“The Path to Greatness” (Mark 9:30-37)

This past week I was flipping from one channel to another on the TV, when up on the screen popped Masterchef. I had never seen the programme before and food always interests me, so I watched on for a few minutes while the three chefs prepared their delicacies. Now if you ask my wife Karen, she will tell you without a moment’s hesitation that her husband is no master chef. I do cook the occasional meal, but it is painful for her to watch on when I do. I’m slow. I make a mess. I use far too many dishes. And usually by the time the meal is on the table, something is too spicy or underdone or overcooked.

So I watched on with amazement as the three cooks prepared perfect cheese soufflés and a couple of other dishes, all with flawless timing. Then I began to think: Imagine the pressure. Always under the eye of the camera. Constantly being critiqued by the judges. Never knowing whether your dish is going to come out the way you hoped—whether you’ve achieved exactly the right combination of flavours, how you will score on presentation and a host of other unpredictables. Always on the knife’s edge. Always just one soupçon away from being eliminated.

Now take a moment to imagine what it would be like if the Christian life were like that. Sad to say, there are some people who think that way and we meet with them in this morning’s Gospel reading.

Jesus and his disciples were on their way to Jerusalem. Jesus had already told them that this was to be their final journey together—that “the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again” (Mark 9:31). Now for a second time he warns them: “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.”

A great mystery

 “But,” Mark informs us, “they did not understand …” Of course they didn’t understand. There is a sense in which the cross of Jesus will always remain a mystery. Somewhere among my books that I am still unpacking there is one with the title, Why the Cross? And I can’t tell you how many times over the course of my ministry there are people who have asked me, “Why did Jesus have to die?” The apostle Paul wrote to his friends in Corinth, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing… Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” (1 Corinthians 1:18,22,23). Even Pope Francis has confessed that “the mystery of the Cross is a great mystery for mankind, a mystery that can only be approached in prayer and in tears”.[1]

So we really can’t blame the disciples. The apostle Paul and Pope Francis both had the advantage of hindsight. Like us, they could look back on the events of Calvary from the perspective of Jesus’ resurrection. For those first disciples all of this was completely unexplored territory. Now wonder they didn’t know what to think!

But it is Mark’s next comment that I find really revealing. “They did not understand what he meant…” And then he goes on to add, “… and they were afraid to ask him about it.” What made them so afraid? Was it the fear of losing this man who had come to mean so much to them, whose words had become for them the word of life? Or was it the fear of just appearing to be stupid or ignorant? I know there is a great deal of that kind of fear in me. Or should we call it by its proper name—pride?

I’m not good about asking for directions along the road, even when I’m totally lost. When people offer me help, my first inclination is to thank them and say, “That’s OK. I can manage on my own.” We call it independence. Yet so much of what we call independence is really just pride going by another name. And I have a sneaking suspicion that part of the disciples’ unwillingness to ask Jesus what he meant also rose out of pride.

We don’t like people to think we’re ignorant or foolish. I remember many moons ago in my teen years rowing lazily up a little river in Maine with my three brothers. It was getting hot, so I decided to jump in for a swim. As I was enjoying myself in the cool water, some canoeists paddled by and one of them shouted over to me, “Do you realize you’re swimming next to a sewage outlet?” “Of course I do,” I replied, and waited until they were out of sight before scurrying back into our boat to row as quickly as possible back to our cottage and leap into the shower. Now that’s pride with a capital “P”!

Striving to be the greatest

But let’s move along in the gospel story. Jesus and the disciples arrive in Capernaum, the lakeside village that was home to Peter and Andrew and James and John. A chilly silence filled the air. At this point you need to realize that the roads in that part of the world were hardly what we would call roads today. In fact, they were little more than footpaths. And so it was not possible for a dozen or more men to walk along all abreast. They would have been strung out in a long line, singly or at most in twos and threes. While he had not been able to pick up the words of it, Jesus knew that the conversation among some of them earlier in the day had not been pleasant. So he asked them, “What was it that you were you arguing about along the way?” No answer—only an embarrassed silence. I suspect that none of them dared look Jesus in the eye, because they had been arguing about which of them was the greatest. Once again the gremlin of pride comes into the picture.

