Most calendars say that today is Palm Sunday, the day we remember how Jesus came into Jerusalem on a donkey, with crowds cheering and waving palm branches in his honor.

For us who have been going through the book of John, though, Palm Sunday and all its celebration happened long ago, way back in chapter 12. We celebrated Jesus’ shining moment with him briefly, but then we watched as he used that moment to choose obedience. Instead of making the most of his political and social power, Jesus chose to sacrifice and to die.

We’ve listened to Jesus teach the inside truth ever since, the most important things he wanted his disciples to understand on the night before he died.

So today, this week before Easter isn’t really a Palm Sunday celebration. Instead, we’re looking at Peter’s great failure.

That might seem incredibly inappropriate, but the truth is historically, there are two different ways that the church has worshipped on this Sunday before Easter. One way is the familiar Palm Sunday, but another is called Passion Sunday, where we enter into the suffering of Jesus’ death.

Today has more of that feel for us, as we try to find what God may be speaking to us through Peter’s failure.

You might have been here three weeks ago, when Sarah Baldwin led us through chapter 13 of John.

The very end of the chapter, verses 36-38, sets up Peter’s experience in chapter 18. Let’s take a look at it. [READ]

Peter is ready to stand with Jesus. He begins to understand Jesus is going away, begins to understand that Jesus is going to die, and Peter wants to be at his side. He’s ready to be, as Sarah said, “so wonderfully passionate and heroic.”

Peter’s known for his impetuousness and the trouble that his mouth gets him into, but it’s important to notice how Peter’s heart is pure gold. His motives are so right. He has trouble fully comprehending Jesus, but the parts he gets, he wants to do with a whole heart. He’s ready to lay it all on the line, and die with Jesus.

But Jesus reminds Peter, almost rebukes Peter, that following him is about obedience and submission and doing what Jesus does. It’s not just about dying heroically.

There’s something inside me that totally gets Peter on this issue.

When I was in grade school, we lived near Santa Cruz, California. I shared once about our really steep driveway that we used to race Lego cars down; it was a really hilly area that we lived in.

A little ways away from the blacktop hill of our driveway was a place that had some of my most dramatic moments as a kid. It was a pretty big and empty sandy hill between my house and my neighbor Alan’s house.

We played all sorts of imaginary “scenarios.” Sometimes, we were in medieval times with swords and bows and arrows. Sometimes we were in the old west. Sometimes we were in the future, chasing each other around with these pretend laser guns that shot these little plastic disks.

But there was one thing that remained constant in all of our little scenarios. Multiple times in an afternoon of play, I would get killed at the top of that hill, and roll, and roll, and roll dramatically down in my heroic death scene.

I loved dying heroically! It didn’t matter if I died as a knight, or as a sheriff, or as the captain of some space ship. What mattered was dying: always at the top of the hill, always with dramatic rolls and flops and clouds of dust.

Pretty much all of the pretending was coming up with a good scenario that would lead to death.

It’s hard work figuring out new and different reasons that the bad guys would want you dead! But I lived for those moments when it all came together, as I stood at the top of the sandy hill, when the arrow or bullet or laser would enter my stomach, and I could throw myself down, hurtling down the incline, rolling and flopping in a martyr’s death.

Did anybody else do this, or is it yet another reason I need therapy?

I totally understand Peter and his drive to die heroically next to Jesus.

Back in chapter 18, Jesus and his disciples are out in a garden at night, when a crowd of torch-bearing soldiers and guards arrive with Judas. They’ve come to arrest Jesus, and Jesus is fully prepared to hand himself over. When they ask for Jesus of Nazareth, he simply says, “I am.”

It’s both an answer to their question, and another claim to be God, to be the great “I am” who introduced himself by that name to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The majesty and power of the moment causes the soldiers to fall back, so Jesus asks again. Again he’s ready to give himself over without a fight, and then Jesus says, “Let these others go.”

Well, this is it. This is the moment. Here, Peter thinks, is his time to stand for what’s right. It’s his time to shine. What chance does Jesus have against hundreds? What chance would Peter have if he fought with Jesus?

This must be what Jesus warned against. This must be the test, the moment where Peter can show his stuff. Deny Jesus? No way. Run away to safety? Huh-uh. He’s NOT taking the easy way out, he’s NOT going to wimp out and deny Jesus. He’s going to heroically stand with Jesus and die with him.

Just freeze-frame that moment for a minute, and put Peter in the best light you possibly can.

