Dear Sister,
Someday we will all be given a disease, some diagnosis, even just old age, accident, or another circumstance which will take our lives…unless Jesus returns first. Our family was given a reprieve recently from the last enemy when my younger brother survived a heart attack, a resurrection of sorts.
The true believer in Christ, the one who has received Christ alone through faith alone through grace alone—that person will not die forever. In reality, no one will die forever, but the Christian will be raised to life everlasting. The unbeliever will be raised as well, but will be thrown into the fires of hell and eternal torment, banished forever from the presence of God.
Easter is here. A commemoration of the already and the not yet. His resurrection past. Ours to come.
Let’s look back.
On the first day of the week after that last Passover supper on Thursday, Peter tried to remember all the events leading up to what he was hearing now from Mary and the other women. He remembered well that night when he was humbled, when the Master had removed His outer garment, wrapped a towel around His waist, knelt and washed Peter’s dirty feet as if the Lord were a common servant. If only he, Peter, had thought of doing it first.
That was the night Judas Iscariot had left the supper early, after his feet were washed…The night Jesus had talked about bread being His body and wine representing His blood. It did not make sense. A new covenant ratified by Jesus’ blood?
Fresh in Peter’s mind was his sleepiness in the Garden when he and his close friends could not keep their eyes open from exhaustion, physical and emotional. Jesus had gently chided him for not being able to stay awake with Him for even one hour, warning that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. He had promptly fallen asleep again until Jesus jarred him awake, warning that soldiers and Jewish leaders were coming to take the Lord by force. Judas Iscariot—Judas, their friend and companion for three years, had betrayed the Master. How could this be?
Quickly came his own denials of the One he loved, the One he had formerly declared to be the Christ, the Son of the living God, thoughts which now crushed his soul. For the rest of his life he would remember Jesus’ eyes looking at him when that rooster crowed in the dawning light of Friday. Was it love or sorrow or pity or “I told you you would deny me” when their gaze met? It was enough to make him flee that courtyard and warming-fire to break down and weep bitterly in true shame and sorrow and repentance.
The mock trials and the frenzied chants of the mob screaming, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”, from the same people who had just a week before welcomed Him into town waving palm branches as if He were a king, were etched as a nightmare in his soul. The memory would probably haunt him forever, even after he would come to understand the reason for these things, things Jesus had told him many times, but his hard and stubborn heart would not, could not receive.
His Lord was executed on that macabre method of capital punishment devised by the Romans, the rugged cross of torture. Why? What had Jesus done to deserve this? Peter felt the deep oppression of the three hour darkness in the afternoon of the day and doubtless heard how Jesus had taken His last breath. Dead. Dead. Dead. And now, this Sunday morning, Mary was trying to tell him, on orders from an angel, that the Master’s body, wrapped in cloths and laid tenderly in the grave of a rich man, was gone. The dazzling angelic messenger declared Jesus was risen and to go tell Peter. This seemed an idle tale, but he had to see for himself, so he ran with John, to the burial site. His friend was younger and quicker and was already peering into the cave, the stone having been rolled away just as Mary had asserted, when Peter, panting from his exertion, arrived and burst into the tomb to see what he would see. Grave clothes, but no body. Anyone stealing a dead man surely would not have unwrapped the body from the burial cloths. Where was He?
The Scriptures tell us Peter departed, marveling to himself at what had happened. He had not understood the Old Testament Scriptures nor Jesus’ teachings about the necessity of the resurrection. Perhaps the eyes of his understanding were gradually being enlightened.
Scripture does not tell us all of Peter’s feelings, but with some visualizing and human affinity, we can imagine some of the “if only-s” and “what if-s” going on in his heart. The worst was, no doubt, the fresh memory of those three denials after his flourish of bravado boasting he would never deny the Lord, he would follow Him wherever—
As Jesus is wont to do with His brothers and sisters, He was not finished with blustery Peter. The risen Lord, in His mercy and love and tenderness, appeared to His passionate and fickle friend before appearing to the rest of the disciples. We are not privy to the conversation, but it seems that Peter would have been reassured of the Savior’s love for him—that the relationship was intact. How I would have wanted to see the living Savior’s eyes as He met Peter along the way. What did Jesus say? What did the soul-battered fisherman do? We surely know he did not bitterly weep this time. Perhaps there were tears of great joy.
Peter saw the Lord several more times before that final scene when he craned his neck as long as possible, watching as a cloud swallowed Jesus from his sight. This time he was not desolate. He was not in despair. The Lord was alive forevermore and on a sandy beach over breakfast had given Peter his marching orders to feed Christ’s sheep. The promised Helper would come to fill him with power and boldness instead of fear and weakness.
The next time we see the once vacillating, denying, and fearful Peter, the one who had met the risen Christ in a priceless, face-to-face encounter, we hear him, before a crowd, lifting up his voice with confidence and understanding:
“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves know—-this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised Him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for Him to be held by it…” (Acts 2:22-24)
If Peter were here now he would tell us that because Jesus lives, the grave will not be able to hold us either. Oh, wait, he does speak:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” (1 Peter 1:3-5)
Amen and amen.
He is risen! He is risen indeed!
Rejoicing with you,
Cherry