The Cock Crows

At the heart of the “Greatest Story Ever Told” is a betrayal. No one would call their child Judas. The name is slimed with centuries of condemnation: the lily-livered turncoat who betrayed an innocent man for thirty pieces of silver. We might understand how the crowd could turn on Jesus, but how could someone from the intimate inner circle hand him over to death?

We keep telling this story because we have met Judas, and he is us. You and me. Peter denied Jesus three times before the cock crowed. Fred Craddock tells a haunting story of betrayal.

I was in graduate school at Vanderbilt. I had left the family and children in the little parish I served and moved into a little room to prepare for those terrible comprehensive exams. It’s make-it-or-break-it time; they can kill you. I would go every night about 11:30 or 12:00 to a little all night diner—no tables, just little stools—and have a grilled cheese and a cup of coffee to take a break from my studies. It was the same every night; the fellow behind the counter at the grill knew when I walked in to prepare a grilled cheese and a cup of coffee. He’d give me a refill, sometimes come again and give me another refill. I joined the men of the night there hovering over our coffee, still thinking about my own possible questions on the New Testament oral exams.

Then I noticed a man who was there when I went in, but had not been waited on. I had been waited on, had a refill, and so had the others. Then finally the man behind the counter went to the man at the end of the counter and said, “What do you want?” He was an old, gray-haired black man. Whatever the man said, the fellow went to the grill, scooped up a little patty off the back of the grill and put it on a piece of bread without condiments and without a napkin. The cook handed it to the man, who gave him some money, and then went out the side door by the garbage can and out on the street. He sat on the curb with the eighteen-wheelers of the night with the salt and pepper from the street to season his sandwich.

I didn’t say anything. I did not reprimand, protest, or witness to the cook. I did not go out and sit beside the man on the curb, on the edge. I didn’t do anything. I was thinking about the questions coming up on the New Testament. And I left the little place, went up the hill back to my room to resume my studies, and off in the distance I heard a cock crow.

That is me, and that is you. And yet the events of these next few days will assure us that despite the worst we could do, the Love of God in Jesus Christ has overwhelmed us and flooded our traitorous hearts with grace and forgiveness and mercy.

April 2, 2015 by David Anderson 3 Comments Filed Under: Awareness, Character, Faithfulness, Grace, Mercy