Because I think I’ve given Peter a bad rap over the years. I’ve thought of him as a fiery, impatient oaf who can’t even admit he knows Jesus, even though Jesus clearly warned him about it just hours before. I’ve wondered how Peter could be so stupid and weak.

But Sarah’s words a few weeks ago helped me to see chapter 18 in a different light. Peter’s trying to do the right thing. Jesus’ words predicting failure are ringing in his ears.

When Peter hears Jesus ask the soldiers for a way out for all his followers, Peter thinks it’s his test. It’s his time to prove Jesus wrong, and stand with him. It’s his chance to heroically offer his life as a martyr, to die with Jesus and take his place in history as the noble follower who gave his life. Peter is bravely trying to do the right thing.

He pulls out a sword, probably a short one hidden in his sleeve.

He’s right where I was, right at the top of the sandy hill, in the moment of futility before the glorious death.

But evidently he’s not too good of a swordsman. He aims for the big, dramatic de-capitation, and all he gets is an ear! Poor Peter.

He’s made the big, impetuous, dramatic move. He’s done his best to prove Jesus wrong, to be faithful, to not deny Jesus, to stand with him and go where Jesus will go.

He’s done it all right, but it’s all wrong.

He’s forgotten that following Jesus means doing what Jesus does.

Jesus isn’t fighting. Jesus is offering himself up to the mob, ready to die UN-heroically.

Peter doesn’t get that. Jesus is proved right: Peter’s not ready to follow Jesus yet. Following Jesus is not a dramatic journey of glorified and fictional death, the kind that children pretend about.

Following Jesus involves a much different kind of obedience and glory.

Can you imagine the confusion Peter must have felt?

He’s prepared to be attacked and slashed and killed by a mob, but instead he gets stopped by the man with whom he is trying to heroically die. He’s tried to be brave and strong and do the right thing and not deny Jesus, and now his whole world gets turned upside down by Jesus’ words: “Put your sword back into its sheath.”

Don’t die heroically. You’re not following me, even though you think you are.

Have you had Peter’s experience?

Have you had times where you have done everything you could to have your motives right, to do the right thing, to bravely follow God…only to hear from God, at the crucial moment, “Put your sword back into its sheath”?

To be honest, this is what is really helpful about Peter’s failure. He’s not an idiot. His failure is NOT Judas’ failure of complete and utter betrayal. Peter fails precisely in the act of trying to do everything he can to be faithful to God. He’s trying to do what’s right, he’s willing to risk his life, and that’s where the failure comes.

To be human, to be a follower of Jesus, means that our frailty and our desire for glory and attention will sometimes lead to our failure.

Why is that encouraging?

It’s honest. It helps me realize that I’m not alone if I try to do what God wants and miss it. It means there is more to following God than just dying heroically, making the big splash. It reminds me that to follow Jesus is first and foremost about doing what Jesus did.

Here’s where I’ve ended up this week. There is a heroic journey of dying that we all need to take, that we need to take more than once in our lives. But it’s not like Peter thought it was. It’s not the big moment of standing against the odds, where all can see, valiantly fighting for our own glorious place in history.

No, often in those moments which we think are so important, those crossroads in life where we want to make a splash and impress others, it’s often in those moments that Jesus says to us, “Put the sword down. Don’t be so dramatic plotting out your big roll down the hill. Just watch me, and do what I do.”

Peter’s already had one failure before the famous denials.

In what he thinks is the big moment, he takes everything into his own hands and fails to do what Jesus is doing. That’s failure number one.

And then his famous failings, the fact that he denied he even knew Jesus three times…his famous failings come not in the dramatic moments, but in the little things.

It’s the day to day things. The things he’s not paying attention to at all.

The true, heroic death that needs to happen many times within us is what people in the church for centuries have called, “dying to self.”

We have to give up our dreams of heroic glory, give up our right to take up the sword’s power, give up the right to take matters into our own hands.

Our call, as followers of Jesus, is to join him in patient obedience that often involves suffering. Our call is not always to dramatic moments of shining obedience, but often to the quiet, everyday questions from others when we’re not really paying attention.

On this Passion Sunday, how might Jesus be calling something in you to die?

When you look ahead to this week where we remember Jesus’ passion, Jesus’ suffering and death for us…can you anticipate a normal, everyday moment where you might need to name your connection to Jesus rather than deny it?

In just a moment, we will close our service with a prayer experience from John 17. What might need to die in you today, so that you may follow Jesus?