Close-up of Rembrandt’s ‘St Peter’s denial’. Photo: Via Wikimedia Commons.
Peter’s denial
Clive Ashwin offers an Easter meditation: from failure to redemption
The story of Peter’s denial and subsequent repentance is one of the most dramatic episodes in the Easter narrative. Jesus had been arrested and taken to the house of the high priest. He was being abused and ill-treated. It was dark and cold in the courtyard outside, so someone lit a fire. There were some onlookers, servants and Roman soldiers standing around. Peter was trying to see what was going on, at the same time as avoiding being identified.
A servant girl recognised Peter as one of Jesus’ circle and challenged him. Peter denied any connection with Jesus. When the girl persisted, he became rude and abusive to her, no doubt drawing upon the colourful vocabulary of oaths he had acquired during his days as a member of a Galilean fishing cooperative. On the third denial, he heard a distant cock crow to greet the coming dawn. As Jesus turned to look at him, Peter recalled the prophecy, which had been so precisely fulfilled, and wept bitterly. The moment is captured with moving intensity in Rembrandt’s painting.
Failure, remorse and repentance
The sense of guilt arising from past moral failure which Peter felt is a perennial feature of the human condition and persists through all ages and classes of person. Writing in the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson, in his essay Repentance, refers to ‘the pungency of remorse’. Johnson was troubled by an incident which occurred during his youth. His father, a bookseller and stationer, had asked him to come to the market at Uttoxeter to help him on his stall. Johnson objected, perhaps motivated by the belief that he was now a young gentleman and such tasks were beneath his dignity.
Johnson remained troubled by the memory of this act of disobedience and ingratitude. Many years later he returned to Uttoxeter. He went to the marketplace where his late father’s stall used to stand. He removed his hat, and stood in penitential silence for several hours in the pouring rain. The feeling of having failed a parent is very common. The word ‘remorse’ appears only once in Quaker faith & practice, and that in relation to perceived ‘failings as a daughter’ (21:52).
It is a very fortunate reader who does not have buried in their memory what one might call a ‘Uttoxeter moment’, an occasion when they have failed in their conduct to someone in their life – a parent, a spouse, a child, a colleague, a friend. Sometimes it involves having failed a complete stranger; for it is our behaviour to strangers which is the ultimate test of Christian virtue. We would like to travel back in time and do things differently, drawing upon the small fund of wisdom which we feel we have since acquired, but we know that is not possible.
Sharing guilt
Some faiths have a priesthood, the rituals of confession, repentance and absolution, enabling their adherents to share their guilt with someone else in a protected and structured way and so lighten the enduring feeling of moral failure. Quakers have, of course, elders, who can contribute to this process; but the egalitarian ethos of Quaker relationships, combined with the periodic nature of offices, make it less likely that members of a Meeting will feel able to share the burden of their guilt with another member of the same Meeting, however trusted. They are more likely to confide in someone with a degree of professional distance, such as a counsellor or therapist.
In the stillness of Meeting for Worship, it is possible for these unresolved and troubling feelings of moral failure to rise to the surface of the mind and issue in what is intended as ministry but takes the form of a confession, turning a Meeting for Worship into a Meeting for Counselling. When this happens it has to be handled with love, tact and discretion. It gives us valuable insights into the deeper levels of the spiritual life of the Meeting and alerts us to the need for sympathetic and supportive action.
One familiar route to absolution is an act of conspicuous repentance such as that chosen by Johnson – a public act of self-mortification. In Christianity, as in many faiths, there is a long tradition of the hair shirt, sackcloth and ashes, self-denial and similar forms of self-inflicted suffering. However, these practices are often private and inward-looking. They may have a symbolic and cathartic value for the individual, but they leave the world around them unchanged unless they lead to some form of affirmative action.
Converting remorse to positive action
Peter’s path to repentance was to recognise the enormity of his failure, to be strengthened in his resolve and to become, as Jesus had also predicted, the most ardent and effective propagator of the Christian message. Indeed, perhaps every opportunity for moral improvement is preceded by such a realisation of failure.
At a humble personal level we can learn from our own failures and convert this knowledge into positive action. If we feel we have been less than perfect as a parent, our actions now can be guided by that insight. We can uphold young parents who are wrestling with the enormous responsibilities of parenthood, in prayer and in practical ways, such as babysitting and sympathetic listening. We can love and uphold others who now carry the burdens of the responsibilities in which we feel we have failed.
Brooding upon our sense of past failure alone can make us gloomy and withdrawn, and less able to support others in Christian love. We need to leave the past where it was: that was then, this is now. We are different and, we hope, better people for that knowledge. We first need to forgive ourselves, and to ‘walk cheerfully over the world’. This will never wipe the slate clean, but at least we can feel that we have shown that, like Peter, we have recognised our sense of failure and converted what might become a secret and corrosive sense of guilt into positive and loving action.
