April 23, 2000

Pastor David G. Mullen

Mark 16:1-8

"And Especially Peter!"

Parents of young children: does this sound familiar? You and the kids are home on a Saturday morning and you're puttering around the house, doing a few chores, your work taking you from one room to the next, perhaps. You're not really spending quality time with the kids, but you do talk to them now and then or take note of what they're playing with, drawing, or the mess they're making. You are just there, as a family, everybody's getting along fine and dandy. But now let the phone rings. What happens? As you stand in the kitchen talking on the phone, your kids come running in, fighting with each other, grabbing you around the legs, whining, begging, crying, carrying on so loudly that you can hardly hear the person on the other end of the line. Why does this happen, and happen again and again?

The psychologist Alfred Adler spent a whole lifetime trying to get people to appreciate what he believed accounts for most of the human behavior that seems to give us fits. In his view, people of any age will do almost anything to gain a feeling of belonging. If people feel they cannot belong in positive ways, misbehavior results: being bad is better than being ignored! Some will clamor for attention, like those children bugging you when you get a phone call. Others go for power, demanding to have things their way-or else! For some deeply wounded souls revenge becomes a way of fitting in, feeling (unconsciously) that they can belong only when they hurt others as they have been hurt. Or, and in some ways this is the worst of all, some very discouraged people find their niche in the world by deciding they cannot do anything right, so why even try. This is called the display of inadequacy--very sad place to be.

And this brings us to the subtext of the Easter story. There is love and mercy beneath the glory and triumph that we might easily miss. Remember that the loud-mouth leader of the disciples, Peter, was the first to confess that Jesus was the Messiah, was the one who vowed to stand by Jesus no matter what. Yet he crumbled in cowardice at the questioning in the courtyard after Jesus was arrested. He who vowed he'd never forsake Jesus, denied even knowing him three times. And when Jesus was crucified, Peter was nowhere to be found; he was hiding in terror somewhere in Jerusalem. Peter must have been dreadfully discouraged about himself and terribly ashamed. He may well have been in a sad emotional and spiritual hell, a kind of ultimate "display of adequacy", feeling like he'd lost his place in the disciple group and perhaps even lost the love of Christ. He failed so miserably that he no longer belonged anywhere.

Many people experience life as failure and sadness. Ever heard of the imposter syndrome? Guess who suffers from that? Many famous, highly successful people! Why? Because they know they are just ordinary humans, and yet all kinds of attention and expectation is loaded on them and they feel like imposters: pretenders, and because they know they really aren't what others perceive them to be.

This kind of thing applies to us when we in all sincerity want to be and try to be good Christians, and know in our hearts that every day we fall flat on our faces. We just can't be perfect now matter how hard we try. Just when we think we got one problem licked, another one rears its ugly head. We wonder, what is the matter with me? I must be a hypocrite, a failure at faith. And that is a very sad place to be, thinking and feeling that we are second class citizens, that maybe we really don't belong or shouldn't belong or can't belong in the Church, or get to heaven, because we're just imposters. That's discouragement, that's the sad place to be. We're a lot like Peter. Very, very imperfect--pretenders to righteousness.

Well, that's all the old story, the familiar stuff of life. We want nothing more than to feel like we are wanted somewhere and really and truly belong, and yet that belonging often seems at risk because who and what we are. We don't live up to expectations. But now here comes the rest of the story, the power of Easter: The young man at the tomb said the women, "God raised Christ from the dead! Now go and tell the disciples, and especially Peter, that Jesus will go ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there, just as he promised."

And especially Peter! The young man-the angel-commands the women to become the first preachers of the Good News. God raised Christ from the dead, death is conquered. But this huge event doesn't mean that God forgets about the issues of daily life. No, right in the middle of Easter triumph, is God's tenderness and mercy and love going out to Peter. Tell especially Peter that Christ is risen and is looking forward to seeing him in Galilee. In other words, all is forgiven. Peter still belongs. He is forgiven and loved. This is the Word of the Lord!

And this same message goes out to everyone of us when we are feeling inadequate, failures, imperfect, mere imposters at life, faith, and decency. And especially Peter! That means "and especially us" when we are low down in some hellish tomb of despair. Especially for us when we think we no longer have a rightful place in this, especially for us comes this Good News! Far from being an organization of judgment, let the church, let this congregation, be like the women at the tomb, running out into the new world, with a message we ourselves can sometimes scarcely grasp: Christ is risen. And he loves you! Nothing you've even done can change that!

For when Jesus walked out of the tomb in the wee hours of Easter, the world lost its power to define us, judge us, or break our spirits. When Jesus walked out of the tomb, the welcome and the mercy of God went to everyone, no matter what.

And therefore, if, as God's children we should find ourselves tugging at the robes of the Almighty, worried that God's too busy taking care of others to notice us in our neediness, remember that on the greatest day in the history of the world, on that day when Christ rose from the dead, almost the first words of the Easter joy went straight to the one who may have felt the worst of all: Peter. Knowing this, St. Augustine wrote: "God loves each of us as though there were only one of us."

What can that mean but that judgment and death no longer prevail? The door to heaven is wide open. There is a place at the banquet of salvation for everyone. Everyone is invited and everyone can belong! And especially Peter! Amen.