Being Chuck

My favorite part of church each and every Sunday is always the sermon. I know that I’m one of the few, but I really enjoy good speaking.  The sermon is probably not most people’s favorite part (in fact, I’m sure it wouldn’t even make most people’s top 5), but I truly enjoy it. And being at First Christian in Fort Myers, we have a myriad of talented speakers. Each of them is talented and interesting in a different way.

Gary is very conversational and easy to listen to. Pete is energetic, very logical, and straightforward. Tim (who preached this past Sunday, and has been for a while) is self-deprecating, and matter-of-fact. He makes things seem simple or boils them down to their essence.

So, as you can imagine, there aren’t many Sundays that I can recall in the past three and a half years that I haven’t enjoyed the sermon. (Don’t worry Tim, this past Sunday was not an exception to that rule.)

This past Sunday Tim was preaching on leadership, and he tied in part of the story of Jesus & the disciples in the garden of Gethsemane (when Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss).

One of the benefits of working in the capacity I do/did at FCC, is that I usually have the opportunity to hear the sermon (or at least part of it) twice. For some this would not be all that exciting, but like I said before, this is my favorite part.

So this Sunday, the second time I heard the sermon, I picked up on a detail in the story I hadn’t ever noticed before, and my brain kind of ran with it for a while.

Matthew 26:47-54

While he was still speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve, arrived. With him was a large crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests and the elders of the people. Now the betrayer had arranged a signal with them: “The one I kiss is the man; arrest him.” Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” and kissed him.

Jesus replied, “Friend, do what you came for.”

Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.

“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?”

And this is what stuck out to me:

Peter (we read in John’s account that it was Peter) drew his sword and cut off that dude’s ear.

Jesus fixes it (as we read in Luke’s account), but Peter cut the guy’s ear off. He attacked him. And we always just write it off that Peter was defending Jesus, right? I mean, his friend, his teacher, his mentor was being arrested, and arrested unfairly at that. He was betrayed by one of the twelve, a close friend, and Peter was just doing what any hot-headed guy would, right? We see other accounts of Peter over-stepping his bounds, so we just chalk this one up with them.

But here’s what concerns me (and why I suddenly went on a tangent in my head):

Peter attacked an unarmed man.

Of all the men to attack (it said very clearly: a large crowd armed with swords and clubs), Peter chose the one that was unarmed. He attacked a guy named Malchus. ( I can just picture a little man with thick-rimmed glasses, his belt too high on his tunic and a quill-protector in his breast pocket.) Malchus was the servant of the high priest. He was probably the one going along to make sure everything was done as the high priest wanted, perhaps he was carrying the order. He was the “enforcer” without any real power.

I could be wrong about him being unarmed, but I haven’t found anything yet to contradict me.

And so there I am (back to me in church), sitting and listening to Tim tell the story of Peter chopping off Malchus’s ear, and Jesus fixing it, and all I can think about is what a cowardly thing that was to do, what a terrible person Peter was.

He struck one of the few unarmed men there. What a coward! And in conjunction with all the other “foot-in-mouth” type moments that the gospels enumerate (which by the way, I’m sure Peter was really happy his friends included all those), I just kept coming back to Jesus’s statement about Peter in Matthew 16:18…

And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

Really? Seriously? Peter was such a loser. He was a scoundrel. For that matter you can pick any character in the Bible. He/she was a loser. He/she was a scoundrel.

Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Miriam, Deborah, Aaron, Jacob, Gideon, Samson, David, Solomon, Jonah, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, etc.

They’re all scoundrels. But we have taken these people and made them into heroes and saints. We recount their success stories time and time again as if they were mythological creatures.

[Please note the "toy box gang" reference... if you don't know, you can go to youtube and type in "toy box gang." If you still don't get it, never mind, at this point I've lost you...]

Catholics refer to Peter as the first Pope.

Saint Peter. Wow…

Why do we do that? These people were absolute scoundrels. Here’s what Merriam-Webster has to say about them:

Scoundrel: a disreputable person (disreputable? who uses that? apparently Merriam-Webster does.)

Disreputable: not reputable (seriously?!?)

Reputable: enjoying good repute (come on…), held in esteem (okay…)

These people (like you and me) were scoundrels. They were “not the kind of girl you take home to mom.” They screwed up on a regular basis. They were not really hero-type material. They had blemishes and scars and less than reputable histories.

So why do we make them out to be heroes? Why is it that I read their stories and sincerely hope to be like them?

Because they did incredible things.

But how?

Because they allowed God to change them. They allowed God to work in them and through them.

Scoundrel + God = Saint

It’s amazing what God can do with a loser, a scoundrel. And that’s what keeps me going. That’s why Peter is one of my heroes.

It had nothing to do with who Peter was, but it had everything to do with who he knew.

It had nothing to do with what Peter did, but it had everything to do with who did it through him.

Peter is one of my heroes for this reason: despite what he thought he knew or thought he could do, he stepped aside enough (not all the time) to let God do amazing things with his life. He was a hot-head, he spoke out of turn, he acted before he thought, and he always thought he had the answer. But he was able to get out of the way enough that God worked in him and through him to change the world.

Man, I hope I can get out of the way.