FRANTIC DESPERATION
Coming off my sermon yesterday at church, about Peter at the Last Supper, I am moved to meditate a bit further....
Peter's demonstrable pattern during these final hours is one of frantic desperation. He knows exactly what would be best and he is getting frantic, and bewildered, that things seem to be going all wrong and the Lord isn't DOING anything about it.
The pattern couldn't be starker.
"I'll wash your feet, Peter."
"NO, Lord, I'll NEVER let that happen!" (I.e., "Don't you understand, Lord, how WRONG that is?")
"You will all abandon me."
"NO, Lord, not ME. Maybe all of them will [Gosh, thanks, Peter], but me? NEVER!" (I.e., "You've got it all WRONG, Lord, don't You see?")
"One of you will betray Me."
"John, quick, find out who it is ('cause I'll put a stop to this)."
"What you are doing, do quickly."
("Wait, WHAT? You're letting him GO? That's just WRONG.")
And then the sword, the clumsy, confused attempt to save Jesus by cutting off a servant's ear. The pathos reaches the most acute, poignant levels.
And finally, Peter runs. And soon says, "I don't know that man." And, at last, collapses in a heap of psychic exhaustion and grief. All is lost, including--no, especially, his highest ideals of his own character. And he's lost the One he did, truly, love all the while.
That love was the saving difference between him and Judas, because in other ways there were uncomfortable similarities.
Frantic desperation is never the recipe for love's best path forward. It only blurs your vision, frays your nerves, and makes you immeasurably less than what you should be for those who need you most. Even when the frantic desperation issues from "the best motives." For one thing, even the best motives aren't omniscience (nobody on earth but Jesus actually knew what was happening and why), and for another the best motives, in their best light, can't be defeated by whatever transpires--they will be tested and refined, yes, like gold in the fire, but not defeated.
After coming through the crucible of his great disillusionment, Peter survived (where Judas didn't), because, deeper than the frantic desperation, was the love for His Lord and Savior. That was always the whole point.
All the Lord's seeming "mistakes" that evening were the transcendent path to Ressurection and humanly incomprehensible triumph, into which we have been called by God's grace.
"Wow, who knew?"
Right. Who knew....
