My family moved from St Catherine's Ontario back to Uganda in the 80’s and the country was plunged into civil war for most of the early to mid 80’s. Talk about a great time to move back home! One of the main insurgency groups - the National Resistance Movement - moved from being a rag-tag bunch of dissidents to a major military force that contained many people that defected from the army and government. Their leader was the former minister of Defense Yoweri (the Ugandan translation of the name Joel) Museveni who has been the president of Uganda since 1986 - first as a military dictator and then as an elected president.
1986 was the year when the National Resistance Movement finally overrun a major defense post about 70 km outside the capital city that then led to the quick fall of the government that had only come to power 18 months before through a military coup. During the days that followed, there was the sound of heavy shelling and gunfire throughout the city and all the schools and businesses were closed and we hunkered down in our small house and ate crackers and soup for weeks on end.
One morning, we were woken up suddenly by the sound of a huge explosion unusually close to our house and the crescendo of explosions that followed for the next 30 minutes kept building. One of my uncles who lived close to us burst into the house and yelled out, “They are going from house to house and bombing them!!”
My mother decided almost instantly that we were going to grab a few clothes and leave the house and my father, who had only recently recovered from major reconstructive surgery on his hip and leg decided that he was going to remain in his house. His exact words were, “If I die, I die!”
We were all too terrified to stay with my dad and so we left the house with my mother and found all our neighbors hastily leaving their homes - probably because of my uncle - and running to safety. I did not know where we were really going, but I assumed that it would be somewhere safe out of the range of the mortars and explosions that seemed like they were almost upon us at the time.
After about 15 minutes of running through people’s compounds and ducking under fences, trying to follow my siblings and my mother, I realized that I had been separated from them. So I tried running faster thinking that they were only a few meters ahead, but I could never seem to catch up to them and eventually realized that while I was still with a group of about 10 people, I had been separated from my family. I decided that I would stay with the people I found myself with and we ended up finding a well hidden spot in some bushes where we stayed in silence and hunger till late in the afternoon when the sound of gunfire and explosions reduced.
The people I was with did not really know my family and so were only partially helpful with me finding my way home, but I eventually did and got there at about 8.00 in the evening. Our house was still standing... in fact EVERYBODY’s house was still standing and my family was home terrified out of their minds wondering what could have happened to me. It turns out that unbeknownst to our community, the army had set up a storehouse for arms in our neighborhood that comprised mostly of families that worked for the church of Uganda, and the explosions we were hearing all day were from a stray bullet having found its way into the house and igniting the explosives. My uncle and his big mouth!
While I was relieved to learn that the situation was not more serious and that we still had a home, I was never able to get past the knowledge that I had been separated from my family and in my mind, I did not think that they had done enough to find me. Because I was not able at the time to see my separation from the family as an honest mistake, I began to see myself as an outsider - unwanted - and this continually fractured my relationship with my parents. I began to increasingly see everything that they did through the dark colored lenses of the betrayal I perceived and even though I was going along with my family, I was following at a great distance unable to bring myself back into a close relationship with them.
A few weeks ago I was studying scripture trying to put together the passion week series that we shall be having during the week leading up to Easter and as I was reading through Luke 22, I began to see part of the story in a different light. Perhaps it is because I had resurfaced the memory of my 1986 experience or something… but I felt that I saw something in the passage that I had not seen before. Let’s read through the verses that I am talking about and then I shall share some thoughts with you.
Luke 22: 47 – 62
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a crowd showed up, Judas, the one from the Twelve, in the lead. He came right up to Jesus to kiss him. Jesus said, "Judas, you would betray the Son of Man with a kiss?"
When those with him saw what was happening, they said, "Master, shall we fight?" One of them took a swing at the Chief Priest's servant and cut off his right ear.
Jesus said, "Let them be. Even in this." Then, touching the servant's ear, he healed him.
