The Dread Interval
Peter’s peelings during the Crucifixion. His arode with John. The Lord’s Resurrection. The special message to Peter. The special interview. Peace be unto you.
And can I be the very same,
Who lately durst blaspheme Thy name,
And on Thy Gospel tread!
Surely each one who hears my case,
Will praise Thee, and confess Thy grace,
Invincible indeed.” — John Newton,
“Except Judas the traitor, none fell so low as Peter...., Lord, what is man! What is our boasted strength but weakness! and if we are left unto ourselves, how do our most solemn resolutions melt like snow before the sun 1 Be Thou surety for Thy servants for good!” — Doddridge.
“A piece of timber on the water may easily be drawn with the hand of a man; but on the land it cannot be stirred without much greater strength. So is it with sin upon the conscience. In the time of committing it, nothing is more easy; but in the time of judging it, nothing is more insupportable.” — Bishop Hopkins.
“A bruised reed shall He not break, and smoking flax shall He not quench, till He send forth judgment unto victory.” — Matt.
xii.20.
HE Crucifixion with its story of love
and suffering is now over.
To all the disciples unspeakably bitter must have been that season of their Master’s unknown anguish. How heavily must the hours have passed between the time the procession moved along the Dolorous Way and the Resurrection morning! What a different Sabbath from the pleasant ones of Galilee, when, as on their way to sick and desolate homes and weary hearts on errands of mercy, they had plucked the ears of corn, or hung on their Master’s lips as He addressed the assembled crowds in Synagogue or on hillside or by pebbly beach: — Sabbaths, in which active work and deeds of divine philanthropy were beautifully blended with hours of teaching and devotion. How many hallowed unrecorded conversations on these Jewish high days must have come back to their memory, like gleams of light in the thick darkness, making them stand aghast at the thought of the present awful contrast. But specially to the one smitten heart with which we are now so familiar, almost intolerable must have been the gloom and misery and consternation. The others doubtless had their own sad reflections at the timidity which led to unworthy abandonment of their gracious Shepherd in His trial-hour: — they would mourn over the severance of a hallowed friendship: — and if they still hoped on, it was hope cherished amid almost despairing anxieties. But Peter had sorrows and remembrances too deep for tears. If he were lurking, as he may possibly have been, within hearing of the taunts and jeers and hootings of a ruffian soldiery and debased populace as they hurried his Lord to Golgotha, how must these infuriated shouts have made every wound of his spirit to bleed afresh. The usual type of Jewish mourning was the rent garment, the sprinkling with dust and ashes, and sitting in sackcloth. But these outer symbols were all too feeble to express, in his case, the intensity of his grief. As the air was rent with the exclamation, “Crucify Him, Crucify Him or as the Eloi-cry ascended apparently unsuccoured to heaven — how terrible to think that to all that bitter anguish of the forsaken Jesus he had basely contributed; — that one of the sharpest and most poignant thorns in the Crown which wreathed these bleeding brows was inserted by his ungrateful hands; and that as memory did its work during these long and silent hours of torture, the Divine Sufferer could say with equal truth of another as of Judas — “He that ate bread with Me hath lifted up his heel against Me i” Add to all these bitter reflections, his injured Lord was now beyond reach of any renewed expression of the sincerity of His disciple’s repentance. The eye which cast upon him its look of reproachful love in the courtyard of Caiaphas was now sealed in death! Well has it been observed, “There can scarce be a more poignant remorse than that which results from the conviction of unkind ness to the departed, — to those who are now beyond our reach, inaccessible to the expressions of our regret, or to the offers of reparation. Such must have been the nature of Peter*a grief in this mournful interval. If he could but come again to his Master, clasp His feet, confess his offence, and assure Him of his unfeigned contrition, what a relief to his burdened soul! But that Master is no more. He hath died with those grievous words ring* ing in His ear, with that odious ingratitude pressing heavily upon His heart. And often at the thought the Apostle’s grief is renewed, and his tears flow with increased bitterness.” 1
Had he been permitted indeed to know all, it might have been different. For may we not confidently surmise that in these hours of agony and shame, when Jesus was transfixed to the cruel cross, His thoughts towards the erring one were thoughts not of severity but of love? He who pled for the expiring felon, and opened for him the Gates of Paradise — He who with His dying breath sought forgiveness for His own very murderers, would not be likely to forget the Prodigal Apostle, who had already, through passionate tears, breathed the Prodigal’s prayer — “I will arise and go to my Father.” “Father, forgive Hiem: “— “Father, forgive
l Bishop Lee’s Life of St Peter, pp. 134-18?.
him.” “I will not blot out his name out of the book of * life, but I will confess his name before My Father.”
