In the account of the arrest and execution of Jesus in John’s Gospel, there is a very striking contrast that, if we will let it, will take us to the heart of Good Friday and what it means for us today. At the beginning of the account (John 18.1–9), John shows us Jesus being arrested in the garden of Gethsemane, a place only a few hundred metres from the Jerusalem temple, across the Kidron valley. When Judas, Jesus’ betrayer, leads a band of soldiers to the garden, Jesus confronts them and asks, ‘who is it you want?’ When they reply that they want Jesus of Nazareth, John tells us that Jesus responds with the words, ‘I am’. English versions tend to add a ‘he’ to this, making it ‘I am he’, so that it doesn’t sound grammatically peculiar. However, in John’s Greek what Jesus says is simply ‘I am’.
‘When Jesus said, “I am”’, John tells us, those who had come to arrest Jesus ‘drew back and fell to the ground’. The sheer reality of his presence somehow overwhelms them. Then the interaction is repeated: Jesus asks them again who they are looking for and again says, ‘I am’, when they say they’re looking for Jesus. ‘I told you that I am’ (v. 8).
I said there was a contrast. Where is it? The contrast is between Jesus’ words here, at his arrest, and the way in which Peter, Jesus’ closest friend, denies Jesus immediately following it (John 18.15–27). A connection between one of Jesus’ disciples and the high priest’s family allows Peter to get into the courtyard of the high priest’s house, where Jesus is being questioned. On the way in, the servant who lets him enter asks a reasonable question: whether he is ‘one of this man’s disciples’. Peter denies it, perhaps not wanting to jeopardise his admission, but dishonestly nevertheless. The form of Peter’s denial, though, is what we must notice. John tells us that Peter says, ‘I am not’ (v. 17). It is the exact opposite of what Jesus says in the garden.
Peter repeats this denial in the same form just a little later, standing by the courtyard fire in the cold of the night. ‘“You aren’t one of his disciples too, are you?” He denied it, saying, “I am not.”’ (v. 25).
‘I am not’. The form of Peter’s words is no accident. When the other Gospels record Peter’s denial they give it in fuller terms: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ (Mk 14.68; Matt. 26.70; Luke 22.60). John, though, has deliberately reduced this to its essence so that it stands out in contrast to Jesus’ words. Jesus says, ‘I am’; Peter says, ‘I am not’.
John wants us to see Peter’s words not just as a denial, but as a confession. More than just a moment of weakness, they amount to a confession of his failure: his failure to do what he said he would do, his failure to be who he said he would be, who he believed he could be. Peter had told Jesus he would stand by him, that he would be with him to the end. ‘I will lay down my life for you!’ he had said only hours earlier (John 13.37). Now, though, he will not even acknowledge that he knows Jesus. He is not who he thought he was. He has proven himself to be unreliable, insubstantial at the critical point. His presence and power pales to insignificance in comparison with Jesus. In a way, he just is not.
What happened to Peter? Why did he evaporate like this? What took the wind out of his sails so suddenly? John’s account puts the spotlight on something else that happened at Jesus’ arrest, which we skipped over before (John 18.10–14). In the garden, after Jesus says, ‘I told you that I am’, the second time, John tells us that he said, ‘If you are looking for me, then let these men go’, so that his disciples would not be arrested along with him. At this point, we are told, Peter drew his sword and struck one of Jesus’ captors. But Jesus sharply rebukes him. ‘Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?’ (v. 11).
It seems that at this moment, Peter came undone. He had been steeling himself for a fight, preparing himself to struggle, even perhaps to be killed fighting for Jesus. What he had not understood, had not grasped or anticipated, was that Jesus would not fight at all. He would not fight because what he had come to do was more radical than anyone could have expected. We must not think of Peter as dim-witted or slow because we have the privilege of seeing, in the Gospels, the life of Jesus narrated with the benefit of hindsight. Peter wasn’t slow; it was just mind-bogglingly, terrifyingly unexpected, what Jesus saw himself called to do. He saw himself called ‘to drink the cup the Father had given him’, called by God to suffer and die for the life of others. That was not a reality Peter was adequate to meet.
‘Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies’, Jesus said, facing his death, ‘it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit’ (John 12.24 nrsv). Jesus did not let Peter fight for him, did not resist his own arrest, and stood before the high priest and Pilate and faced their nonsense, blame-shifting, self-aggrandising and pompous sneering without reacting, because he knew this was his task: to drink the cup the Father had given him. And he was stripped and pierced with nails and hung on a cross, and thirsted, and suffered unto death, because this was the work he had been given to finish.
In the face of this reality, Peter simply was not. Paradoxically, there is a sense in which Peter was telling the truth when he was asked, ‘aren’t you one of this man’s disciples?’, and said, ‘I am not’ (v. 17)! For he wasn’t, now. He had not truly understood that this was the path Jesus was on. He had been following him without truly knowing who he was. Now that the truth of Jesus, his true reality, had been unveiled, he could not stand beside him. He was not.
And nor are we. Nor are we worthy or able to stand beside Jesus at this moment, as he drinks the cup given to him to drink. Nor are we able to stand in his presence when the sheer, awesome reality of who he is is disclosed. We, too, are revealed as those who are not. For we, too, are full of the same failures and fears that led to Jesus’ death. Sometimes, like Peter, we are more at home with violence than with peace, and do not have the courage to tell the truth. Sometimes, like Judas, we are willing to do shameful things to enrich ourselves. Sometimes, like the high priest, we are obsessed with being recognised and respected. Sometimes, like Pilate, we scoff at the idea of truth, and capitulate with little struggle to the inevitability of injustice. Sometimes, like the crowd, we let ourselves be manipulated, and hide our responsibility in a mass of complicity. Sometimes, like the religious leaders, we use the letter of the law disingenuously to secure our own ends along with a veneer of due process. Sometimes, like the soldiers, we go through with evil deeds on the grounds that we are only doing our job. These are our people we see in this narrative. They are us; and Peter confesses our truth: we are not.
But he is, and he died for us. That is the simple, clean, good news of Good Friday, and it is very good news indeed. For he, the one who truly is, the one in whom the life and fulness of God pulsated gloriously, whose presence was filled with the blinding, clear light of divine perfection – he was the one who died, and not we. He was the one who refused to turn away and gave himself over to death so that we might have life. The one who was – who is – gave himself in the place of those who are not. And he finished the work, exhausting the penalty of sin and death that was due to us, that we might go free, so that our many and manifest failures might not remain our fate.
This Good Friday, let us behold the one who could say with all the weight of heaven, ‘I am’, and see what that fullness of presence and life entailed: the cross. And before this awesome, paradoxical presence let us fall down in our frailty, sin, and insubstantiality, yet not in fear and despair, but rather in humility and gratitude. For this one, this mighty, beautiful one, died in our place, for our forgiveness, that we who are not might be in Him. Amen.
Good Friday, 2021
