The Path to Brokenness

By John Martin

“It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times.”  This line of Charles Dickens from the opening sentence of A Tale of Two Cities referred to the time of the French Revolution.  Beyond its original context, it also hints at the reality of the now and the not-yet tension inherent in God’s Kingdom.  Hear the continuation of his thought, “It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way."  Whether we admit it or not, each of us in the human experience is all too familiar with that tension – the battle between two opposing kingdoms.  The best of times and worst of times somehow co-exist in the mix of experiences that make up the mixture of our lives.  Not only do we feel it: the simple truth is that at times we get caught up in it and feel powerless in that cosmic struggle.  Take Jesus’ good friend Peter for instance.

Jesus told him in advance (Mt 26:34) Peter would deny him.  Peter simply could not believe it would happen.  Yet, just a few short hours later he was overcome with shame to realize that before the rooster crowed he had, indeed, denied Jesus three times (v. 75).  It happened innocently enough, at the Palace of Annas the High Priest.  Peter sat among the servants at the fire, but his body was restless, and his mind raced.  Next came that unsettling question from the maid, “Weren’t you also with that Nazarene, Jesus?”  What must have gone through his mind?  Was he afraid of being implicated?  Was he afraid of being dragged into court to testify against Jesus?  Did he simply not want to answer because she was a woman who had no legal right to an answer?  Sigmund Brouwer reflects on Peter’s thought process.  “Peter justified, then denied.  There is something peculiar about human nature.  In almost inverse proportion, the more off-kilter our stance, the more strenuously we defend it – justification requires further justification for the self-deception to survive.  We can understand why Peter, with every additional denial, added more bricks to build a higher wall of defense—a wall . . . that was being built not between him and his accusers but between him and Christ.”1 Finally the realization of this was too much.  Peter went out and wept bitter tears of shame and remorse.

Despite our best intentions, we are no better at this than Peter.  We, too, deny Jesus in big or little ways, as this cosmic battle rages in and near us!  Growing up, I was never into outward rebellion.  I was a compliant preacher’s son who never seemingly tested the boundaries.  I did all the good things Christian kids should do, and some would say I even led an exemplary youth, but I denied Jesus in times of testing just as surely as Peter did.  Some of the bad ideas, presuppositions, and attitudes -- if not behaviors – I picked up along the way to adulthood remained unexplained and unexamined in my Evangelical Protestant mind and heart.  In quiet and mostly unintentional ways, I denied Christ’s power and authority by not pressing forward through the swirling doubts and ambiguities for solid answers.  By my mid 20’s, I lived in a kind of complex and inescapable avoidance of the very issues that mattered most -- even as I held firm to Christian faith.  It worked for awhile, but eventually deep questions about life overtook me and unnerved me to the very core, threatening my health and well-being.  In earlier years I did not see a problem, but in reality God knew I was going to have to eventually face a type of testing I had never known before.  That testing has become my journey across the past dozen years, and this brings me to today.  Thankfully, life is not over for me yet, and I have begun to face those old questions with the grace of Christ by my side.  We must be on guard, because each new day presents additional opportunity to deny Christ.  Today, by writing these very words, I have to choose once again if I will deny Christ’s power by succumbing to my own self-consciousness and quietly hold this vulnerability within me, or if I will bring glory to the Christ of the Cross by sharing His powerful healing grace at work in my life.  As we journey to the Cross, we must recall that all Christians are rescued from the pit, and we must not hold back in giving God the glory for the redemptive grace of the Lord Jesus Christ in our lives.  Thanks be to God!

1 Sigmund Brouwer, The Carpenter’s Cloth, Word, 1997.