Peter would seem to have taken up his abode during these never-to-be-forgotten days with John: — so we are led to infer from the fact of Mary Magdalene, as we shall presently note, finding them together (John xx. 2). Whether after the burial they had lingered nigh the grave, or, stupified with grief, had shut themselves up in John’s wonted place of sojourn in Jerusalem, we cannot tell. There is something remarkable and significant, however, in their fellowship at such a time. We can only conjecture the reason. Could it be that Peter, penitent as he was, still cowered away in shame from his old associates? Or, on the other hand, might it not be that, truants as they all were from the fold, this unhappiest of wanderers was discredited and disowned by the rest? They would remember perhaps his vain boasting and bravado — the precedence he so often assumed, and which now would rekindle jealousies so recently manifested. They would have little confidence in the genuineness of his tears. While this, however, might be the case with the others, the one disciple most like his Lord in tenderness to the erring still clung to his rejected companion. Perhaps John had stolen out after him into the night, and had witnessed his bitter weeping. Perhaps he knew the solitary chamber whither his erring brother had repaired to brood gloomily on the horrible past, and had there found him out. They had mingled perchance their prayers and tears together. u As we find John at the foot of the cross, receiving the charge which, in the midst of all His own agony, the Son of Mary committed to him, ‘Mother, behold thy Son; Son, behold thy Mother, shall we say that after leading that Mother to his own house, and soothing her poignant grief as best he might, he bethought himself of his fallen friend, and went in search of Peter, whom he had seen, under the piercing, yet melting glance of their common Master’s eye.... What might be their converse, who can guess? * We did trust,’ they might be sadly saying to one another, ’ that it was He that should have redeemed Israel.’ But He is gone, it may be for ever; and all seems to be lost: .Hope is withered, and for our consolation, memory is all that now remains memory, in John, of that last endearment at the Supper; in Peter, of that last offence at the trial. And yet, friendship can blend the two. The bosom on which John leaned — the eye that looked upon Peter — are now common in the sad retrospect to both. They mourn, in their sad bereavement and bitter penitence, together.”1 Peter, treated, as we have surmised, with not unmerited scorn by all the others, thus discovered in the Disciple of love a friend that sticketh closer than a brother, and saw in his generous kindness the type and pledge of a forgiveness still more coveted. Hence, we may conjecture, was the reason that Mary Magdalene revealed the astounding tidings in the first instance to these two alone.’2
While the Apostles were thus indulging in conflicting feelings of amazement, and shame, and terror, others had been busy with their ministry of love and affection to the Beloved dead. Joseph of Arimathea had, on the afternoon of the Crucifixion, begged the body of Jesus, and wrapping it in a linen shroud, “laid it in a new tomb.” Nicodemus too had provided a mixture of
Dr Candlish’s Scripture Miscellanies, pp. 267-209. * See this well stated by Br Green, p. 64.
myrrh and aloes, an hundred pounds weight, and embalmed the corpse. The first funeral ceremonies were necessarily hurried and incomplete. The last offices of affection to the departed were required by Jewish law to be completed before sunset, at which time the Hebrew Sabbath began, and during whose sacred hours the rites of sepulture were rigidly forbidden. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had after a time of sacred watching in the Garden, hurried to their homes to prepare additional costly spices for the final interment on the first day of the week, — what Lange calls “the Great Burial — adding, as an additional reason for a renewal of sepulchral rites, that “by the first anointing, they sought simply to preserve the body; by the second, they wished to fulfil the ceremonial requirements, for which no time remained upon Friday evening.” Jesus indeed had told them, as we have found He had done His Apostles, of His death, burial, and resurrection (Luke xxiv. 6, 7). But the preparations we find them making for a more complete embalmment too truly reveals the conviction which had seized their minds, that His flesh was to share the doom of mortality and be laid in “the long home.”
The spices and perfumes accordingly were duly purchased on the Friday evening; and after the hours of the Paschal Sabbath had elapsed, Mary Magdalene is seen, in the early dawn, ere the first golden beam was tipping the summit of the Mount of Olives — doubtless, too, after a day of agony and a night of sleeplessness — hastening to the spot where all she most loved lay silent in the domain of death. As she and the other Galilean women, guided by the moonlight, enter the garden gate, their first thought is as to how they shall be able to remove the gravestone. They are nearing the spot. Lo! the stone is already rolled aside from the mouth of the sepulchre. Mary, in a moment of panic, leaves her companions, and rushes into the city, to carry the tidings to the disciples. The thought of rude hands pillaging the tomb and taking the loved inmate away, alone seems to have occupied her. She has never entertained the possibility of*her Lord having risen. She had expected to have seen His cherished form again; to have bathed His pale countenance with her tears, and relaid the embalmed corpse in its rocky bed. Blinded to grander realities by her grief, in an agony of sorrow she pours out her painful tale to the disciples: “They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid Him.”