The word for “great” in the New Testament is megas. You hear it again and again in English. A big personality on TV or in the movies is a star. And we call a really great star a superstar. But an even bigger star is a megastar. So it was that these men weren’t satisfied with just being ordinary disciples of Jesus. They were set on being mega-disciples. Their problem was that somehow they had come to think of following Jesus in terms of Masterchef. It had become all about performance, trying to impress Jesus, all the time constantly worrying as to whether they’d done enough or done it right. And part of that would inevitably have meant comparing themselves with the others around them. Following Jesus had become a competition.

What happens next is as though Jesus took a hand grenade, ripped out the pin and threw it into their midst. He was going to blow their whole world of pride and self-achievement apart. “Anyone who wants to be first,” he said to them, “must be the very last, and the servant of all.” Did you get that right, Jesus? Did I really hear you correctly? Let’s listen to those words again: “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.” And that is the pattern of discipleship as we find it in the New Testament.

You can see it in the life of the apostle Paul. Early in his ministry he describes himself in this way: “I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle”. A few years later, this is what he has to say about himself: “I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people.” Then, finally, as he nears the end of his life, he describes himself as “the worst of sinners” (1 Corinthians 15:9; Ephesians 3:8; 1 Timothy 1:15). “If I must boast,” he writes elsewhere, “I will boast of the things that show my weakness.” And why? “So that Christ’s power may rest on me” (2 Corinthians 11:30; 12:9).

John the Baptist recognized this as he stood on the bank of the River Jordan. Of all the ministries in the Bible, his has to have been one of the most privileged—to have baptized the Son of God. Our Lord Jesus even pronounced that “among those born of women there is no one greater than John”. Yet John said of himself, “He must become greater; I must become less” (Luke 7:28; John 3:30). And who would you say is the greatest figure in the Old Testament? I have no doubt that Moses would rank high on anyone’s list. Yet the Bible tells us that “Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3). “Of all garments,’’ wrote Bishop J.C. Ryle 150 years ago, “none is so graceful, none wears so well, and none is so rare, as true humility.”[2]

The servant of all

Just in case the disciples haven’t got the point, however, Jesus reaches over and brings a little child into their midst. Holding the child in his arms, he says to them, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.”

It is difficult for us to understand how radical Jesus’ words would have been. It’s not that children were not loved by their parents in those days, but they certainly did not enjoy the privilege that they have in our society today. They were taught; they helped with the chores; but by and large we could say they were invisible. So for Jesus to focus attention on a child in this way and to tell the disciples that to welcome such a one was their duty and privilege would have been something altogether new.

It was not that different from the time when he had honored Mary in Bethany for sitting among the men to listen to his teaching, or when he accepted the offering of the sinful woman who had anointed him with her tears (Luke 10:38-42; Luke 7:36-50). What Jesus was saying was that those whom we regard as the “least, the lowest, the last and the lost” all have their place in his kingdom and in his family. Here there is no status, no competition, no arguing about who is the greatest or the best. We are all here to serve one another and to serve the world in Jesus’ name.

And that brings us back in a circle to the opening words of our passage this morning—Jesus’ words, so puzzling to the disciples, about being delivered into the hands of men to be killed and after three days rise again. Here we have the very Son of God, the King and Lord of all creation, stooping down to share our human frame, to suffer and to die for you and for me on the cross. In the words of St Paul,

Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a slave… And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

There on the cross the first became last. On the cross Jesus proved himself the true servant of all, to the point of taking the stain of our sin upon himself. He trod the path of humility to become the servant of all. And now he calls you and me to follow in his steps.