Jesus spoke to those who had come—high priests, Temple police, religion leaders: "What is this, jumping me with swords and clubs as if I were a dangerous criminal? Day after day I've been with you in the Temple and you've not so much as lifted a hand against me. But do it your way—it's a dark night, a dark hour."
Arresting Jesus, they marched him off and took him into the house of the Chief Priest. Peter followed, but at a distance. In the middle of the courtyard some people had started a fire and were sitting around it, trying to keep warm. One of the serving maids sitting at the fire noticed him, then took a second look and said, "This man was with him!"
He denied it, "Woman, I don't even know him."
A short time later, someone else noticed him and said, "You're one of them."
But Peter denied it: "Man, I am not."
About an hour later, someone else spoke up, really adamant: "He's got to have been with him! He's got 'Galilean' written all over him."
Peter said, "Man, I don't know what you're talking about." At that very moment, the last word hardly off his lips, a rooster crowed. Just then, the Master turned and looked at Peter. Peter remembered what the Master had said to him: "Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times." He went out and cried and cried and cried.
We all know who Peter was and from the accounts in scripture, he tends to be viewed as a passionate and borderline impulsive person. When he saw Jesus walking on water, he jumped out of the boat and gave it a try. When they ran to the tomb, even though John was faster and got there before him, John was too afraid to walk into the tomb, but Peter charged right in… and similarly in this account of the events surrounding Jesus’ arrest, Peter sprung to action and tried to defend his buddy and in the process chopped off the ear of the high priests servants.
Passionate people are often perceived as being unfeeling perhaps because they are relentless in the pursuit of their passion and yet many are actually very sensitive and so they are just as quick to get discouraged as they are to get fired up about anything especially if the object or focus of their passion shuts them down or ignores their work.
Instead of Jesus using Peter’s actions as a distraction and making a swift getaway, he instead rebukes Peter and heals one of the people that were there in the first place to arrest Jesus. If Peter was as passionate AND sensitive as we think he could have been, it makes sense that the rejection of his display of fearlessness in the face of obvious danger and arrest must have felt like humiliation.
As Jesus was led away Peter followed, but this time not in close proximity as he had been doing in the past – partly because of the guards that were taking Jesus away, but I also think because he could have been taken back by the perceived rejection from Jesus.
The more I read over this passage and thought about my own life and the betrayal I had conjured up in my mind, the more I began to see Peter’s denial of Jesus in a different light. Most commentaries I have heard about this particular part of scripture say that Peter’s denial of Jesus was rooted in his fear of being discovered. I can understand why this would be the consensus among the commentaries I have heard, but would I be wrong to hypothesize that perhaps his denial was rooted in the hurt that he felt because of how Jesus had treated him?
Put yourself in Peter’s shoes. Wouldn’t you have said, “Woman, I do not know him!” just like he did after innocently trying to defend somebody you had spent the last three years hanging out with only to be shut down? I know I would!
My experience with my family bears some resemblance to this series of events because the more I allowed the hurt that accumulated over the years to fester, the more disconnected I got from them to the point that I was ready to disown them and I ran away from home. While I never once said out loud “That is not my father, I do not know him!” I certainly thought it!
My experience with my family is no different from my experience in my Christian walk and just like Peter, there are things that have happened in my life that cause me to move from being a passionate follower of Jesus to being a distant follower disillusioned by the hurt that I may still hold over events in the past. It could be anything from the way people in the church have treated me to the petitions that I feel were ignored or even the fact that it seems like I am stuck in a situation that will not change and I am frustrated that God knows I am powerless to change anything and yet he still does not step in as I think he should. I have found myself sitting through many worship services and being both amused and annoyed at the same time at the display of affection for Jesus that is fleeting in my life because I have been following at a distance for so long. So I may continue to follow – but at an increasing distance till I finally reach the place where my previous persuasions are on such shaky ground that I am unwilling to be associated with the Savior that I may still love.
