ST PETER AND DOING IT MY WAY

Fr Billy Swan

The liturgical calendar is quiet at this time of year as feast days of saints rightly give way to the approaching celebrations of Holy Week and Easter. That said, I would like to focus on St Peter who will feature prominently in the readings for Palm Sunday, Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter Week. In these Scriptural accounts, we see how a man who sought to control the Lord’s destiny was transformed into a disciple who learned to know Christ as Saviour, to follow the Master and let go of his desire for control.

Peter was chosen by Jesus as one of the twelve and emerges in the Gospels as the leader and spokesperson for the Apostles. There is much we could say about him and much in him we can identify with. Peter loved the Lord but was a flawed disciple, trying to steer Jesus down as certain path of his own choosing, thus forgetting who he was as a disciple of Christ and losing sight of his own weakness. It was only after he had been forgiven and after Pentecost that a transformed Peter emerged – a Peter who knew Christ’s forgiveness at first hand and spent the rest of his life proclaiming the new life of the Gospel for all.

Peter’s reluctance to follow Christ on his terms is seen clearly after he had professed his faith in him as the Son of God in Matthew 16. After Jesus predicts his passion and death, Peter responds by insisting that ‘this must not happen to you!’ Jesus’ response was sharp and direct. His instruction to ‘Get behind me Satan, for you are an obstacle in my path’ was not only a rebuke to Peter’s worldly way of thinking but also indicated a flawed desire to reverse roles whereby Peter sought to go before Jesus and not the other way round. The deeper issue in this episode is Peter’s reluctance to follow the Lord on his terms and his fear of what Jesus had just said.

For Peter knew that if Jesus was going to suffer and die, then as his follower, that would be his lot too. This theme of following where the Lord leads, arises again in the last chapter of John’s Gospel where Peter is reminded again by Jesus that ‘You are to follow me’ for the way of discipleship takes us ‘where you would rather not go’.

Western culture places a very strong emphasis on the freedom of the individual. This prevailing philosophy is captured in slogans such as ‘my life, my choice’, ‘my body, my choice’ and ‘my death, my choice’. It is the exaltation of the self, cut off from anything or anyone who would limit that freedom of choice. It is also expressed in what we might call a ‘Frank Sinatra spirituality’ of ‘doing it my way’. This celebrates the freedom of the individual to choose the lifestyle they want, even if the consequences of that lifestyle are disastrous. Even among people of faith, the temptation of Peter is strong - to go ahead of the Lord and do our own thing. We want God to bless our plans, to follow where we have already decided to go and to be the god we want him to be. That’s why the concept of God’s will is threatening and subversive to us who have made god in our own image and likeness.

Yet God gave us that gift of freedom and wants us to be happy. He knows how the joy we long for can be attained. Our desires, dreams and expectations are important to the Lord, but they need to be purified, refined and aligned to the mission that has been assigned to each of us. There always is a gap, big or small between my will and God’s will. This gap can only be filled with a deep faith in God who knows us better than we know ourselves and whom we trust is going ahead of us on that path through life. Like Peter, learning to get behind the Lord and to be his disciple involves dying to ourselves, humility and trust that he will lead us to become the people he has created us to be.

That’s why the Peter we see after Easter is very different to the Peter we saw before. He is free and brave to proclaim the Gospel without fear of the consequences. He has learned how to be a disciple and has come to know Jesus as Saviour. May we too learn how to be missionary disciples who know Jesus as friend and Saviour. May we learn to do his ‘his way’ and not ‘my way’.