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[1]        http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-francis-approach-mystery-of-the-cross-with-pr

[2]        Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Mark, 187

“A Threefold Call” (Philippians 2:1-11)

One of our great institutions in this land is the annual festival of Thanksgiving. Once a year it offers us a day to pause and to render thanks to God for his many blessings to us. The focus of Thanksgiving for the most part is on our material blessings—a home to live in, food on the table, physical health—not to mention those less measurable blessings such family and friends, freedom and peace. In the opening words of the letter to the Ephesians, the apostle Paul by contrast gives thanks to God “for every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places”. Then he goes on in the verses that follow to enumerate those blessings: being chosen in Christ and adopted as God’s children, redemption and forgiveness by God’s grace, the hope of a glorious inheritance and the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.

In the verses before us from Philippians 2, Paul calls upon his readers to do the same thing. But he does it in an indirect fashion, at least for us who speak the English language. For he begins each phrase of what he says with the word “if”. For us “if” is a word that expresses doubt. But that is not necessarily the case in Greek. In fact, “if” can mean quite the opposite. It can be an expression of absolute certainty. So let me try to render what I think Paul is really trying to say in the first verse of our passage this morning.

If there is any encouragement in Christ (and most assuredly there is!), if any consolation from love (and most assuredly there is!), if any fellowship in the Spirit (and most assuredly there is!), if any compassion and sympathy (and most assuredly there is!), then make my joy complete…

What Paul is doing is calling the Philippians to look around them and see in the faces of their fellow believers the blessings by which they are surrounded: those who have stood with them when things were going wrong, those who have expressed love in times of loneliness, those who share your most deeply held values and convictions, those who have given their very selves for you at your moments of need. As we look around in that way, we recognize that we owe far more than we could ever give. I find myself humbled by the many ways in which my fellow believers, my brothers and sisters in Christ, have given themselves faithfully, selflessly and unstintingly for me on so many occasions.

The Call to Unity

Well, says Paul, if that is the case (and most assuredly it is!), here is something else I want you to work on: Be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. It seems to me that the challenge for the Christian community in Philippi was not that different from the challenges that face any healthy, growing church body. It was that there were great things happening over here, and over here, and over here, but they were happening without any sense of the larger whole. It was what business people today call siloing.

In the business world siloing often goes along with personal kingdom building and departmental turf wars. However, I don’t think that was the case with the believers in Philippi. I suspect that things had simply grown and grown, and nobody had had the time to stop and give consideration to the life and health of the whole body. Yet Paul recognized that if they didn’t take measures to do so, there were all kinds of pitfalls that lay ahead of them.

Paul recognized that for the most part unity doesn’t just happen. It requires intentionality and effort on the part of all. In verse 2 he tells the Philippians what that is going to involve: being of the same mind, having the same love and being in full accord. Now for some of us “being of the same mind” may bring visions of Waco, Texas, and the Branch Davidians or of Jonestown in Guyana thirty years ago. But that kind of groupthink is the farthest thing from Paul’s mind. Remember after all that Paul is the one who exhorts us to stand firm in the liberty in which Christ has set us free. Paul is not looking for mind control (unless we mean minds controlled by the Holy Spirit).

Over my years at Messiah our Vestry has had a number of discussions about what this means when it comes to making decisions. On the one hand there have been those who have argued for complete unanimity. On the other there is our democratic heritage of majority rule. The tragedy is that our human fallenness is able to make either of these into a form of tyranny. What Paul is describing is a common mindset, a commitment to set of shared values that is able to guide our decisions and our common life.

Yet that is only one side of the coin. Aside from being of the same mind, the second thing Paul exhorts the Philippians to is to have the same love. That is to say that the church is bound together not just by a commitment to certain truths, but also by a commitment to one another. Without that love, that mutual caring, we are no different from a stamp club or a historical society. “Love covers a multitude of sins,” says St Peter. And of course the love that both he and Paul are referring to is the love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

The Call to Humility

The second quality to which Paul exhorts the Philippians is humility. “There is nothing so foreign to a Christian soul as arrogance,” proclaimed the great fourth-century preacher and bishop John Chrysostom. “The two impediments to a universal, diffusive, unconditional charity are the exaltation of party and the exaltation of self,” wrote another great preacher and bishop, J.B. Lightfoot, fifteen centuries later.[1]

