By Reverend Laurie DeMott

Take a closer look at this picture that Luke has painted for us: in the center of the frame is Jesus, barely visible through the mass of people crowded about him, pushed to the edge of the lake by their enthusiasm and excitement, and then over in the corner of the picture we see Peter, calmly washing his fishing nets. This scene that Luke describes for us is our first clue that Peter was pretty clueless. Somehow everyone else in the town has gotten word that this Jesus fellow is a remarkable man worth taking a few minutes out of your busy day to listen to, but Peter has chosen to spend his day fishing and washing his nets, as if it is an ordinary day like any other day. To add to this astonishing picture of Peter's cluelessness is the fact that Jesus was not a stranger to Peter -- Jesus had stayed at Peter's home and even healed his mother-in-law of her illness, and yet Peter still believes that at this moment washing his nets is more important than anything Jesus might have to say.

At this point in the story, we know that Jesus was already beginning to contemplate the choice of disciples, because before the day is through, he calls Peter and James and John to join him in his ministry, and when you look at the picture Luke paints immediately before that call, you have to ask, "Why Peter?" In the center of the frame is that whole crowd of listening people and off to the side is Peter, ignoring Jesus completely because you know, he's got those fish nets that need to be washed, and while God might be interesting, a man's got to be practical and attend to business before taking time to contemplate life's mysteries. For Jesus to choose Peter as his successor would be like Steve Jobs, looking out over the heads of a mass of Apple fanatics hanging on his every word, pointing to a guy in the back who is not paying any attention because he's too busy paying his bills, and saying, "You there, in the back, I choose you to run the company."

What did Jesus see in Peter that made him by pass all of his most ardent fans to choose a man who thought washing fish nets was the most important thing a man could do in a day?

That's a question that people have been trying to figure out for 2000 years because in fact, Peter takes a long time to demonstrate the worthiness of Jesus' choice. Throughout Jesus' ministry, Peter demonstrates over and over his persistent cluelessness: he makes bonehead mistakes, he can't seem to get the gist of Jesus' teaching, and he even runs away at the cross. Even Peter admits that he can't see anything in himself worth seeing -- in this first encounter with Jesus, Peter protests to him, "I am a sinful man!" and for a long time it seems like Peter knows himself better than Jesus does since he is more apt to mess up and prove his sinfulness than he is to get it right and prove Jesus' faith in him. But of course, we sometimes forget the depth of Peter's inadequacies because we know the end of the story -- we know that Peter did finally get it together and eventually became the leader of the early church but that was only after several years of inept discipleship and an awful lot of patient forgiveness on behalf of Jesus. And so we have to ask again, if we can't see it until years later, how did Jesus know from day one that the faithful Peter who eventually will emerge is somewhere beneath all of that other sinful screw-up clutsy clueless Peter? What did he see that no one else, not even Peter, could see?

Luke wants us to read Peter's story as our story. Jesus calls all of us to follow him, to shape our lives by his teachings, and to become faithful disciples, in the same way that he expected Peter to become a faithful disciple. We are supposed to read this story of Peter and imagine ourselves there on that beach, washing our nets, oblivious to what is going on right under our noses, and likewise we are to see ourselves later as the Peter who finally comes through and becomes strong, compassionate, and faithful. We are supposed to see our own progress of discipleship as God's enduring belief in us that sees beneath all of this sinful, screwed-up, clutsy, clueless person that we are to take hold of the good person underneath and pull it into being. So when we ask, what did Jesus see in Peter that no one else saw, even Peter, we are really asking, "What does God see in me that even I can't see? Is there really anything here to believe in, anything inside of me worth God staking the Kingdom on? You know, I can't even find my keys half the time; what makes God think I'm going to be capable of discipleship?"

If the bible were a well written novel, I could point you to some foreshadowing, some little things that Peter did or said that justified Jesus' trust in him. And then we could look at one another and say, "Ah yes, you know, she may have a short temper but she is really kind to cats" and we would assume that God's choice of her as a disciple would be revealed as brilliant in the end when her love of cats became crucial to the healing of the world. In other words, we suspect that the reason that God believes in us is because we really have exhibited our worthiness in some way, no matter how small. But the gospel isn't a screenplay and the reality is that there isn't much there for us to hold on to to give us faith that Peter's going to do right in the end. The reality is that much of the time there isn't anything for any of us to hold on to to give us faith that any of us will live up to God's expectations for us. We are all disappointing mixtures of good and bad, successes and failures, and if we wait for someone to prove themselves worthy of God's faith in them, we may often be waiting for a very very long time.

But God's faith in us has really nothing to do with who we are. God's faith in us has to do with who God is. God is the one who made us, and so God knows that down at the center of your being remains the person God created you to be. Maybe that original creation has gotten a bit sullied of late; maybe it's accumulated a bit of grime and hurt and layers of debris that present a pretty poor picture to the world, but underneath it all remains the original shining creation of God -- the person that God made and made you to be. We can't always see it -- others can't always see it -- but God sees it and constantly calls that person back into being.

I once had a discussion with several other clergy about church security, and one minister said, "In our church, we are very concerned about security and we have a very strict practice in place as to who receives keys to the church building. You are only given a key if you are the chairperson of a board, which in our church, is an elected position based on your earned trust of the congregation and even then, when you go off the board, you must hand over your key to the new chairperson. No one is allowed to have a key unless they are serving in an official capacity. Of course," he added smiling, "there is also a key hanging by the backdoor for anyone who forgets their's."

This is the meaning of grace -- we can and should work hard to be good people but we should never forget that the reason God believes in us has nothing to do with whether we are successful in our attempts at goodness and perfection. When all is said and done, God will leave a key hanging by the back door for us, not because of who we are, but because of who God is. The apostle Paul said, "I am who I am by the grace of God and God's grace to me was not in vain." Paul should know. The person God had made him had become buried under layers of arrogant, seething rage and no one, least of all Paul, could have imagined that underneath all of that anger lay the man who would one day give his own life in love for Christ and others. But Paul came to realize that to deny the possibility of his becoming a new person would be to deny the power of God to call forth the person God had created him to be. To refuse to believe that any person, even ourselves, is capable of change, is capable of goodness and healing and wholeness, is capable of becoming a new person, is to deny that God is our creator and that God's vision for us was wrong. If we cannot have faith in ourselves, if we cannot have faith in others, then let us have faith in God.

God calls us to get down on our hands and knees and clear away all of the debris that has sullied the original work of God that is us, to reveal the beauty that lies there. God calls us likewise to look at our neighbor and believe that beneath all of the accumulated hurts and mistakes and misjudgments atill lies that original creation of God's. God calls us to see our neighbor and ourselves and every person we encounter with the eyes of Christ, and believe that God's grace was not in vain. It may take years, it may take a lifetime, or it may take only a voice speaking to us on the road to Damascus, but however long it takes, God will never stop calling us to be that person that God created us to be, that lies within us still waiting to emerge into new life.