Jer.14:7-9; Matt. 26: 69-75       Good, Better, Best                E/DC               March 18/07

 1.      Our Lenten journey today takes us into the courtyard, where a serving girl is holding forth.  (put on robe.)   “I could tell that guy was Galilean.  It was how he talked.  When you’ve been around like me, you can pinpoint where they’re from.  And where they come from up in the hills, everyone has to know everyone, it’s so small!”  So it was evident he knew this Jesus.  The one who told everyone he could destroy the temple and build it in three days.  Yeah right.   

2.      So anyway, that big guy got really upset when he thought we’d found him out.  “I do not know the man,” he swore.  It was pretty clear what kind of friend he was.  I think that’s what bugs me most.  These guys going along, acting like they’ve got it all together, and as soon as it gets a little hot, they say whatever they think will save their neck.  Actually, giving him credit, I haven’t seen any of his other buddies around the end of this week.  Earlier they were thicker than fleas on a dog’s tail.  They were singing, throwing down their cloaks, lining the streets with palm branches.  Where are they now?

 3.      All right, all right, so I’m not perfect either!  But I know I’m going to mess up.  So you don’t see me going around telling other people what to do.  When the priests mess up they seem to go buy a couple of birds and sacrifice them to God.  Can you imagine me?  I’d be running to the temple every fifteen minutes!  I’d sure provide those temple merchants a good living.  Seems silly to me.  What happens if you do something, say hurt someone, or break a rule and don’t know you’ve done it?  So you don’t go sacrifice.  Does that mean God wouldn’t forgive you?  That Jesus said a lot about loving and forgiving.  Upset the ‘religious’ people.  Especially when he turned over the tables and kicked out the businessmen.  Like how could they be forgiven, if they couldn’t sacrifice?  If I’m really honest though, I have messed up.  Really badly.  Sometimes I feel sick when I think of it.  I heard him say to someone your sins are forgiven, go in peace.  Could that mean me too?  (remove robe) 

4.      The servant girl raises some interesting issues for us.  Peter’s horrendous choice – to save his life, or deny even knowing his friend, is one.  Self-preservation as a possibly good choice, but not the best, reminds us of Albert Camus’ story The Plague.  The city of Onan, on the coast of North Africa is struck by the Bubonic plague and quarantined.  As you can imagine, there were people ready to try to make money by providing boats to flee to Europe illegally.  One such entrepreneur took the terrified people’s money, and left them in a warehouse to wait for their boat.  It never came, because it never existed.  When the plague was over, the people left the warehouse.  The scoundrels knew that they need not fear being turned in, as leaving the city was illegal. 

5.      Does it seem like we too are acting like a world under siege?  We hear honest people unwilling to run for office, believing it impossible to function with integrity.  We actually read of the difficulty for a particular politician to “spin” a story in order to get elected, re-elected, or make political points.  Strong women leave the military or careers as pilots because of how they are treated.  Cynical people describe job interviews as the company lying about how wonderful the job is, and the person being interviewed lying about how they’re the best possible person for the job!  What we often call self-care overrides everything.  Like Peter, we succumb to choosing self-protection, undeniably the good, over what could be the best. 

6.      Beth Huener states that “temptation is the attraction of a lesser good which causes us to reject, ignore, or postpone a greater good.”[i]  Temptation becomes most difficult when we’re not really taking care of ourselves, which includes trusting God.  We’ll likely hear ourselves saying, “I have to take care of myself, too.”  The reason this is so difficult is because there are times when trusting God means doing exactly that.  Peter didn’t likely actually say those words, but the idea certainly could have been there.  We might say like he may have, “What earthly good will I be if I get arrested too?”  But what did it mean to Jesus when everyone, including Peter, denied even knowing him? 

7.      How many of the good people of Onan said to themselves, “I have to take care of myself, too,” as they desperately sought an escape from the plague, even though illegal?  You see they were not only abandoning their sick neighbours and family, they could be carrying a deadly infection to another continent.  Thinking only in selfish terms, they weren’t caring for themselves.  Because they could well want to come back, and be in need themselves of the very people they abandoned.  Or end up sick in a country where they had no supportive community.  Coming from a Christian perspective, leaving a community in such need, is immoral and unfaithful. How did they live with their guilt? 

8.      That’s the same question that I can’t read Peter’s story without asking.  How did he survive until he was able to receive forgiveness?  Some of us have had occasion to bear the burden of deep guilt.  We may have hurt someone or ones so badly, or lived so opposite to what we truly value, it seems impossible to ever feel whole, ever to stand up straight again.  And it is to God we come to receive the gift, the grace of forgiveness.  And if we will receive it, it is ours.  Peter must have received the gift, for we know how he later lived his life with power and faithfulness. 

9.      But what do we do in the midst of the conflict, when we’re desperately trying to choose the best over the good or the better?  So we don’t hurt ourselves or others.  To abandon any of God’s children to save our own lives is sinful.  And incredibly tempting.  We are created to be survivors.  But more than that, we’re created to trust God, more than to cling to this physical life.  Temptation looses it power the closer we are to God.  Real life is only found in right relationship to Christ.  As we become closer to God, other things can be let go.  God is already with us.  We just need to remind ourselves of the fact.  Then the lesser good tempting us away from holy will becomes less attractive.   

10.  We also remember that we have a powerful tool to overcome evil.  Hope.  Because we hope, we work in whatever small or large ways to change poverty or injustice or despair.  James Bartleman, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, tells how he got out of a life of despair and poverty with the books he read from the school library.  He now collects books across Canada for the children of the northern communities like his.  To give them hope.  Author Timothy Findlay when asked why he writes, says two words, “Against despair.”  Each of us can light a candle or complain about the darkness.  It’s hope that is the life-raft to prevent us drowning in the vastness of world problems.  It’s not because we’re particularly courageous or strong.  But because we have God’s promise of relationship and the strength and the courage we can receive.  And the belief that while we live on this earth, our job is to do God’s will.   

11.  Lent brings before us the powerful effect of the choices we’re called to.  Life and death choices.  Life and death because it’s only when we live in God’s will that we’re fully alive.  The good or the best.  Difficult choices, because they have to do with looking after ourselves, and following the will of God, and looking after ourselves as we follow the will of God!  We draw close to God for help to know the best, and the strength and courage to do it.  And when we fail, we open ourselves to God’s love and forgiveness.  And go on in the new life we’re given.