Just a few days earlier, they had given Jesus a royal welcome to Jerusalem in anticipation of his instituting a new monarchy on the eve of the Passover feast. Instead, in the early morning, he was arrested, and his closest friends scattered like roaches. They denied even knowing him, and were so afraid of joining him that they took on the humiliation of running away nakedin a time and culture in which even running in your finest clothing was cause for shame. Most of the ones who stayed to watch his unfair trial and subsequent execution stayed hidden in the crowd.
The reason we know how cowardly, short-sighted and self-interested Jesus’ closest friends were when the going got tough, though, is because they weren’t afraid to say so after his resurrection. Peter, the earliest senior officer of the new Christian church, made no secret about the fact that he denied even knowing Jesus. The only story about his life that James, Jesus’ younger brother, told was about being rebuked and turned away by his older brother for presuming that he would get any attention from him at all. Saul, one of Christianity’s earliest ambassadors to other cultures, made sure people knew he started his career waiting on the people who persecuted and executed Jesus’ followers.
They were wrong about what they expected from Jesus, what they thought of themselves and the way they thought God would work in the world. Why were they willing to admit that? Because they saw the resurrected Jesus. After his resurrection, they understood that he didn’t go through the suffering of good Friday because of them—he went through it for them.
The resurrection had left Jesus’ friends and Christianity’s best early ambassadors so assured of God’s acceptance of them that they could admit their most heinous wrongs—even wrongs they had done to Jesus himself. Even after the resurrection, Peter’s confidence in God’s love was such that he could openly admit when he was wrong about whether Gentiles had to live like Jews to be part of the Christian community.
There are going to be times when we fail to live the lives we should be living. There are going to be times when facts we are sure of turn out to be incorrect. The more personally we understand Good Friday, the more willing we are going to be to concede to the truth. Let’s let Holy Week be a reminder to us to be honest with ourselves, and not feel threatened when the truth isn’t what we wish it to be.
