The Grace to Cry and Wait

“Judas, Peter”

because we are all
betrayers, taking
silver and eating
body and blood and asking
(guilty) is it I and hearing
him say yes
it would be simple for us all
to rush out
and hang ourselves
but if we find grace to cry and wait
after the voice of morning
has crowed in our ears
clearly enough
to break our hearts
he will be there
to ask each again
do you love me                       
              Luci Shaw in  A Widening Light: Poems of the Incarnation

St. Peter's, Gallicantu - Jerusalem ("Where the cock crowed.")

Notice that Peter, the Good Friday denier, has something to say in the reading from the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles that is appointed for the Third Sunday of Easter. 

I realize it's easy to miss. This is after all, the week when the Gospel reading is the story on the road to Emmaus, a favorite among many preachers. And a favorite of mine, to be honest. Such a brilliant Lukan Easter narrative. And so liturgical,unfolding like the liturgy of Word and Sacrament, which gives Episcopalians goosebumps.

Even so, I call your attention to Peter, who is a new man in Acts, a man who has found the grace to cry and wait. And then learned to love again. 

Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed the multitude, "Let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified." Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, "Brothers, what should we do?" Peter said to them, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him." And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, "Save yourselves from this corrupt generation." So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added.                                   

Peter has found his voice. The same Peter who said, “I don’t know the man, I don’t know what you are talking about, you must be mistaken.” That Peter now stands up and raises his voice and says: “let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that Jesus is Lord.” He has discovered that the heart of the matter is about forgiveness, and that with forgiveness new life is possible. 

What does this have to do with us? It suggests two things to me which are really two sides of one Easter coin. First of all, our God is a god of second chances. The whole point of Easter is that death does not get the final word. The whole point of Easter is that even at the grave we make our song. The whole point of Easter is that forgiveness triumphs over vengeance and love defeats fear. 

God does not desire the death of sinners, but that they might turn and live. This is not just a New Testament idea. But it culminates in the Easter story, which more than anything else reveals who God is, from the moment when God first brooded over creation until the day when there will be a new heaven and a new earth and every tear will be wiped away. 

That leads to the second side of the coin, and that is that Peter models for us what true faith in such a God looks like. It is way too easy in this life to get stuck. And when we get stuck, it can lead to despair. Judas hangs himself because he cannot imagine that God will really forgive him or make things new again. And so he is bound up in fear and guilt over what he did, and unable to imagine the possibility of what God may yet do in and through him.

In contrast, what makes Peter a saint is not that he always gets it right. The Scriptures are very clear that he does not get it right very often, in fact. But he trusts that God is a God of second chances, of new beginnings. He trusts that the rooster’s crowing can become a lesson in humility that leads to life, not humiliation that leads to death. He trusts in the grace to cry and wait, knowing that God is love. So the risen Christ asks Peter (and us) "do you love me?" (See John 21:15-22.) Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. Feed my sheep. In other words, the whole law and he prophets hang on two commandments: love God, love neighbor. 

This is not a cliché! In fact it takes us to the very heart of the gospel: we are not called to be perfect. but to live as a forgiven people. Love shows us the way forward. We are called, with God’s help, to repent and return to the Lord when we mess it up, and to begin again. And again, and again, and again. To learn that, and to live it, is to enter into more fully into the Paschal Mystery and to become the “Easter people” whom God is calling us to become.

If we find grace to cry, and wait, after the voice of morning has crowed in our ears clearly enough to break our hearts, he will be there to ask again, do you love me?