Like unity, genuine humility is a basic ingredient to Christian community. I like the fact that our English word “humble” has its origins in the word “humus”—earth, soil. It reminds us of our origins, that like Adam God formed us from the dust of the ground. That truth is visibly and tangibly reenacted for us every Ash Wednesday, as the ashes are smeared on our foreheads in the form of a cross and we hear the words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.” Before going too far, however, I should make it clear that humility does not mean groveling or indulging in what some call “worm theology”, thinking that I am worth no more to God that a creature that crawls beneath the ground. Quite the opposite: if nothing else, the cross of Jesus proves our infinite worth to a heavenly Father who loves each of us more than we can ever imagine.

Thus, says Paul, true humility involves having a balanced understanding of who we are—what Oxford professor Markus Bockmuehl defines as “an unadorned acknowledgement of one’s own creaturely inadequacies, and entrusting one’s fortunes to God rather than to one’s own abilities or resources”.[2] And that in turn involves leaving aside selfish ambitions and conceit (what Bockmuehl again colorfully describes as “that strangely addictive and debasing cocktail of vanity and public opinion”) on the one hand and esteeming others above ourselves on the other. Once again, that doesn’t mean that we have to be doormats, but that we always have other people’s interests at heart. I like the way Eugene Peterson paraphrases it: “Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead.”

I think I may have told you before about Bishop Russel Brown. With pure white hair and a resonant voice with just the trace of an English accent, he was a man who could not have looked our sounded more like a bishop. One of the roles he took on well into his retirement was as chaplain at a small hospital and it happened that my student assistant was assigned to him for part of his training. I well remember Paul telling me with a look of amazement, of how the two of them had paid a visit to a patient who was too weak even to shave himself. Without hesitating, the bishop rolled up the sleeves of his purple shirt, daubed the man’s face with shaving cream, and began to shave him. It was a lesson in humility that he and I would never forget.

As we sang three weeks ago at Pentecost,

Let holy charity my outward vesture be,
and lowliness become my inner clothing—
true lowliness of heart, which takes the humbler part,
and o’er its own shortcomings weeps with loathing.

In humility esteem others as being higher than yourselves.

The Call to Christlikeness

Paul calls the Philippians—and by extension he calls us—to unity and to humility. But that is only the tip of the iceberg. The real point he has been leading up to all along, the primary challenge that makes the others pale almost into insignificance by comparison, begins in verse 5: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…” More than unity, more than humility, it is the call to Christlikeness.

In his commentary on Philippians Markus Bockmuehl describes these verses as

… a passage which in the twentieth century has been the subject of an uncontainable deluge of scholarly debate, quite possibly more than any other New Testament text. Other passages in the New Testament are of similar poetic grandeur and force; others have been similarly influential in the history of the church; but few if any have over this past century received even a comparable amount of scholarly attention… Fifteen years ago, one well-known monograph on Philippians 2:5-11 and its modern history of interpretation had a bibliography of five hundred items; at least another hundred items could now easily be added.[3]

And he was writing more than fifteen years ago himself! The subjects of these debates are many and include issues such as, “Were these verses really a hymn already familiar to the Philippians?” and, “What did Paul mean when he described Jesus as emptying himself?” But all these questions really are a colossal exercise in missing the point. That is, that if you and I are truly going to be the church, if we are to be the body of Christ in the world, then we need to be like Jesus.

What does that mean? First of all, Jesus did not see equality with God as something to be exploited. Do we hear echoes of Adam and Eve here in the Garden of Eden? They were fooled into thinking that if they ate the forbidden fruit they would become like God. But Jesus chose to divest himself of all his divine prerogatives, to empty himself, not just to share our human frame, but to go all the way to the death for you and for me. “No one has greater love than this,” Jesus told his disciples before he went to the cross, “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).

