Peter the Humble Bold One scene 1 (click for next scene)

Jesus' instructions just before His ascension began to effectively rearrange Peter's traditional concepts about the identity and work of the Messiah. His incorrect picture of God and the Messiah learned from and deeply entrenched in his nation's religion and culture were very difficult to release. But they had to be exposed and renounced in the light of the actions and attitudes demonstrated by the real Messiah. The deep assumption of an earthly, force-based, Jew-favoring kingdom was nearly impossible to overcome even in the face of overwhelming evidence and instruction by Jesus to the contrary.

But once again Jesus laid out His plan for addressing the world and its salvation. Acts 1:3 says that for 40 days He spoke to them of the things concerning the Kingdom of God. Then once more He gave them specific instructions as to where to be and what to look for just as He had done at His resurrection. The last time they had completely failed to follow His instructions to go ahead of Him to Galilee to meet Him, instead, cowering in terror and despair and unbelief in the upper room. This time Peter's mind and heart were beginning to be more attentive, not so preoccupied with his own plans for Jesus, though still somewhat confused by the misleading beliefs of his “church”.

Just as He had done before the crucifixion, Jesus engages in joy-capacity building activities of eating and being together with His disciples. He again gives them instructions for the present to prepare them to be ready for a future He has planned for them. “Stay in Jerusalem this time. Wait. Remember the promise of the Father you heard me talk about at the last supper. In fact, when you remember that you will begin to remember all the other things I shared with you then that you didn't hang on to. I spoke a lot about joy, about my deep desire for us to be with each other and the Father's equally intense desire for the same thing. I petitioned the Father at that time to send the Holy Spirit and He always gives me what I ask for. I prayed for unity, not only between you, me and the Father but that will include all of you with each other. Now let's get back on track where you got off and let's focus again on these fundamental elements of the real Kingdom. It is not your business, contrary to nearly everything you have been taught by your religious authorities, to figure out dates and have the scoop on how events will happen to fulfill prophecies. That's God's business, not yours. Your part in all this is to keep your focus on ME. Be obsessed with my passion and my interests. It is not dates and world events you need to know, it is ME you need to know – intimately, passionately, until you are completely swallowed up in my love for you and have lost all interest in self. Then you will be immersed in and by the Holy Spirit who will empower you supernaturally to simply be witnesses of me, the Truth about God. And your witness will be a seismic event so powerful that it will explode out from the epicenter of Jerusalem, the city of God, like an unstoppable tsunami that will sweep across Judea, Samaria and will not be stopped until it reaches the remotest parts of the earth.”

Then He was drawn up into heaven creating an intense, emotional desire for Him in the hearts of His followers that would sharpen their focus on remembering His presence and words with far more interest than they had ever done before. Without His physical presence they realized that they had to take seriously His instruction to “eat His flesh and drink His blood” to become one with Him. They turned to each others recollections and to the scriptures like never before. They listened to each one's differing perspective and memories of how He had related to them and spoken to their hearts. For the first time they began to deeply appreciate the rich diversity of each one's experience and unique memories as each testified how Jesus had profoundly met their deepest needs, healed their pain, ravished their hearts with His love and was making them complete and whole.

They began to let go of their prejudices and pride and bitterness against each other in a growing eagerness to learn more and more about their best friend – about God – in each other's witness that they had never before cared about. Their differences, grudges, conflicts and inner lies began to be exposed and to float to the surface in the sea of love that quickly began to engulf them, fed by the melting glaciers that had for so long kept their hearts rigid and frozen. As their hearts continued to melt in each others presence they renounced the lies in their minds and turned to each other for reconciliation and forgiveness. This tended to further heat the sea of love and accelerate the melting process until they began to desire nothing more and nothing less than to be fully consumed and absorbed by the very fiery passion of God Himself revealed in Jesus, their friend, their Redeemer, their lover and obsession.

As Peter sat in awe looking around the room at what was happening to this mixed group of disciples, his heart was stirred with unfamiliar emotions and his mind was brimming to capacity with a new understanding of what true reality is. His craving for power and preeminence had dissolved in his humiliation at what these attributes had caused him to do in denying his own Redeemer. But Jesus' faithfulness to him had far out-weighed his guilt and he was still accepted and loved, not only by Jesus but by His disciples, Peter's former “peers”, and even by Jesus mother.

Here were many other women too, women who had stubbornly stayed by Jesus, displaying amazing courage and loyalty in the face of enormous hostility while most of the men associated with Jesus had collapsed and disappeared in cowardice and fear. The only men who even partially stood with Jesus were mostly His “closet” followers like Nicodemus and Joseph. They, ironically, had lived in bondage to fear and cowardice so long they were ready to step away from it just when the other disciples were being swallowed by it.

Here was Mary Magdalene, the one person Jesus had identified as having a better grasp of the gospel than anyone else. Peter and the others had harbored disdain and even disgust for her fueled by Judas' critical spirit. Peter felt deeply ashamed of how he had treated Mary and how he had felt toward her for so many years. Now after his own public disgrace he was beginning to identify with her feelings and a new appreciation for her was growing in his heart. He could learn a lot from her about Jesus if he should take the time to listen to her story.

Over there was Jesus' mother and even His earthly brothers. Oh how much had changed in the past few days and weeks. Mary had gone from bewilderment to intense grief and then to amazement and joy as she watched her Son live out the very life of God and then die the worst death of a vile, rotten sinner. Yes, she had definitely experienced a “sword in her own heart”. But after the resurrection she had realized that her relationship to Jesus had dramatically changed. At the cross her job of mother had terminated. She had been given a replacement son in the person of John. Now her relationship to Jesus was no different than all the other followers. Jesus was her God, her Saviour, her Redeemer. The only difference was that she had the wonderful privilege of being a repository of unique and intimate memories of His whole life on earth unlike any other human. She too now had Peter's new respect and would be an invaluable source of heart mentoring for him as he began to synchronize his own new heart with God's heart and those of His children.

For the first time in her life Mary's step-sons were now in sympathy with her. They had always been a source of pain to her heart as Jesus was growing up and throughout all His ministry. They had even swayed her to doubt Jesus herself at times and they had openly undermined Jesus' claims and influence in the public arena. They had been annoyed and irritated by Jesus' consistent sweetness of disposition and forgiving spirit and they had many times made His life very difficult. They had always been deeply embarrassed by Jesus' claims to be God and even their mother's version of the circumstances of His birth. This had cast a stigma on the whole family that they felt unfairly affected their own reputation and so they had been quick to join the religious leaders in their disbelief and ridicule of His virgin birth. They hoped to lessen their own disgrace by sympathizing with His enemies. Even for a time after the crucifixion they lived in unbelief and shame.

But when He appeared to them after the resurrection with the same soliciting tenderness and complete absence of condemnation that had so annoyed them most of their lives, their unbelief melted into repentance. They had seen the true evil and malice of the leaders they had sought to harmonize with exposed during His final hours, and the contrast between the spirit of Jesus and that of the leaders became painfully obvious. Now, in the upper room with their mother and His other friends, they confessed their animosity and unbelief and, surprised by joy, they opened their hearts to accept His love, forgiveness and Lordship in their lives. Yes, Peter was in awe.