bowing low

After church on Good Friday, I came home to cook dinner.  As I often will do, I turned on the TV as a sort of white noise as I went about my work.  Surfing through the channels I happened upon a rebroadcast of “The Passion of the Christ” just as the scene where Peter is watching Jesus be tried and flogged started to play.  When confronted as one who had been with Jesus, Peter denies it.  Three times he denies it.

So many of us spend much of our lives denying Jesus.  Obviously, there are people who never accept the claims that Christ is the living God, denying him over and over again.  But plenty of us, who say that we are believers deny him as well.  We deny him when we fail to see him in the face of a homeless person or an immigrant.  We deny him when we make decisions base on fear or resentment instead of faith.  We deny him when we say, “that person can never change.”  We deny him when we put more faith in government or political action instead of God’s action of bringing his kingdom among us.  We deny him anytime we make a good thing into an ultimate thing, saying of anyone or anything besides the Lord, “THIS I must have to live a joyful life.”

The good news is that no matter how or when we deny God, it is never too late to turn back to him, or to turn to him for the first time.  But what must I do to be received by Jesus?  What must I do to stop denying and come to my true home?

For an answer we turn to Peter again…rash, impetuous, frightened Peter.  On the first day of the resurrection, when the women went to anoint Jesus’ body and found his tomb empty, they went to tell the disciples.  The men all thought they were talking “crazy talk.”  All but Peter.  The one who had denied Jesus three times, “rose and ran to the tomb, stooping and looking in.” (Luke 24:12)  Facing his fears and failures, he ran toward Jesus, not away.  And in the ultimate act of contrition, he stooped, he bent low, crawling in to see the one he had let down so abysmally. 

It takes stooping to come to Jesus….stooping, kneeling, bowing low in humility to the one who wants to lift us up into new life.  He IS the resurrection and the life.  No matter how or how often you have denied Jesus, will you bow before him today?

Happy Easter.  The Lord is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

Love, Liz 

With thanks and acknowledgment to Pastor Marc Choi for his Easter meditation.