So, says Paul, our calling is, yes, to unity and to humility, but even more to the same self-sacrificial love that Jesus has shown to us. Such love will rarely be recognized by the world. It will not hit the headlines or go viral on YouTube. Apart from the women and John, Jesus died on the cross alone and unrecognized by the world. Yet now he holds the name that is above every other name, the name before which every knee will one day bow. So too, we do not look for fame or any earthly reward, but to be effective in God’s service, to know that we are doing the Father’s will—and finally to hear those words that every child of God longs to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

I’d like to conclude with a well-known prayer from Ignatius of Loyola.

Lord, teach me to serve you as you deserve:
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labor and not to ask for reward,
save that of knowing that I do your will.

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[1]     Philippians (ed. Alister McGrath), 122,123

[2]     The Epistle to the Philippians, 110

[3]     Page 115

"Discipleship is a process" (1 Peter 5:1-11)

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Last year, as many of you know, I passed the fortieth anniversary of my ordination. The occasion provided an opportunity to leaf through old photographs and reignite many memories, particularly of the people among whom I have been privileged to serve over the decades. This morning in our Epistle and Gospel readings we are given two brief glimpses of the life of the apostle Peter, one towards the end of many years of discipleship, the other back at the very beginning. Peter did not have the convenience of photographs but as he composed the first of his two letters that we find in the New Testament with the help of his friend and coworker Silvanus, I can only imagine that a torrent of memories, going all the way back to the events of this morning’s Gospel reading, must have been flooding through his mind.

Peter first became aware of Jesus through the witness of his brother Andrew. Andrew was a follower of John the Baptist. He had been present when Jesus had come to the banks of the Jordan River and John had proclaimed, “Look, the Lamb of God!” Andrew had been so entranced by what he heard and saw that he followed Jesus to where he was staying and spent the rest of the day with him. His excitement was such that he wasted no time in going straight to his brother and telling him, “We have found the Messiah.” This in turn aroused Simon’s interest enough that he followed his brother back to where Jesus was. There Jesus met him with the words, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas”. Now kepha is Aramaic for “rock” or “stone”, which in Greek is petros—hence the name Peter. And it seems to me that the rest of the story of Andrew’s brother Simon, or Peter, in the New Testament is how he became a rock.

So now as we read the Epistle, Peter is writing from the perspective of a long life of discipleship. He describes himself as “a witness of the sufferings of Christ”. It is a unique designation. Nowhere else in the New Testament do we find a disciple described in this way. The apostles were to have been witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection. But Peter describes himself as “a witness of the sufferings of Christ”. I wonder if Peter did not have in mind that fateful night as Jesus stood in the Garden of Gethsemane and pleaded with his heavenly Father, “If it be your will, take this cup from me.” Luke’s gospel tells us that his agony was such that he sweat drops of blood. Or later on as Peter warmed himself by the fire in the courtyard of the high priest’s residence as Jesus awaited trial. Three times he denied even knowing Jesus. Surely he must have seen the pain in Jesus’ eyes as Jesus looked at him—and I have no doubt that that pain pierced his own soul as he ran out only to break down and weep inconsolably.

At the same time Peter describes himself not only as a witness of Jesus’ suffering but also as one who shares in the glory to be revealed. Here too I wonder if there were not reminiscences in his mind—of the day when he and James and John had stood at the top of a mountain to see Jesus revealed in all his eternal glory before their very eyes. As Peter now prepares to close this brief letter, written to followers scattered over the great swath of land more than a thousand miles long and five hundred miles across that is now modern Turkey, what does he have to say to them? Three things stand out in my mind: be humble, be prayerful, and be watchful.

Be humble

Twice in the eleven verses that we have before us Peter speaks about the need to be humble: in verse 5, “Clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another,” and again in verse 6, “Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God.” There had been a time in Peter’s life when he had been anything but humble. I think that, like many of us, genuine humility, the grace, as Paul describes it, of honoring others before ourselves, did not come easily to Peter. He was impetuous. He had spent his life working long hours, hauling in nets with heavy loads of fish flipping and flapping in every direction, occasionally battling storms at sea. Life had demanded that he be tough.

