Peter Disowns Jesus
54Then seizing him, they led him away and took him into the house of the high priest. Peter followed at a distance. 55But when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter sat down with them. 56A servant girl saw him seated there in the firelight. She looked closely at him and said, "This man was with him."
57But he denied it. "Woman, I don't know him," he said.
58A little later someone else saw him and said, "You also are one of them."
"Man, I am not!" Peter replied.
59About an hour later another asserted, "Certainly this fellow was with him, for he is a Galilean."
60Peter replied, "Man, I don't know what you're talking about!" Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed. 61The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: "Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times." 62And he went outside and wept bitterly.
The Guards Mock Jesus
63The men who were guarding Jesus began mocking and beating him. 64They blindfolded him and demanded, "Prophesy! Who hit you?" 65And they said many other insulting things to him.
Jesus Before Pilate and Herod
66At daybreak the council of the elders of the people, both the chief priests and teachers of the law, met together, and Jesus was led before them. 67"If you are the Christ,[d]" they said, "tell us."
Jesus answered, "If I tell you, you will not believe me, 68and if I asked you, you would not answer. 69But from now on, the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the mighty God."
70They all asked, "Are you then the Son of God?"
He replied, "You are right in saying I am."
71Then they said, "Why do we need any more testimony? We have heard it from his own lips."
Dig Deeper
Last year the movie “Avatar” came out to a great deal of commercial success and a bit of critical success as well. The movie was surely striking in its trailblazing technology and use of computer graphics. But where it was so inventive and and creative in technology it lacked somewhat in an original story or a very deep one. The basic story was that a group of human beings from earth had traveled to a distant planet to mine the extremely valuable and useful natural resources of that planet. A conflict quickly develops, though, with the natives of that planet who are very connected spiritually with their planet and do not want to allow the taking of their resources and the destruction of their environment that comes along with that mining. Because of the conflict of interest between these natives and the alien humans, hostilities break out between the two groups of beings. The point of the movie, however, what is supposed to make it so powerful, is that we are supposed to look at the characters within the movie and in them, see ourselves. It’s not a terribly new technique and it is often a very powerful one. We will leave the debate to others to determine whether that particular technique is effective in this movie or not, but it is generally a powerful technique. That is really one of the most powerful elements of story that there is. To be able to look at another character and see the shame or the glory or whatever emotion may be elicited, and in that character to see yourself, is deeply moving. This is, in fact, the very technique that Nathan used when he wished to confront David with his own sin (2 Sam. 12:1-14). Nathan told David a story about an abusive rich man and then allowed David to see himself in the actions of the rich man. It was easier for David to see the ugly truth in the life of someone else, but then to also see the bitter truth that the actions of the rich man in the story were a window to his own soul.
The events surrounding Jesus’ life and death are certainly more important and more fascinating than a mere movie, and what is more, they are absolutely true. But that doesn’t change the fact that Luke is still a skilled writer that wishes for his audience to be able to connect to what he is writing in the most effective and powerful way. As the stories surrounding Jesus’ last moments before the cross begin to come into focus, we see images of failure, betrayal, cruelty, and selfish ambition. As powerful as these images are on their own, however, they are all the more so because as we gaze into the various images of the people that were involved in Jesus’ death, we begin to see ourselves. We cannot just sit back and shake our heads at those who mistreated the Messiah because we slowly realize that in them, we see our actions and they are no less ugly.
It is easy to get bogged down in the details of this chaotic evening and, at times, it seems difficult to piece together all of the little details of the four gospel accounts and come up with one clear picture that makes sense of every detail. That’s usually the way it is with such highly charged, emotional, and confusing events, though. Different eyewitnesses stressed different details and one Gospel writer might include a detail that another one left out and so it can be confusing. (For instance what if a group of people, in a mass of voices, corporately express a question and one eyewitness chooses to focus on a woman in the crowd and report that she asked a question, while another eyewitness focuses on a man in the crowd and reports him as asking a question? The accounts suddenly look contradictory but they wouldn’t be if we could go back and actually observe the chaos of the scene.) Luke seems largely uninterested, however, in getting bogged down in all of those details, so we will largely stay away from trying to harmonize the four accounts of the evening leading up to Jesus’ death.
Jesus is taken inside to the house of the high priest for what seems to have been a slightly-less-than-perfectly-legal course of proceedings. The religious leaders of Israel had finally gotten their way. They have Jesus away from the prying eyes of the largest portion of the crowds and it is in the middle of the night when many of those who supported Jesus would not learn of what was going on until the next day when it was far too late.
But while Jesus was taken inside, Luke wants us to know what was happening outside at the very same time. Peter, the very man who swore that he was prepared to follow Jesus even into death and who would never deny him, has faded in his resolve in the wee hours of the night. Jesus had warned his people that a time would come in the future when they would be tempted with the stupor, drunkenness, and sleepiness of not holding tightly to being people who rejected the ways of the world and who lived by the values of the age to come, all the while expectantly waiting for the coming judgment of the Son of Man to vindicate his true people. Now, in a microcosm of that, Peter has failed. He grew weary as he got tired and things got more and more potentially dangerous. In three separate scenes, Peter was given the opportunity to show his alertness and his loyalty to the Messiah and all three times he chose instead to deny Jesus. He denied knowing Jesus, his friend whom he had declared to be the Son of God (Matt. 14:33) and the Messiah from God (Lk. 9:20). He denied being one of Jesus’ people, even though he had declared that he had given up everything to be part of Jesus’ family and had nowhere else to go (Mk. 10:28). He had denied everything about his relationship with Jesus.