Meanwhile the other women, who have lingered behind, see a young man seated in the vacant tomb, clad in long white raiment — the emblem of gladness. He announces the startling tidings that the Lord they loved had risen; that He was to go before them into Galilee; that the Sea of Tiberias and its shores were again to hear the familar music of His voice. “He goeth before you” (the word would seem to indicate “as a Shepherd”) “into Galilee; there shall ye see Him as He said unto you.”
Peter and John heard the strange account from the lips of Mary. Her words to these two disconsolate brothers seemed “foolishness.” They run toward the sepulchre; and surely the very fact of Peter thus hastening, shows that though overwhelmed with anguish at his aggravated sin, he was not absolutely “crushed by his fall.” The beloved Disciple, younger and fleeter in foot, outstrips his friend; but, with feelings o,f sacred awe, he can do no more, on reaching the spot, than “look in.” Peter, on the other hand, “with characteristic ardour” — disregarding, as other Jews would have done, ceremonial pollution — rushes inside the rocky grave, followed by his more timorous companion. They beheld with their own eyes the folded napkin and ’ sindon ’ — the fine linen given by Joseph of Arimathea, lying by themselves (the undoubted trophies of victory), indicating no hasty or furtive abstraction of the body. With mingled doubt and perplexity, yet consolation and hope, they “went away again unto their own home!”
Does the narrative, however, furnish us with no other and more interesting clue to Peter’s present conduct 1 After all the sad and recent story of his apostasy and ingratitude, would even such startling tidings as he had heard tempt or warrant him without hesitation to leave the hiding-place of his cowering shame and remorse? Had no new ray of light pierced that horror of great darkness? Had no word of encouragement and hope, better and stronger than man could give him* been conveyed to his ears? Yes; undoubtedly there was. A special and most wondrous message had been brought to him by Mary Cleophas — a message direct from the celestial Warder at the tomb — which might well have brought burning tears to the eyes of one of sterner mould. “Go,1’ said that Angel-guardian; “go your tmy9 tell His disciples, and Peter.” Often has imagination sought to picture the interview between this messenger of reconciliation and the trembling Apostle on that memorable morning. When Mary rehearsed to him the Angel’s words, would he not be disposed at first to listen to them as idle tales, — as a message too good, too kind to be true? “‘What! ’ may he not have said to her, 4 have you not mistaken the name? John or Andrew, James or Matthew, it may have been; or some peculiar message of love and affection to His sorrowing but devoted mother; but I am the last, surely, who would have been singled out with this special remembrance of a love I so basely requited.’” 1 Yet it was all true; a new testimony that u God’s thoughts are not as man’s thoughts, and God’s ways are not as man’s ways.” He who guaged all the anguish of that smitten heart, knew that better than all the balm of Gilead would be a single expression of affectionate recollection and kindness from the lips of Him he had denied. “And Peter!” How these two little words would linger like a strain of music in his souL How they would follow him every step in his way back to his native Galilee, haunt his sleeping and waking hours, and prove like a bright gleam in his lonely watches on the midnight sea. Well does Bishop Wordsworth observe, on the fact of these same words being recorded by St Mark alone .• — “The recital of them, treasured up by the thankful Apostle, and recorded by his son in the faith, seems like the thankful acknowledgment of a contrite heart, overflowing with love for the Divine tenderness to him after his denial. And they beautifully illustrate our Lord’s saying, that ’ there is joy among the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.’”