No doubt Peter’s pride had been punctured somewhat early in his acquaintance with Jesus. It was on that occasion when he and his companions had been out fishing all night with nothing to show for it. The sun was getting high into the sky and the fish would certainly have retreated to the cooler waters deeper down, when Jesus said to them, “Go back out into the middle of the lake and let down your nets for a catch.” The gospels don’t psychologize, but I can only imagine Peter thinking to himself, “What does that @#$%& carpenter think he knows about fishing anyway?” His words to Jesus were more polite: “Master, we have toiled all night and haven’t caught a thing…” Then something in him caused him to relent. “Well, if that’s what you want, we’ll let down the nets…” And we all know the rest of what happened. In no time nets were so full that they threatened to tear apart. All that Peter could do at that moment was to fall at Jesus’ feet, and here I like the way the New Living Translation puts his words: “Lord, please leave me—I’m too much of a sinner to be around you.”

In spite of this incident early in his life with Jesus when it came to the point where everything seemed to be unraveling, it was Peter who stood up and boldly declared, “Even though all become deserters, I will not” (Mark 14:29). A few moments later, as the soldiers closed in to arrest Jesus, it was Peter again who boldly strode forward, drew a sword and sliced off the ear of the high priest’s servant. Yet in the end all this bravado proved to be nothing as Jesus was led away, put on trial and finally crucified.

Now, years later, Peter finds himself telling his fellow believers, “Clothe yourselves with humility.” The word refers to the tying on of a servant’s apron. So perhaps Peter had in mind that evening in the upper room when Jesus had gotten up from supper, stripped off his outer garment and fastened around himself the towel of a slave. After washing their feet he had said to them, “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet” (John 13:14).

I believe that the person to whom humility comes naturally is rare. Rather, humility is something that most of us have to learn, as Peter did, both through the school of hard knocks and through the example of others. The Bible tells us that even Jesus learned obedience through the things he suffered (Hebrews 5:8). And Jesus comes to you and me as he did to Peter with the invitation, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29).

Be prayerful

Thus Peter says to us, “Be humble.” And secondly he says, “Be prayerful.” “Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares for you.” Again it was a lesson that Peter had begun to learn during his time with Jesus. He had been there when Jesus had taught,

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For … your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:25-33)

Jesus’ words about trusting God had been put to the test one night when one of those sudden, violent storms, which I understand are wont to arise on the Sea of Galilee, threatened to capsize their little fishing boat and drown them all. I suspect that Peter was one of those who in a panic found Jesus asleep in the stern of the boat and shook him awake. “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re all going to die?” And with just two words from Jesus the storm was over more quickly than it had begun.

“Teacher, don’t you care?” “Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares for you.” It’s the same word in the Bible. Worries and anxieties will come. There will be crises and disappointments. Yet what a privilege is ours that we have a God who is not only big enough to handle them, but who also cares—to whom we may bring all our concerns, who knows our needs before we ask, whose desire is only for our good!

Be watchful

Thirdly, Peter calls us to be watchful. “Discipline yourselves. Keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.” In spite of God’s fatherly care, Peter is under no illusions that Christian discipleship is a cakewalk. Once again he could look back on his experience in the Garden of Gethsemane. There, as Jesus had poured out his soul in prayer, he and James and John had all succumbed to their fatigue. “Simon,” Jesus had said to him after the first time, “are you asleep? Could you not keep awake one hour? Keep awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mark 14:37,38).

At numerous points the Bible warns us that when we sign up to follow Jesus we are, whether we like it or not, engaging in a spiritual battle. As we read in Ephesians, “Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (6:12). Satan desires nothing more than to bring us down, to fall into the traps he sets around us, to make us believe the lies that call into doubt God’s good purposes for us. So it is that the life of discipleship is one of vigilance: of having our ears attuned to the voice of God, our minds infused with the word of God, our hearts inflamed by the Spirit of God, our eyes focused on the Son of God.

“Simon, Simon,” Jesus had warned Peter, “Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31,32). May we take Peter’s words, learned through the crucible of long Christian experience, to heart today. As we walk the path of discipleship, may we be humble, prayerful and watchful—and (in Peter’s words) may the God of all grace himself restore, support, strengthen and establish you.