In my many journeys, I have come to discover that there are many more leaders in the church that are struggling with disillusionment than those that actually confess that it is real for them. The reason for this is because we have built our churches to revolve around personalities and so if the conviction of the leader wavers, it tends to have drastic effects on the people that are being led and so even though the leader may be struggling in their walk with God, they would be greatly loathe to admit that they in fact are no longer following closely but rather at a distance.
When I first changed career paths from Information Technologies to working as a music minister, I joined a small church that was struggling with the fact that one of their prominent and influential members was dying. Our pastor felt, at the time that we needed to have a 24-hour period dedicated to praying for him and so for 24 hours people went to his home or showed up at the church to pray for him. One week later, however, he died and everybody went into a spin… but none more than my pastor because this prayer-for-healing-thing in such a grandiose manner was not really done in the history of this conservative Baptist church. I was privy to the private struggle of a great pastor working through the discouragement and disappointment of the unanswered prayer and I know that what must have hurt the most for him is that he had felt led by God to pray for healing and then God did not heal the person we were praying for.
Just like Peter, I would not be surprised if he began to hang back and follow at a distance instead of continuing in a close and intimate relationship with Jesus.
What is your story this morning?
As ministers in Woodvale, there is an unspoken assumption that we are expected to be in a place of close intimacy with God and yet just as I am sure that there are people here in this room that are in a place of closeness, excitement and sensing God’s presence, there are those that have been hanging back for so long that the whole Christian walk is dry and meaningless. I do not know where you are in the spectrum, but this morning I felt that we should start by encouraging those who like myself have been hanging back.
I have been to enough worship team retreats to know that asking people to really admit where they are at in their walk with God is a tough thing to ask. Conventional thinking says that if you gather people together in the same place that share the same kind of experiences, they shall be more open to talking frankly about them... but instead what happens, is that there seems to be a competition to see who is the first among equals and there is little-to-no meaningful dialogue about anything. I have seen worship team retreats deteriorate in the same manner and so I want to caution against it during the times that we get to respond to the thoughts that I feel God would like us to share today. This is why I will be the first to say here in front of all of you that there are challenges in my life that I am struggling through - challenges that have caused me to follow Jesus at a distance and not as closely as I could. While I am still in this Christ walk, I openly admit that it has been a trudge and not a race as is described by Paul
So what encouragement is there for people like myself? How do we find our way back to a place of intimacy with Jesus in the face of great adversity and disappointment?
I’ll show you where I started to turn a corner and find encouragement. Turn with me to John 21 and lets read from verse 15
After breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?"
"Yes, Master, you know I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my lambs."
He then asked a second time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?"
"Yes, Master, you know I love you."
Jesus said, "Shepherd my sheep."
Then he said it a third time: "Simon, son of John, do you love me?"
Peter was upset that he asked for the third time, "Do you love me?" so he answered, "Master, you know everything there is to know. You've got to know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my sheep. I'm telling you the very truth now: When you were young you dressed yourself and went wherever you wished, but when you get old you'll have to stretch out your hands while someone else dresses you and takes you where you don't want to go." He said this to hint at the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. And then he commanded, "Follow me."
This is probably one of the most touching stories of Jesus’ interaction with his disciples because it shows how Jesus reached out and restored Peter. Not only had Peter’s relationship with Jesus suffered the blow of possible humiliation, but I think he was also eventually wracked with guilt from the memory of his denial of Jesus. I can identify with Peter when he says “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you” - you were there when I tried to defend you and even when you shut me down and I subsequently denied you, I am still here... conflicted, but still here because I love you. I may have followed at a distance, but I still followed because I love you... Yes, Lord, you KNOW that I love you!
Just like he did with Peter, I believe that Jesus calls out to us today: “my servants at woodvale, do you love me?” I do not believe that he asks this as a redundant question... rather that he may draw us to himself through our own acknowledgment of our love for him in spite of our disappointment over previous events. As we are drawn back to him, he affirms our restoration with the renewed charge to feed his sheep.
So I must ask again: What is your story this morning?