His anxiety would seem to have led him a second time to the vacant tomb. But now the angels were no longer keeping vigil After -gazing on the place of mysterious silence,” he departed, wondering in himself
1 Water from the Well Spring, p. 65. at that which was come to pass.” Moreover, during the day, at some time and in some way not revealed to us, he evidently had a special appearance of his Divine Lord vouchsafed to him, similar to that given to Mary. We are curious to know the particulars of what doubtless must have been a most touching interview ;-r- where it was — how it came to pass — what words were spoken. But regarding all this, Scripture is silent. “The details may have been too personal to be revealed to us.” Beautiful, however, and deeply touching is this earliest evidence of Christ’s forgiving love. The Risen Saviour, with His old unchanging kindness, makes it His first business to seek out the deeply erring but now deeply humbled and penitent man. The Good Shepherd’s first errand is to go to rescue the one of the fold most entangled in the thorny brake — bleeding, and footsore, and weary 1 All we know for certainty is that such a meeting did take place. For in the evening of that ever hallowed day, when the two disciples from Emniaus hastened to the chamber in Jerusalem to convey the wondrous tidings that Jesus had been “made known to them in the breaking of bread,” they were welcomed with the joyous announcement: “The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared unto Simon” The same special interview is expressly mentioned by St Paul in the beginning of his Great Resurrection-chapter. There, in specifying the evidences of the Saviour’s rising from the dead, he commences with the distinct announcement, as if the appearance were one pre-eminently
1 “It is observable that on this occasion the Apostle Is called by his original name Simon (not Peter); the higher designation was not restored until he had been publicly reinstated, so to speak, by his Master.” — BUM Die, art. “Peter.” noteworthy and remarkable: “He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve.”
It has been well remarked, “The absence of all description, and even of any direct mention of this interview, is strikingly characteristic of that which js a peculiar feature of the Gospel history, whether told by Matthew, or Mark, or Luke, or John — we mean, the studied avoidance of that which we now describe as ’ sensational ‘There probably never was, during the whole world’s history, such another interview between two persons in human shape as this between Peter and his injured Master. But, with one consent, all the Evangelists avoid the subject. Every one of the four must have been cognisant of the fact; yet they are all not only reserved, but absolutely silent. This could not be because they deemed the fact an uninteresting one. No; a contrary feeling prevailed. The meeting was felt to be one which, as no human eye beheld, so no human pen should attempt to describe. Peter’s own attached friend, whom he calls ‘Marcus, my son,’ was one of these Evangelists. But he is as silent as the other three. The Apostle had kept silence even to him, or he had forbidden all allusion to the subject.” 1 And yet, is it vain curiosity which tempts us in thought to lift the curtain and try to get a glimpse into the sacredness of that interview! We can picture Peter covered with confusion, dumb with emotion. How strange, how thrilling, to meet for the first time all alone — unseen by any third person — the glance of that eye which when last confronted bad pierced him to the heart’s core, and sent him away weeping in the darkness! If silence and tears on
1 Author of Ssaajs on the Church, p. 89. the present occasion had found vent in words, we can suppose that they were either a repetition of his Transfiguration experience, “Not knowing what he said,” or else that, in spirit at least, he adopted the plaintive wail and confession in that “Psalm of a broken heart v — “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight, that Thou mightest be justified when Thou speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest.” But whether the interview was thus one of “mute expressive silence” — where exchanged looks were sufficient between the Forgiving and the Forgiven, — or, as is more likely, there were the penitential 8ighings and avowals of a contrite soul on the one hand, and the assurance of generous oblivion extended on the other, we cannot fail to recognise, at all events, the extreme tenderness in the dealings of Him of whom it was truly predicted that “He would not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax.” By this considerate means the Lord spared Peter the pain and shame of encountering for the Jirst time, in the presence of his brethren, One whom he had so deeply injured. Unless this private preliminary meeting had first taken place, in vain, at least to one heart present, would the benediction have been uttered, “Peace be unto you.” He could have seen only the spirit-form he once beheld on the stormy waters, the vision which led him to “cryout for fear!” Jesus, however, by this gracious anticipation seemed, in divinest sympathy, to exemplify His own law in dealing with the erring: “If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone.”
That “upper chamber” within which, on that Easter evening, Peter and the rest of the eleven were gathered, was most probably the same which had been so recently and sacredly associated to them with the institution of the Holy Supper, the washing of the disciples’ feet, and the last sacerdotal discourse and prayer. All at once, in mysterious silence, with no footfall heard, and no opening of door, the Great Lord Himself appears with the familiar words we have just quoted, gently upbraiding them for their unbelief, and graciously exhibiting the spear and nail marks on hands and side, to attest the identity of His resurrection-body. Then breathing upon them, He said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” And so also, eight days later, must our Apostle have been present with the waiting ten, who had again gathered on the second Easter Sunday to commemorate their Lord’s rising, and when the slow, doubting Thomas had his misgivings removed by reaching forth his finger and touching the crucifixion wounds; — exclaiming in reverential faith, “My Lord and my God.” It was on the same occasion Jesus repeated the gracious word for His Church in all ages: “Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.” “An echo of which saying,” as has been observed, “we have, years after, in the first letter of Peter to the Churches;” — “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Peter i. 8).