You may be wondering about me. Yes, you may be wondering what happened to me. If so, please read on, because I promise you will be surprised to learn the path that my life story has taken. It has been a path with some very unexpected twists that honestly, I could never have imagined.

I wasn’t always a follower of Jesus, but I am now. In fact, you could say that for the longest time, I was his enemy. I am sorry to admit that. But God, in his great mercy, has allowed me to, as John the Baptizer would put it, “repent” and turn around from enemy to friend and eventually, to follower. And maybe, just maybe, you might even call me a disciple of Jesus.

I love Jesus. Yes, I know that he’s no longer living here with us, and that he reigns in glory in heaven. But I can still put my feelings about him in the present tense, can’t I? Because I mean, as the song says, He Lives!

We’ve all heard for years that Jesus was both human and divine. And we accept that as factual, mostly without fully understanding it. Jesus helped to feed that image by calling himself the Son of Man, while also admitting that he was at the same time the Son of God.

This story is not a story, really. Instead, it’s a confession, not just for me, one of the twelve, but also on behalf of my brother apostles. Maybe it seems odd to you that any of us would need to confess anything. After all, we’ve been declared saints (well, all except Judas). Some of us even have our names on books of the Bible. Churches and schools are named for us. There are feast days in our honor. Even the most obscure of us, like me, are famous in one way or another. I guess it’s mostly because we were all martyred, all that is, all except for John.

Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place, for all who take the sword will die by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled, which say it must happen in this way?”

“Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. A servant-girl came to him and said, ‘You also were with Jesus the Galilean.’ But he denied it before all of them, saying, ‘I do not know what you are talking about.’  When he went out to the porch, another servant-girl saw him, and she said to the bystanders, ‘This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.’ Again he denied it with an oath, ‘I do not know the man.’  After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, ‘Certainly you are also one of them, for your accent betrays you.’ Then he began to curse, and he swore an oath, ‘I do not know the man!’ At that moment the cock crowed. 

It may surprise you to see my story included here. But once the opportunity was given to me, I just couldn’t pass it up. Perhaps you may think of me as an enemy of Jesus, but I assure you that I was not, at least not at first.

Well, here I am again, the Pharisee who wrote to you some time ago.

Since that message, many years have passed. I’m not old just yet, but I do have some gray hairs. I remain a Pharisee, and am still steeped in the traditions of our faith and in its laws, which I hold very dear.

Has anything changed? Other than the color of my hair? In a word, yes.

He was one of us. One of the twelve, chosen by Jesus himself, just like the rest. And now, he’s gone, having taken his own life. He snuffed it out like a candle. The flame of his life is gone forever, leaving us to ponder.

“Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was one of the twelve; he went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers of the temple police about how he might betray him to them.  They were greatly pleased and agreed to give him money. So he consented and began to look for an opportunity to betray him to them when no crowd was present.”

Those men were smart, Annas, Caiaphas, and the others in their small group of leaders. They had it all figured out and their plan worked, brilliantly, it appeared. You have to give them credit, because they seemingly thought of everything.

We were all so very unlikely, but perhaps none more so than me. Our fellowship of disciples included fishermen, drawn straight out of their boats. And of course, there was a tax collector, one who was hated by most of our countrymen. Another would betray our Lord. One who would deny him. Yet another, who questioned everything. And finally, several more, ones who were so obscure that in your time, you know little about them. Gospel writers couldn’t even agree on their names!

Peter was, without question, the most prominent of the twelve. And also, the most enigmatic. I know that you’ve received letters about Peter before, actually several times. And I hope that this letter to you is not redundant. You can be the judge of that, but I must say that Peter is so very interesting, that I felt the need to write about him again. Why, you ask? Well, read on and see what you think!

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already decided that Judas son of Simon Iscariot would betray Jesus. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from supper, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.

The Passover, one of our oldest traditions, was always meant to be celebrated with great joy. Why? Because it commemorates God’s defining act in freeing the Children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. And our joy in this festival has never dimmed, even over many hundreds of years. It is at the heart of our faith, and especially the Passover meal, called the Seder. No Jewish tradition is more important and none is more joyous than Passover. Year after year, we look forward to it with great anticipation.

But not this one. Not this time. Not for us.

I am writing this to you, in your century, to warn you about the Lord’s Supper. You see, my hope is that we might share this memory of Jesus with you across all of the centuries that separate us. But yes, I need to warn you, hoping that you will not dishonor the words of Jesus just as we did only hours ago.

Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many. 

The day was dawning under heavy clouds, portending a storm on the lake.  We fishermen, with our nose for the weather, could feel it coming.  So, we stayed close to shore, huddled in the boat, ready to dash to safety.  

I waited for him in the dimly lit cell. Slowly, he was lowered, bound with ropes, through the small hole, into the confined space where I stood. The cell had no doors or windows, so no possibility of escape. The only way in or out was through the opening through which he was now passing.

Were you there when they crucified my Lord

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble.

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?