Weep Bitterly

 

Tonight, we will gather at Christ’s table where there is a place set for all and plenty of room to spare.  Tonight, we will break bread together on our knees.  Tonight, we rewind the story just a bit, because what we’ve been reading happens after the disciples push back from the table and go out to the garden with Jesus (see Monday’s morning meditation).  Hear now these words,

 

Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “He has blasphemed! Why do we still need witnesses? You have now heard his blasphemy. What do you think?” They answered, “He deserves death.” Then they spat in his face and struck him, and some slapped him, saying, “Prophesy to us, you Messiah! Who is it that struck you?”

Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. A female servant 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 female servant saw him, and she said to the bystanders, “This man was with Jesus the Nazarene.” 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. Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly.

 

I weep bitterly with Peter because I know this story didn’t just happen, it is happening.  I weep bitterly with people whose lives are shattered and scattered by actions of system racism and legislation dripping with hate.  I weep bitterly for creation that we continue to see as a means to wealth rather than a wealth of God’s creativity to be honored and exist in harmony with.  I weep bitterly for ongoing violence, the idea that we can bomb and kill our way to peace.  I weep bitterly for the hatred we have of each other.  I weep bitterly for our inability to see that our lizard brain (fight, flight, freeze, flock, fawn) has taken over the steering wheel of our so-called “enlightened minds” and has ruled the roost ~ perhaps since September 11, 2001.  Will we be called a generation of those who thought we knew so much, but denied the pain of so many?  Will our grandchildren lament that problems we hand them as we shrug our shoulders and say, “Not my problem now”?  Will our inability and unwillingness to let our faith write our story because the gospels of money and power and privilege have always been the narrative we really cling to?  Will fear be our legacy?  Come tonight with your beautifully broken self to the table.  Taste your own brokenness in bread and then a cup of grace that you did not earn.  Grace is not some frosting on the burnt cake of our lives, grace is who God is.  Grace is not something God does, but the way God seeks to reconcile and repair a world hell bent on destroying itself.  Come tonight to continue the narrative that isn’t about the past but speaks to our very present moment in ways we need to hear now more than ever.  Amen.