Before we are too harsh with Peter, though, take a look and see if you don’t see yourself in his actions, even if just a little. How many times do we shrink away, whether in word or deed, from fully associating ourselves with Christ? How often do we act like we don’t really know Jesus? How often are we far more concerned with what others might think or even do than with God? How often can we worry about offending someone else or looking weird in front of them if we fully act like one of Jesus’ people all the while acting quite unconcerned with our relationship with God and his people? We need to ask those questions of ourselves often and then let the piercing stare of a betrayed Jesus sink into our souls as it did into Peter’s. If we enter this scene for a moment it doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to think that the worst part of this whole night for Peter was looking up and locking eyes with Jesus. There is a scene in the movie “Braveheart” when William Wallace looks up and his eyes lock momentarily with Robert the Bruce, the man who has just ashamedly betrayed Wallace. The mixture of unbelief, hurt, and tears welling up in Wallace’s eyes is haunting and it deeply impacted Bruce. The look from Jesus must have been so much the more haunting for Peter. Peter wept bitterly as the full implications of his actions hit him. But it is in those tears of realization that Peter will eventually find forgiveness and reconciliation. Just as I can find myself in Peter’s denials, I must also find myself in his genuine sorrow and amazing commitment to be loyal to Jesus even though he failed.
The betrayal of his best friend, though, was just the beginning for Jesus. Men who should have been bowing down to Jesus as the Lord and ruler of the universe (men who one day will do just that), instead gave in to the inhumanity that we can so easily fall when we stop seeing each and every human being as a creation of God that he cares for and wants to be reconciled with, but who he also wants his other creations to treat with dignity and respect. When we mistreat others we not only rob them of their humanity, we rob ourselves of our humanity as well. They mocked Jesus, whom they had no doubt heard was a great prophet. They blindfolded him and proceeded to hit, punch, and strike at the Son of God. Rather than acknowledging him as the king, they mocked him as a pretender. The sad irony drips off of every word. But they didn’t just strike Jesus, they insulted and mocked him in every way possible. Once the dehumanizing behavior starts, it tends to roll down hill. But take a closer look. Peer into the scene. Do you see a stomach-turning reflection of an attitude of heart that you can see in yourself far too often? We judge others. We insult others. We belittle them. We look down on them and make assumptions. We try to manipulate others and play power games and head games with them. We can be just as guilty of dehumanizing behavior as they were. The sad difference, though, is that regardless of what they did, they could never really dehumanize Jesus. He was the full human being, the perfect image of God. But when we dehumanize others, even in small ways, we really can rob them of their humanity. We can injure them in ways that are deeper than we can ever know. In that sense, perhaps our hatred, anger, and dehumanizing treatment of others is even worse than their behavior that incited us to our anger in the first place. It’s certainly something to think about.
I can’t imagine how long that night must have been for Jesus. How much his heart was breaking for the very people that he wanted so deeply to bring under his wings and protect from what they were bringing on themselves (Lk. 13:34). I believe that Jesus was far more hurt by the pain of seeing what these people were doing to themselves than anything they were doing to him. But as daylight began to streak through the dark skies, the dark night was not nearly over for Jesus. This was the hour when darkness would reign (Lk. 22:53).
The chief priests and elders were only concerned with whether Jesus would claim to be the Christ, the Messiah, for one reason. They needed a charge for which they could send him on to the Romans. They did not have the power to put Jesus to death but that’s certainly the end result that they hoped for. In order to get there, however, they needed to be able to definitively claim that Jesus was claiming to be a king. That’s something that would get Rome’s attention. That’s something they would deal with. So was he the Messiah, the king of Israel? Jesus’ answer exposed that they didn’t really care about that. They weren’t truly looking for God’s Messiah. If anything, they wanted their own version of one. Jesus could say outright that he was the Messiah and they would still send him to his death. So, Jesus would not give them an outright statement. If they were going to kill him they were going to have to make it clear that that was the only outcome that they ever desired. They thought they had authority over him, but the reality of the situation would soon be shown. He was the Messianic figure promised in Daniel 7 who would rule over the whole world and who would go directly to the throne room to sit at the right hand of God. They might think they were in control, but in due time, it would all be shown for what it really was. They were about to put to death the Messiah, God’s own Son, and it would be exactly what they had wanted to do all along. God had sent his son and they were about to kill him, thinking that the inheritance would be theirs (Lk. 20:13-15).
The reference to the messianic phrase “Son of Man” led them to directly ask him if he was the Son of God (a phrase that was also connected with the Messiah in Jewish thought but was also a term that Caesar had given to himself and would have definitely been enough to bring the wrath of Rome down on him). The TNIV changes Jesus answer a bit, in that he actually said something more like “you say that I am.” Again, he would not confirm their charge, but nor would he deny it. That would be enough for the religious leaders. They had their charge. They had their authority and they were making sure that they were going to keep it at all costs.
Once again, it is so easy to look down on the chief priests, teachers of the law, and elders for their actions. The last two thousand years is full of people who have hated the Jews for the supposed crime of putting Jesus to death. But this is to ignore the obvious. We can be just as guilty of ignoring God’s will in favor of our own. We can be just as quick to abuse power for our advantage and to crush others if need be to get what we want.
As we look deeper at the pictures that Luke has painted of a friend who faltered and betrayed the one to whom he had promised to be loyal to forever, or of those who got caught up in the flow of events and used intimidation and violence to dehumanize another precious human being, or of men who abused their power at the expense of others, we begin to get a very sober feeling. We are not worse than these people. We are certainly not better than these people. We are these people.
Devotional Thought
When you look at these scenes surrounding Jesus’ unjust execution, do you see glimpses of yourself at all? When you do see such things, does it cause you to run away in shame and hide or do you, like Peter, look into the eyes of Jesus and find the motivation you need to find forgiveness and restoration?
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