Luke 22 tells the occasion of the Last Supper and the betrayal of Jesus in the garden on the Mount of Olives.
After the last supper, Jesus goes into the garden and asks of his disciples, “Pray, lest you enter into temptation.” In his own contemplations, Jesus bears the weight of knowing what will soon transpire, and seeking not to run from his fate and necessary death, Jesus prays, “Father, if thou wilt, remove this chalice from me: but yet not my will, but thine be done.”
Here, even as the Son of God, we see Jesus too holds dread for the pain and tortures of the flesh. He seeks, should God will, that God may remove the burden and pain that will bear across his shoulders for the sake and sins of all man; but should God deny such prayer, Jesus ends his prayer “but not my will, but thine be done.”
Perceiving already his coming pains from torture, Jesus’ body strains, and his sweat turns to blood; and when he breaks from his prayer and premonitions, Jesus finds his disciples asleep, unaware to the torment he has endured while they rest in peace. He begs, “Why sleep you? Arise, pray, lest you enter into temptation.”
After this, Jesus is betrayed by Judas.
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Though none of us will ever bear the burdens, pains, and tortures of Jesus; life and God give us all our own crosses, pains, and trials to bear. When in, or facing their impending happenings, we too can be hit with fear, dread, desire to remove and avert the cross and trials we must bear.
Unlike Jesus, we can run from God, run from our crosses, avoid the pains and torments of our necessary trials; but when we do, we divorce ourselves from the spirit of God, and the aversion of pain leaves an absence of purpose and joy—for we have failed to even face our trial that tempers and enforces our Faith and Spirit.
To run from our cross is not to be saved. To run from our cross is to lose and fail in our trial, to live a little longer in degree of comfort that leads to know enrichment and elevation of our spirit and communion with God and a Greater Purpose.
Sometimes, pain, trial, and tribulations are necessary in life. It’s our tribulations, and the crosses that we bear, that raise us high: even when our elevation looks an feels like Hell.
Perceptions of the immanent are all part of the trial.
And often—just as the disciples of Jesus—when we envision and are in the midst of our greatest trials and tribulations, our greatest pains, those around us may have no idea to our torments in minds and hearts.
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In this chapter, the prophesy of Simon Peter’s denial of Christ is told. At the Last Supper, Jesus speaks, “Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that ye may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not; and thou, being once converted, confirm thy bretheren…I say to thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, till thou thrice deniest that thou knowest me.”
When Jesus is taken, and the passions and enmity of the world are turned against Jesus and his disciples, Peter is identified and called out as being a disciple of Jesus. Three times, Peter denies he is a disciple of Christ:
“He denied him, saying: Woman, I know him not. And after a little while, another seeing him, said: Thou art also one of them. But Peter said: O Man, I am not. And after the space, as it were of one hour, another certain man affirmed, saying: Of a truth, this man was also with him; for he is also a Galilean. And Peter Said: Man, I know not what thou sayest. And immediately, as he was yet speaking, the cock crew. And the Lord turning looked on Peter. And Peter remembered the words of the Lord, as he had said: Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.”
To me, this is one of the most powerful passages in the Gospels. It is not a parable. It is a happening. It is not a miracle, it is simple telling of truth.
In life, God designs into us necessary and essential failures. What we do, and make, of our failures determines what we become and our enduring effects in our living life and beyond.
Just as Judas, Peter failed Jesus. One betrayed, the other denied, both permitted and enabled the crucifixion and murder of Jesus. Both were predestined to commit their failings in order for the Greater Happening to live. What each did after, more so than their failing—which God designed and destined—tell more of the Spirit and Faith of each than their actions in failing.
Judas killed himself. Peter created the Church and—just as Jesus told in prayer to Peter at the Last Supper—“once being converted, confirm(ed his) bretheren.”
In life, when we fail—what do we do next? When confronted undeniably, and made nakedly aware to failings and imperfections within us, what do we do next? Do we let failures and awareness to imperfections—awareness that we are men in need of God; that we are human, fallible, will never become Gods ourselves—consume and destroy us, or do we use our awareness and employ the humility and lessons in failing to advance and perform the greater God Purpose we are to take from them?
I believe our weaknesses, failings, and imperfections are ever as much gifts from God as those the world calls talents. It is our weaknesses and failings—not our strengths—that keep us humble, return our eyes to God when our own hubris allows ourselves to look and focus elsewhere. It is our times of failure, the pain and lowliness we live in such moments, that permit us to more greatly empathize with all in this world who—as we all do in moments and seasons of life—struggle with bearing their own tribulations and cross. It is our weaknesses and failings that remind us that man is interdependent, and we all need others. One’s own weakness is tempered, aided, lessened, when paired with the gifts, talents, and empathies of another. Our weaknesses, not our strengths that distinguish, that keep us close and man a creature of community and not pure autonomy that is isolation.
To the weaknesses and failures God designs within us, what do we make of them? Paul had his thorn of the flesh. I believe it was his thorn that gifted him the empathy and humanness that allowed him to speak in both understanding and guidance to all the beginning churches of the ancient world. It was his thorn of the flesh, that allowed him to understand, and then guide into correction, so many of the struggles other beginning communities of faith worked through. I believe it was Paul’s own lived sins, and raw awareness of the forgiveness and mercy Jesus and God imparted on him, that gifted him the Spirit of forgiveness and atonement that kept united, rather than disintegrated, the factions of the beginning Church.
This Spirit of love, mercy, and forgiveness is no less necessary today as it was then; and only when we confront our own sins and failures—and too the raw and amazing powers of forgiveness and mercy afforded to us—are we able to live and advance the same in spirit and actions lived for others.
To me, this is why Jesus’ telling of Peter’s necessary failure—something Peter himself cannot comprehend or see until it happens—is so powerful.
God gives us all trials. God designs in all of us failings. God permits Satan to sift us as wheat so that, by our trial, we may act after to affirm, advance, and live our greater Faith and Spirit after the encounter restores in us humility, and a soul fixed to the greater service of God and his prayers of purpose for us.
To me, this awareness of failures being designed parts of spiritual trial and test for after-affirmations—opportunities to advance God’s will in ways we, before, could never have imagined—is what makes this passage and failure of Peter so powerful.
What do you believe?