I AM NOT…

John 18:12–27

All through Lent, we’re exploring a single, stubborn hope: by grace, what is torn, what is broken, what is frayed in our lives and in the world can be mended. Not hidden. Not ignored. Mended. Transformed. Made new.

Today, we name a tear or crack that runs straight through the middle of many brave hearts – fear and denial. We name it and we offer it to the One who says “I AM” even when our answer falters into “I am not.”

In the Gospel of John, we’ve been moving slowly—deliberately—through Jesus’ last week, and today we emerge from dwelling in the upper room where Jesus took up a towel and a basin to serve the disciples by washing their feet. That act was so much more than hospitality – it demonstrated love that upsets expectations about who serves and who is served.

Right before our scene today, Jesus has tried to alert Peter to what will happen, to how Peter will respond under pressure: “Will you lay down your life for me?… before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times,” Jesus tells him.

These are hard words—but honest ones—spoken to someone Jesus loves. Imagine those words are resting in Peter as we begin.

Step into the story. Torches. Weapons. The thrum of a courtyard that is buzzing with intrigue. Inside, Jesus speaks plainly. Outside, Peter draws close to the warmth of a charcoal fire. Questions come like quick tugs on a frayed garment: “You aren’t one of his disciples, are you?” Three times Peter answers, not with the courage he hoped to have, but with the reflex of a frightened body: “I am not.”

Perhaps you have had an experience of acting in the midst of fear, of not being able to think quite as clearly. We’ve just missed the gospel writer’s narration of the distress of the garden—the shock of state power arriving under cover of night, Peter’s panicked swing with a sword that severed an ear. We need to be aware of this so we understand the ground he’s standing on.

Fear narrows us. It tunnels our vision. It makes us grab whatever will stop the unraveling around us right now. 

We don’t make our best choices breathing that thin air.

Given the foreshadowing, given Jesus’ warning about this, the gospel writer  highlights an important contrast in voices as the drama unfolds.

When the arresting party asks for “Jesus of Nazareth,” Jesus answers, “I am he”—ego eimi  —the same steady “I AM” the Gospel has been threading through sign after sign. I am the true vine, I am the bread of life, I am the way and the truth, I am the resurrection and the life, I am the good shepherd, I am the gate, all of which points to God’s response to Moses in the Hebrew scripture about the divine name – I AM.

Meanwhile Peter’s refrain in parallel moments is the antithesis: “I am not” or ouk eimi in the Greek.

We are intended to hear this contrast – Jesus saying I am and Peter saying I am not.

I wonder where we deny like Peter? Where do we insist “I am not?”

Last week as we witnessed Peter sputtering about Jesus washing feet during the meal, we recognized our own discomfort with having tables turned, with receiving an act of love and service, and with having our expectations of power and authority unseated.  We thought about how we might need to mend our need for control by receiving love that we cannot anticipate or script, by suspending our judgment about who serves and who is served.

But in this moment in a courtyard after the chaos of Jesus’ arrest, maybe we can still hear Peter’s heart pounding.

Here’s the thing about fear - it isolates us. It whispers that survival requires withdrawal—Step back. Keep quiet. Say you’re not with them. Denial is simply fear’s proclamation spoken aloud: I am not. 

Today, we witness fear and the resulting denial in Peter’s moment of trauma and the mending that we are called to practice in response to that is truth-telling that is born of holding tight to our role as disciples, staying in the role, abiding with Christ.

We can counteract that fear and denial by abiding—refusing to let go of God with us even when our hands shake.

During his traveling ministry with the disciples, Jesus taught some practical skills: presence, advocacy, abiding. These can be stitches that bring things back together, that transform, that make a person or situation whole.

Throughout the gospel of John, Jesus keeps returning to relationship—teaching, consoling, correcting, staying close even when it is hard or unexpected—so that the disciples’ identity can be anchored in something deeper than adrenaline when crisis arises.

The scene in the courtyard with Peter doesn’t erase that work; it reveals how much we need it.

It’s so hard to have skipped so much of Jesus’ teaching and praying with the disciples just before this encounter. I encourage you to spend time reading chapters 13 – 18. In particular in those chapters, Jesus places three tools in our hands that I want us to consider as we work on our fear and denial:

First, abide – Jesus says abide in me and I will abide in you. This is a continuation of the gospels theme about staying in relationship – where believing is about staying connected. Abide. Stay in Love. Let that love hold you. Don’t flee the relationship when you feel small. Jesus says, “Abide in me…,” not “Perform for me.” Abiding is the slow hand practicing small and strong stitches that prepare and repair —ordinary prayer, ordinary meals, ordinary Scripture— things we practice again and again until courage holds.

Second, receive the Advocate – Jesus promised an Advocate to be with us always – to be God’s ongoing presence with each of us. You are not mending alone. The Spirit is the friend‑at‑your‑elbow who reminds you what is true when the night presses in.

Third, keep the commandment to Love – Practice love concretely. Not theories, not slogans. Wash feet. Share tables. Cross boundaries. We have been naming this as a congregation: letting our faith pull us beyond labels and roles and comfort to the aching places where healing is needed.

Because we are United Methodists near the nation’s capital, our mending has public threads. By that I mean that the work of discipleship, of justice and mercy, does not stop at the sanctuary doors. Love that kneels with a basin also stands at a hearing, shows up at a courthouse, marches in the capital, opens a guest room, signs a check, and tells the truth – that all bear the image of God - in places where it would be easier to keep quiet. We are not mending “ideas.” We are called to work that mends the world. In doing this work, in bearing witness like this, we are mending real lives—including our own.

I wonder what you might take on in the remaining weeks of Lent to stretch into courage and to mend the world with love?

Before we close, I want you to hear that I have deep compassion for Peter. I have deep compassion for our humanity, our collective fear. Peter wasn’t plotting betrayal; he was scared. He had watched the machinery of power move against the one he loved, and he did not yet trust that abiding love could hold him on that kind of night.

That may feel close to home right now. We may find ourselves asked to live out love, to abide with God in public facing ways that strike fear in our hearts. Because it doesn’t always feel safe.

The same Gospel that shows us Peter’s fear and denial in chapter 18 will later serve breakfast on the beach a few chapters later—another charcoal fire—where Jesus mends Peter not with shame but with relationship and recommissioning: “Do you love me?… Feed my sheep.” That is what grace does with torn places: it loves them, abides with them, calls them to become new, to respond.

And that is what Christ does and will do with each of us. If this week the rooster’s cry finds you at dawn and you realize you stayed silent when it mattered—hear the invitation: come to the shore. Eat. Tell the truth. Receive grace. Feed sheep.

May it be so. Amen.