Happy Good Friday! It sure didn’t seem that way to the eleven apostles, especially Peter, when they saw Jesus arrested late Thursday night in the Garden of Gethsemane by a contingent of Jewish guards from the temple at Jerusalem and Roman soldiers from its adjacent Antonio Fortress. Fearing for their lives, they fled the scene just as Jesus had predicted they would. He had quoted to them from Zechariah 13.7 by declaring, “You will become deserters because of me this night, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered'” (Matt. 26.31-35; Mark 14.27-31; Luke 22.34; 13.38 NRSV).
At least Peter and John returned later to linger about and see what was happening to Jesus. And that’s when Peter denied his Lord and Master three times. This proud leader of the apostles was then most unhappy when the cock crowed at his third denial. Jesus had predicted only hours earlier that this would happen (Matt. 26.34; Mark 14.30). And we read next that when Jesus made this prediction, “Peter said to him, ‘Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you.’ And so said all the disciples.”
There were so many instances during the time of Jesus’s arrest, interrogation, condemnation, and crucifixion in which it was obvious that God orchestrated certain events. None were more evident than when Peter denied Jesus three times. It seems to have happened in short compass. Matthew records it as follows in Matt. 26.69-75:
“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, sayin, ‘I do not know hwat 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. Then remembered what Jesus had said, ‘Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.’ And he went out and wept bitterly.”
But Peter’s intense sorrow, and that of his comrades, would change most dramatically to happy joy on the following third day, on Easter Sunday, when God raised Jesus from the dead.
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