Episode 730 Peter’s Denial (John 18:12-27)

This week we’re reading Peter’s denial of Jesus as told in John 18:12-27. In what may be one of the most challenging discussions we’ve ever had, we discuss the moral injury that accrues, for Peter and for ourselves, when we encounter the gap between who we thought we were and who we turn out to be in life’s most challenging moments. We think about the incremental decisions that lead Peter to denying both Jesus and his own true self, the well-meaning denials that seem to start out innocently enough but build until Peter has rejected Jesus altogether. We notice that when the rooster crows in John’s version of this story, Peter doesn’t even notice, so little has he even realized what he has done. When the rooster crows for us, we wonder, what will we notice?