place to heal and proclaim the nearness of God’s reign, God’s active power and presence in the world. “Who do people say that I am,” he asked. The accounts varied, but everyone had an opinion. Then he asked them what they thought, what had they seen? “You are the Messiah,” blurted out Peter. Jesus didn’t deny it. But even with his own friends he took the same tone as he had with the unclean spirits and sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. Jesus will do that all on his own. We heard the account of that last week as Jesus either explicitly, or implicitly (depending on how you translate it) affirmed the question of the high priest who asked him if he was the Messiah. The first three weeks of our journey through the passion narrative of Mark have been a little like the beginning of a roller coaster ride. You know what I’m talking about. There’s a nervousness when the safety bar comes down and locks you into place. The brake comes off and you roll slowly to the bottom of the first ascent, the first big hill. It’s there that the chain grabs hold of the car and starts clicking you steadily upward. It’s the slowest part of the ride and yet in some ways the anticipation of the drop that you know is coming makes it the scariest. Once you’ve reached the top and passed the tipping point, your stomach drops and everything accelerates. The prayer in the garden, the kiss of betrayal, even the first blood shed by a slave, it’s all in some ways been prelude to the real violence that concluded last week’s reading as Jesus was blindfolded, spat on, struck and mocked. We’re watching something ugly being unleashed and it’s starting to pick up speed. The question none of his disciples either wanted to or thought to ask on the road months earlier, “Master, who do you say that you are?” Has finally been answered. At first he stayed silent, just has he had ordered all of them to stay silent. But in the end, he does not deny it.
There is an irony that many who claim to follow Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, fall into the same trap that the assembly at the high priest’s house falls into. Namely, they get so caught up in the trappings of their religious traditions- its holy buildings, its holy book- that they fail to recognize the presence of the Holy One of God when he’s right in front of them. In fact, they deny that Jesus is exactly who he says he is so that they won’t have to come to terms with what he has to say about what God does, and more importantly does not care about. But don’t take my word for it, listen to what God says through the prophet Amos, “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies… Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
God makes God’s home with us in Jesus, God’s anointed. As such, more than any of the rest of it, more than the words we say about him or the songs we sing, more than buildings or programs or hierarchies or bureaucracies we build, God is made known to us in Jesus. And Jesus is with us in one another, in the very flesh and blood that he came to save. Which makes Peter’s denial that much more painful.
Because Peter isn’t being asked if Jesus is the Messiah. Peter isn’t being asked if he thinks Jesus is the Son of God. Peter isn’t being asked to take either a theological or political position on Jesus. Peter is simply asked, “weren’t you with him?” Not by the high priest, or the other chief priests, or the elders or the scribes. but by a servant girl, someone with neither the status nor the power to do anything about it. And still he says, “I do not know or understand what you are talking about.” He gaslights her. That isn’t what you saw. That isn’t who I am. You’re crazy. “Even though all become deserters, I will not.” That’s what he told Jesus when Jesus said they’d all desert him. The cock crows and the servant girl follows Peter out into the forecourt and tells the people there that he is one of them. One of who? There’s only Jesus. All the rest have fled. Still, he denies it. But they can hear his accent. They can see that he doesn’t carry himself with the sophistication of someone from the city. He’s not from around here. It’s all too much for him. Peter curses and swears an oath. So much for dying with Jesus. Maybe he’s telling the hard and tragic truth. For all the following. For all the preferential treatment, the trip up the mountain, the time in the garden. For all the back and forth, the meals shared, the multitudes fed and healed, even walking on the water- Peter does not know him. Not really.
Jesus never denied who they said he was. Even when he knew what it meant. Even in the garden in the depths of his grief over what it would mean to drink from this cup. He didn’t deny it. Denial is just re-directed fear. Fear of being caught, or exposed, or rejected. Sometimes it’s the fear of being guilty of something. Other times it’s born of a shame that is not ours to carry but has been placed on us nonetheless. If, as one of the letters to the church puts it, perfect love casts out all fear. The inverse is often also true, that perfect fear in the form of denial casts out all love. It casts out the love we have for another, or the love we have for God, and perhaps most painfully the love we have for ourselves. You wonder, when he hears the cock crow a second time if Peter weeps for Jesus, or the knowing words with which Jesus predicted this very thing, or if Peter isn’t weeping for himself and how much he hates that Jesus knows him far better than he knows himself. Knows the weakness under all the bravado, knows the fear beneath all the bluster. Far better than Peter knows Jesus.
Let me make a confession. Glass houses and throwing stones and all that. It’s not uncommon, when strangers ask me what kind of work I do, for me to say that I work for a non-profit. Not a lie, per se. But certainly not the whole truth. The truth is that the question doesn’t have to come in the crucible of a passion narrative, in the runaway train of swords and clubs, blindfolds and mockery. Despite what some may claim, Christians in the western world are not persecuted. We do not risk retribution or death for the open practice of our faith. I don’t know about anyone else, but my form of denial- saying that I work for a non-profit instead of saying that I’m a Christian pastor, has less to do with Jesus and more to do with the raft of assumptions that get made the second I affiliate myself with his church. On the one hand there are those whose understanding of who Jesus is and what it means to call oneself Christian are far different than my own and they assume I’m in agreement with them and share a vocabulary that I do not. On the other hand, there are those whose only exposure to the Christian faith has been negative (often at the hands of those whose understanding is far different than mine) and they regard me with suspicion, or just think I’m intellectually deficient. The truth is I’m afraid. I’m either afraid of being complicit with actions and statements I find questionable at best. Or, I’m afraid that I’ll be dismissed as some kind of religious nutjob.
The truth is that every one of us- whether we’ll admit it or not- has at one point or another stood where Peter stands and in one way or another have sworn that we do no know him, or his church. The one thing there is no denying is that this is where things stand- Jesus will lose his life because he will not be less than who he is, and in the process he will save not only his own life but ours as well. Whereas Peter, in trying to save himself ends up condemning himself in the process. In Jesus we see how God always is, and in Peter we see how we always are. The sooner we learn that truth, the closer we are to the glory that awaits.