Simon the Noise, Peter the Rock Pt. 1

I have abandoned you left and right,

 But you know I’m trying now.

The best I can

 

All of us at one point or another can identify with Simon Peter I think. Usually what comes to mind when we think of him is his denial of his Lord and friend at the trial that condemned Jesus to hang on the cross, despite adamantly insisting he would follow Jesus to the grave itself mere hours before. And this is kind of who he was in a nutshell – excited about Jesus, loved Him greatly and wanted to do it all. I mean, he stepped out of the boat and walked on water, however briefly, while everyone else just marveled from the boat. But once he got out of the boat, he got scared. He declared his undying devotion to Jesus and fully believed what he was saying until someone actually got in his face and accused him of being Jesus’ follower when that could mean joining Him on a cross. We’ve all done it in one way or another – confessed our undying love for our savior with our lips and denied Him by our actions. I looked up the meaning of the name Simon today out of curiosity, and what do you know, it means ‘to hear and to be heard.’ That was Simon, who became Peter – reactive, loud, boisterous, out there, heard. You can’t miss him. But when the chips were down, he got scared, and he’d quickly go back to being his boisterous self again shortly after a fall.

 

 After his denial of Jesus, Simon Peter went back to being a fisherman. Everything he’d thrown himself into for the last 3 years seemed to come to a disastrous end, and what’s more he couldn’t even stick with it to the end as he’d believed himself capable of (Been there? Me too). Then Jesus shows up. Three times Jesus asks Simon Peter if he loves him unconditionally (agape definition of love, we lose something in the translation to English here), and three times Simon Peter says he loves him as a best friend (philia definition of love). On his third answer, Simon Peter breaks down weeping. I have often heard the lesson from this being that despite our shortcomings, God will use us. Jesus’ closest follower can’t get beyond a friendship level dedication to Jesus after three straight years of working with Him, and still God builds His church on this man. The other day I was thinking about this though, and I guess I looked at it from Simon Peter’s perspective a little more.

 

Imagine facing yourself after that night at the trial. In your best moments you believed yourself capable of following this Son of God most high, who you’ve somehow been given the opportunity to walk with, serve with, learn from, and teach along side, to the depths of hell and back. You’ve healed people by this man, you’ve learned of the kingdom of God, you’ve seen thousands fed by a few fish, and for crying out loud YOU WALKED ON WATER WITH THIS MAN! And you couldn’t even admit to KNOWING him. Every declaration, every belief you had about yourself and your dedication – gone. And maybe for the first time in your life you’re forced to be honest about who you really are. The weight of what he’d done I
think finally broke through all those layers of self assertion and made
him look really hard at who he was underneath all those proclamations.
And so, when Jesus shows up and asks Simon Peter if he loves Him, Peter gives the most gut level honest answer we see him ever deliver – that he merely philia’s his friend and savior, and does not agape Him. Jesus gives him three chances to go back to his old ways, and three times Peter faces that knowledge of his own shortcomings and has to admit that he does not love Jesus as he wants to. I imagine it takes him right back to that moment in the trial of realising what he’d just done every single time he says ‘Lord, you know I philia you.’ I would have wept the first time with the weight behind those words. Peter made it to number three.

 

And right there, in the depths of pain, Peter is told he will be the rock on which the church, God’s family, will be built on. Yeah, waterworks would’ve ensued there for me. Right there you see it – Simon the noise has become Peter the rock. It didn’t come by strength of declaration or great action – it came by the recognition of himself and confessing his shortcomings. There’s a lot of basic Christianity right there that can be unpacked of course, but the new aspect of this to me was that the story of Simon becoming Peter is (amongst other things) a story of a man realising who he is in himself and, upon turning that over, becoming who he is in Christ. Before God can turn us into who He knows us to be, we have to be honest with ourselves about who we are right now. And it just gets more painful the longer we hold out.