3-21-22<\/p>\n
We can think about Easter all year, and we should. But the Lenten season invites us, makes us ready. The Truth of Jesus\u2019s incarnation\u2026 His teachings\u2026 His miracles and healings\u2026 His willingness \u2013 or determination \u2013 to be sacrificed for the sin-penalties we deserve\u2026 His arrest, imprisonment, and torture\u2026 His betrayal\u2026 His suffering and crucifixion\u2026 His death\u2026 His Resurrection\u2026 His Ascension: there are things that should be true to us on any and every day of the year.<\/p>\n
I mean, Easter is not just for Easter; Christmas is not just for Christmas. The importance and relevance of every moment of Jesus\u2019s life, and the Gospel, should burn to us and through us, every moment of our own lives.<\/p>\n
So if we contemplate the details of Holy Week and Easter during Lent, it is a good thing. We can do the same thing around, say, May Day or Hallowe\u2019en too; but here we are. I often find myself imagining what it would have been like to be one of the Disciples. The streaming series The Chosen<\/em> \u2013 the fellowship of Jesus and His followers \u2013 is doing a good job of that.<\/p>\n It has always amused me when skeptics and agnostics say that they would find it easier to believe in Christ if only<\/em> they could see Him; have some tangible proof that He lived and was the Son of God. Why am I amused? Because the Disciples themselves \u2013 never mind the multitudes who were taught, fed, and healed \u2013 lived every day with Christ. They saw Him walk on water, feed multitudes, heal the sick, raise people from the dead; more things than books could hold. For three and a half years! Day after day, week after week!<\/p>\n \u2026 and yet when Jesus was in jeopardy \u2013 as He even foretold, just days before \u2013 these Disciples fled. They scattered like dry leaves on a windy street. And we think that we would act differently?<\/p>\n I have further guessed that compared to the beatings, torture, whipping, thorns pressed down on His head and nails hammered through his wrists and feet\u2026 that the worst suffering felt by our Savior was the betrayal of His friends, their abandonment of Him.<\/p>\n We fool ourselves \u2013 and dare to fool God \u2013 if we believe that we would have been any different than the Disciples in those days before the Crucifixion.<\/p>\n \u201cDifferent\u201d is the operative word. Let us understand that Jesus chose the Disciples because they were not different. They had different talents and backgrounds, yes; but they were ordinary people \u2013 no celebrities, no dignitaries \u2013 and they were no different than you and me<\/em>. So we can identify. We can learn from their experiences, admirable and cowardly and… human.<\/p>\n A great lesson, drawn from the actions of the Disciples that week, is presented by the different choices of two of them, Judas and Peter.<\/p>\n Judas, from the little we know, was sort of the treasurer of the little group, at least handling affairs as Matthew also did. As is well known, Judas betrayed Jesus by accepting a bribe from Roman authorities to reveal Christ\u2019s whereabouts, and further to identify Him by embracing Him, on cue, before centurions. Jesus was then arrested and thus began His \u201ctrial\u201d and execution.<\/p>\n He betrayed Jesus.<\/p>\n Soon remorseful, he scattered those 30 gold pieces and hanged himself.<\/p>\n Peter, during those same hours of turbulence, was asked by authorities if he were associated with the Man who called Himself the Christ. Three times Peter denied even knowing this Jesus. When he heard a rooster, he was thunderstruck and remembered that Jesus recently had predicted, \u201cBefore the cock crows three times, you will deny Me.\u201d<\/p>\n He denied Jesus. He knew Him\u2026 but denied knowing Him. Was it much different than betrayal? I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n Peter, to me the most impulsive, sometimes random, and always most human of the Disciples, was remorseful too. But he did not hang himself. It is not recorded that he was at the cross \u2013 Jesus\u2019s mother, Mary, remained faithful \u2013 but we know that he huddled in fear after Jesus died, with the remaining Disciples. He endured, avoiding the self-abnegation of Judas and the skepticism of Thomas… and he met the Resurrected Christ.<\/p>\n From the accounts, he was the \u201csame\u201d Peter while Jesus showed Himself and ministered and preached and healed for those 40 days after the Resurrection, and before Ascending to Heaven. And he seems to have been the same Peter, huddling in confusion in the Upper Room where Jesus had told them to wait.<\/p>\n Wait for what?<\/p>\n The Holy Spirit is recorded to have come upon them, and others, \u201cas a mighty rushing wind.\u201d After that, people were transformed. They spoke in \u201cstrange tongues,\u201d the languages of angels and of foreigners. They were imbued with knowledge and power\u2026 and wisdom.<\/p>\n After that experience Peter became a mature leader. He might have remained impulsive, but now it was to establish the Church and plant communities of believers. On that day, the Feast of Pentecost, the Church was born, and lives yet today.<\/p>\n Judas had betrayed more than Jesus; he betrayed the hope<\/em> of Salvation and Forgiveness that easily could have been his. Peter denied knowing Jesus, but he exercised that glimmer of hope that redemption was drawing nigh.<\/p>\n Are you a Judas, or a Peter? I don\u2019t mean betraying or denying Jesus\u2026 because when we sin, as we all do, we betray Him and deny Him.<\/p>\n It is our choice, however, how to react; to be remorseful and turn inward like Judas, or to wait upon Jesus and His promises, His Resurrected power, to come to us. To embrace the hope of Christ\u2019s forgiveness.<\/p>\n