That Your Faith Might Not Fail
Palm Sunday 2002

Week of Monday, March 25, 2002

For three years or so Jesus traversed the towns and villages of Galilee teaching in the synagogues, preaching the good news of God's kingdom, and healing the sick. In Nain he raised the only son of a widow, in Capernaum he healed a person possessed of a demon, in Jericho he gave sight to a blind man, and on and on. But in Chorazin, Bethsaida, Nazareth, and other places he met rejection, resistance, and unbelief. To say that at the end of those three years he was a controversial figure would be an understatement. By then he attracted huge crowds, sometimes in the thousands. People trampled over each other, Luke tells us (12:1), while in Capernaum, says Mark, the crowds had so engulfed a house both inside and out that people ripped off the roof to get to Jesus (2:1–12).

At some point toward the end of those three years, Jesus “resolutely set his face toward Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). When he finally entered that city for the last time, knowing that betrayal, persecution and death awaited him, we might well imagine that he was greeted by the largest crowd ever, for this was his Triumphal Entry (Luke 19:28–48) that the church celebrates each year as Palm Sunday. In an image rich with political irony, Jesus is proclaimed King and seated on a tiny donkey. The crowds spread their garments on the road in a first century version of a red carpet salute. His adoring subjects are little children; inanimate rocks and stones would sing his praise. Clearly, His kingdom is not like normal political kingdoms. As he entered the city Jesus was overcome with emotion and wept for Jerusalem. Why? “Because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you” (Luke 19:44).

But the triumphal entry was also a tragic entry. The same crowd that adored Jesus was as fickle and feckless as all those dusty villages he had visited. A few days later it morphed into a frenzied mob full of rage and violence. The religious leaders had hatched their plot to kill Jesus, and they would succeed. His days were numbered.

Within this larger story, the Gospel writers also include three individual stories of people who were not merely a peripheral part of the large, anonymous crowd, but who were among the very closest followers of Jesus. In all three instances Jesus makes a tragic, prophetic prediction that is eventually fulfilled. Together the three stories offer a sobering reminder about how fragile our allegiance to King Jesus can be. They also remind us that even wholesale betrayal, no matter how egregious, need not keep us from continuing on the journey with Jesus.

Everyone, of course, remembers Judas Iscariot. The power of his image runs so deep in our cultural consciousness that merely to utter his name signals treachery, deceit, greed and betrayal—all with a kiss. Somehow, somewhere along the way, “satan entered Judas” to betray Jesus (Luke 22:3), much, I suppose, like he enters all of us at one time or another. Jesus had predicted this, telling his disciples that someone would betray him. When Judas asked, Jesus said, “Yes, it is you” (Matthew 26:25). He cut a deal and at the appointed time he did his deed, but who could ever explain why?

Then there is Peter. As with Judas, Jesus predicts his betrayal, but Peter, so impetuous and full of himself, so ignorant of his true self, would hear nothing of it. “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death” (Luke 22:33). In fact, he would only “follow at a distance,” says Luke. I wonder what was more dreadfully painful to Peter, his actual denial, the prediction of his Lord that, yes, like Judas, he too would deny ever even knowing him, or, more likely, that immediately upon his triple betrayal “the Lord turned and looked straight at Peter” (Luke 22:61). It is painful just to think about it.

After betrayal and denial, Judas and Peter responded in similar ways. Matthew tells us that when he saw that he had aided and abetted in the condemnation of Jesus, Judas was “filled with remorse.” He returned the blood money, openly confessed that he had sinned, then in despair he committed suicide (Matthew 27:1–10). Peter “wept bitterly” after he denied knowing the Lord (Luke 22:75). Both men denied Jesus, both men wept bitter tears of confession, but one man returned to grace whereas the other allowed despair to swallow him.

In language remarkably similar to the Judas texts, at the Last Supper Jesus also predicts that it is not only Peter and Judas who will betray him, for in fact “satan has asked to sift you all like wheat” (Luke 22:31). In Matthew he foretells that “you will all fall away on account of me” (Matthew 26:31). And that is not hard to fathom, that Peter and Judas are the rule for us all rather than the exception, that all of us in our own unique and personal temptations are wont to betray the Lord we love. But the disciples, like Peter, were living in denial. When Peter avowed that he would never disown Jesus, “all the other disciples said the same” (Matthew 26:42). The historical record proved otherwise for these other ten believers. In the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus begged for their help, three times they fell asleep. Upon his arrest “all the disciples deserted him and fled” (Matthew 26:56). Not a one of them attended to his dead and lifeless body after his crucifixion.

There is a warning here for us all. Don't deny your denial. Don't lie to yourself about your dark side. Never imagine that you would not betray the Lord, for every last one of us has inherited what Craig Barnes calls the Judas chromosone.¹ At the Christian college I attended twenty five years ago I remember the president saying that he never liked to sing the line of the hymn, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the one I love,” because he had not, in fact, ever felt that way. Back then I probably received this as an inspiring exhortation; today I find it experientially incomprehensible. Peter, Judas and the other ten disciples—and let us remember that no one was closer to Jesus—make denial and betrayal look remarkably easy. Satan the accuser longs to sift us like wheat and grind us to dust. I shudder to think where I would have been if I had been part of the crowd at Jesus's Triumphal Entry, part of his disciples in Gethsemane who were charged to help him keep watch, or at Calvary. At best, I think I would have been like the disciples who “followed at a distance.” At worse, well, I would rather not think about that.

But there is also encouragement. Let us never refuse grace. The deeper tragedy of Judas was that he allowed his sin to overshadow God's grace, and once you descend to a place like that suicide is very easy to fathom. Jesus prayed for Peter and all the disciples that “your faith might not fail” (Luke 22:32). That is not a cart blanche guarantee that we will never deny the Lord; experience proves otherwise. But when we do succumb to denial, betrayal and even worse things, God help us always to remember the words of Paul—who once described himself as the chief of all sinners—that “where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more” (Romans 5:20).